It’s no secret!
The most successful and timeless formula to get more conversions on your online store is;
Promotions and Discounts!!
Nothing attracts more customers to your online store as easily as the word SALE.
People rush to online shopping sites as soon as they see the new discount offers. Ever wondered why? Well, it is so obvious, we all want to save some money.
The very thought of being able to save some makes us spend some more!
Why coupons and discounts?
Believe it or not, it is the biggest psychological hack that smart marketers use. A study suggests that 61% of users redeem the discounts and coupons they are offered. Further 91% confirmed they would return to shop more if they are given more coupons.
Some of the obvious advantages of promotions are:
- Attracts new customers to your brand
- Loyal customers keep buying more often
- Creates a preference for your brand over competitors
- Keeps your inventory moving and clears old inventory
- Gives your brand the benefit of word of mouth advertising
- Gives you actual and immediate insight into customer preferences
- Test various marketing strategies and analyze results
Running Sales: The Balancing Act
Despite the obvious advantages of discounts, the mere act of offering a lower price to your customers does not guarantee that your sales figure is headed north. If not planned strategically your promotions might even hurt your business and eat away your margins rather than helping you.
To set the right momentum and to make your work you should carefully consider the following;
Define Your Objective
Decide whether you want to acquire new customers or plan to re-engage your customers who haven’t ordered in a long time. You might even want to capture a new audience segment or maybe nudge your loyal customers to buy more. Based on your objective your discount offers would vary.
Customer Segmentation
Dividing your customers into segments based on their product preferences, order size, order frequency, geolocation etc can help you create different deals. Offering segment based promo codes can help in higher conversions.
Track Your Margins
While offering discounts and coupons always be very mindful of your margins. The products with higher margins can be offered at a greater price cut. Never give deep discounts that burn through your margins as this might be detrimental to your growth.
Set a Target Sale Volume
Once you have calculated your margins, you should set a target sales volume and accordingly plan various discounts. Instead of opting for a uniform discount, opt for a mix of coupons and discounts which can be applied to a different product or user segments.
The Perfect Timing
Timing plays a great role in the success of your marketing. You can time your sale and offers during the slack season to make up for slow sales or you can time it around seasonal or festive periods when customers are actually on a buying spree.
Set The Tone With Design
When you change your site design layout and jazz it up according to your latest promotions your offers and products are more likely to get attention. Place your new products more prominently and club them with some old inventory for cross-selling to get bigger ticket sizes.
Offer Ends Soon
Promote impulse buys with limited time discounts. You can also add the factor of psychological pricing. You can nudge your customers to buy more by offering an additional product at a discounted price. For example, if one Tshirt is priced at Rs. 500, give an offer where the customer can buy a second Tshirt for only Rs.350.
The Pull OF FREE
FREE is the word that stops customers in their tracks and makes them take note and explore the offer immediately. While planning your promotions incorporate something for FREE, it can be free shipping on a certain order volume, a freebie with the purchase of certain items or maybe a coupon for
How StoreHippo Helps you Boost Your Sales With A Powerful Discount Engine
Discounts fetch the maximum sales only if they are planned strategically. Planning and implementing a variety of coupon codes can become cumbersome if you have limited options to set the promo codes.
Considering the importance of coupons and discounts in e-commerce marketing, StoreHippo e-commerce platform has built a powerful discount engine that enables you to experiment with a variety of marketing mixes. The discount engine is a built-in feature of the StoreHippo platform and available with Professional, Premium, Business and Enterprise plans.
With the powerful discount engine, you plan and execute the following types of discounts:
Discounts On Orders
Prompt your customers to order more by offering order level discounts. You can offer a percentage or value-based coupons. For example on
Set Up Different Discount Rules
Apply various rules to create a variety of discounts using the rule engine. Apply discounts of diverse products to create unique personalized offers for your customers.
Set up Coupons
Create a variety of coupons codes and run multiple promotions to compare what works best with your customers. For example, offer a coupon for Monday special 20% off, or 15% off purchase of certain order volume.
Limited Period Offers
Plan flash sales with a limited period offer. Easily set the start and end date of coupons and discounts to plan a range of successive marketing campaigns.
Save Time With Bulk Import/ Export
StoreHippo e-commerce platform understands how important it is to make the processes easier. You can now plan various discount offers and import these right to your dashboard in one click. Similarly, you can import the results to analyze the performance.
Discounts For Different Devices
You can maximise your sales by offering special device based discounts. Since a vast majority of buyers (up to 80%) come through mobile channel and also order bigger ticket sizes, you can incentivize them with a better offer.
Personalized or Group Discounts
You can easily create specific discounts for a single customer or segment them into groups to offer group based discounts. For example, you can offer discounts for a specific region, for customers who buy more than 2 times every month and so on.
Brand or Seller Based Discounts
StoreHippo e-commerce platform lets you use another type of discount which is based on a specific brand or a seller. You can easily discount the products of a given brand or seller to make them move quickly.
Conclusion
Discounts are the shortest and most effective method of boosting sales immediately. By knowing your goals you can strategically plan you're discounting to get the maximum pay off. Bring in more sales and revenue from your promotions and deals by combining the tips and ideas given above.
Let us know in comments if you have used any other tips to make your discounts and deals more effective.
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