Written by Raúl Carrión
Índice
Promotions are a great sales tool that will help you increase the turnover of your online store. In this article you will find the information you need to design your first promotional actions and measure the results obtained.
An online store that never applies any type of promotion can project an image of abandonment or of not being very detailed with its customers. You don’t need to pay off all your products or go overboard. Listen to your customers and find out what makes them want to buy your product and how you can offer it to them.
An online store that never applies any type of promotion may project an image of abandonment.
What is the purpose of promotions in an online store?
Having a good promotional strategy in your online store is beneficial for multiple reasons:
Increase sales to achieve liquidity
One possible scenario for applying a promotion is when we need liquidity to meet imminent expenses. For example, to acquire new products for the next season, a remodeling of the website, payments to suppliers, etc.
With a well-designed and communicated promotion you will convert stock into cash quickly.
Balance references
If we strategically want to stop offering a certain product, a product-oriented promotion will help us to accelerate its liquidation.
Maintain the interest of the potential customer
An online store that frequently applies promotions will always keep the interest of its followers in the various social networks high and will also progressively increase its database of subscribers. Your potential customers will be alert to make their purchases at the best time.
Types of promotions in your online store
Promotions applicable in an online store can be classified into four categories depending on the benefit to the customer:
Promotions for product
Promotions for products are those that apply a discount for the purchase of a certain product or products that belong to a specific family. The amount to be discounted can be a fixed amount or a percentage of the product price.
These types of promotions are recommended to sell products that are being discontinued or, on the contrary, to introduce new references to our product portfolio, increasing their visibility thanks to welcome promotions.
Ordering promotions
This type of promotion applies a discount regardless of the products purchased. Its use is usually related to the need for short-term liquidity. You can also use them to incentivize a customer’s purchase by sending them a promotional code that activates the promotion.
Free shipping and handling
The cost of shipping the goods is one of the determining factors in the abandonment of the purchase process. There are a large number of users who are reluctant to process their order after seeing an increase in price when selecting the shipping address. This aversion tends to increase the higher the price of the shipment. Especially if the order is for a small amount. With a free shipping promotion we can increase sales at a specific moment and also check how critical this aspect is for the buyers of our online store.
Special promotions
If none of the above types of promotions fit with our promotional strategy, we can use the promotional policies we are used to seeing in department stores: 2 for 1, 3 for 2, etc.
If you decide to opt for this type of promotions you must make sure that your online store is prepared to manage them properly. This point is important because not all current e-commerce managers have this functionality natively.
Promotions with discount codes
Discount codes act as passwords that activate promotions for those users who know them. They allow us to make selective and exclusive promotions.
Frequent uses of discount codes
Discount codes can be used for:
Customer loyalty
By giving a discount code when making a purchase you will encourage the customer to return to your online store.
Convert off customers into on customers
If you have a physical store, giving out promotional codes will encourage your offline customers to start buying from you online as well.
Design promotions for users of a given channel
Create a promotional code and spread it through a single channel or social network, in this way you will be able to measure the impact of the promotion in a specific media.
Rewarding special customers
Create discount codes for your best customers and show them that they are important to you.
Tips for using discount codes
When creating a promotion you should stop to think about all the possible situations you may encounter: what happens if I sell too much, can a customer misuse the promotions?
Anticipate by following these tips:
Limits the number of total uses of a promotional code
Your online store must allow you to limit the maximum number of times a promotional code can be used in total. This will minimize the risk of abusive use.
Limits the number of promotional code uses per customer
If you are worried about a person misusing your promotional codes, you can configure your online store to only accept a certain number of uses per person. For example, if you were to offer a 10% promotional code for a first purchase, that code must be limited to one use per person.
Use a different discount code for each promotion
In this way you will be able to measure the impact of each promotion and increase the interest of your potential customers in learning about new codes.
Promotions calendar
There are dates when every self-respecting store should have an active promotion: Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Halloween, etc. To these dates you must add the dates specific to your sector, for example, in the fashion sector you must take into account the various sales periods.
A promotion calendar will help you be on time for all these dates and prevent you from spending nights working to launch promotions at the last minute.
My recommendation is to use a calendar that you can always keep in mind and that allows you to mark events that recur year after year. For example Google Calendar. Once you have decided on the calendar to be used and the events to be recorded, you should know that for each promotion you will have to record several dates:
- Promotion design date: the days you have to decide how the promotion will be designed, design creatives, etc.
- Communication start date: when you make the promotion public, you can even mark additional dates with the planned promotional emails.
- Promotion start date: time at which customers can begin to benefit from the promotion.
- End date of the promotion: when you have to return the store to its original state and take stock of the campaign.
Year after year your promotion calendar will be enriched with your entries, new dates, etc. Until it becomes a perfect work plan and indispensable in your daily life.
Measuring the success of promotions
The success of a promotion will depend on a large number of factors and many of them will be beyond our control, we cannot avoid it. Depending on the sector, the profile of our clients, the type of products or the date of execution, the same promotion can be a success or a complete failure.
One of the main advantages of online business is the possibility of being able to measure practically everything, and online store promotions are no exception. By measuring the impact of our promotional actions we will be able to know what works in our case and how we can enhance and replicate it in each promotion.
In order to measure a promotion correctly, the following aspects should be taken into account:
- Use a different discount code for each promotion. This way you will be able to know the number of real uses from your e-commerce platform.
- Label the links used in the communication of the promotion. In this way you will be able to analyze the sales generated by each communication channel of the promotion, bounce rate, quality of the visit, etc.
- Identify the customers who purchased in the promotion. Differentiating between new customers generated by the promotion and existing customers. If we know the average number of purchases made by a customer per year, we can extrapolate the real benefit of attracting a new customer thanks to a specific promotional action.
As you can imagine an online store with an active promotions strategy requires a great deal of dedication. However, the results more than compensate the work and with each promotion you will gain experience that will help you to become faster and more efficient.
