Deals, coupons, discounts, and offers. There comes a time when you are confronted with the decision on which to use for your online store. When do you use coupons, and how many deals should you offer to customers? Coupons, offers, discounts, and deals are powerful tools you can use for your store to drive customer loyalty.
However, when you misuse them, they can damage your brand and destroy your marketing strategy. In this write-up, we will explore several eCommerce promotions you can offer for your customers.
Types of eCommerce promotion
You have different types of discounts at your disposal for your business. While you might not use all, you can implement two or more to drive sales.
Percentage-based discount
Virtual every store uses the percentage-based discount to provide a small incentive to customers. It can be like 5% or 10%, depending on the business and what they are trying to sell. These discounts can be applied to different products based on location or specific purchases. For instance, buy two pairs of shoes and get 40% on any wristwatch.
This type of discount can be applied to various promotion campaigns. For example, seasonal deals, customer loyalty, abandoned cart, offer for first order etc.
Dollar value discount
This kind of discount comes in the form of credit. It makes people feel they are wasting money if they don’t use the credit. For instance, spend $300 to get $50 off from a particular product. For new businesses, it can help to determine what percentage to use. However, an easy trick you can implement is the rule of 100. If the item you are offering is below $100, then you use a particular percentage discount. However, once it is above $100, you can apply a fixed amount. Using this gives your customer a psychological trigger that makes them buy higher.
You might see this type of eCommerce promotion often in referral campaigns, contests, incentives for participating in events or exclusive offers.
Free shipping
One significant reason most online shoppers abandon their carts is shipping costs. When you offer free shipping, you encourage them to make purchases and mitigate cart abandonment. Furthermore, it helps in increasing your conversion rate and revenue.
Use free shipping along with a minimum purchase requirement as it would increase your average order. Shopify allows you to set shipping features and determine when to apply free shipping. Additionally, you can combine free shipping during holiday shopping. For instance, 40% discount code for email subscribers that click a link from their emails.
A common and effective practice is to offer free shipping when orders reach above your AOV.
Free gift
Another option available is the free gift, where you offer customers free items. If you strategically use the free gift option, you can increase your average order rate and eliminate any dead stock.
Furthermore, you can set a minimum purchase requirement or volume for customers to qualify before they can get a free gift. For instance, buy ABC products and get free XYZ products.
How to apply eCommerce promotion
Automatic Discounts
This can apply to every eligible cart in the store based on preset rules and conditions. Customers can see them before they make payment. You don’t have to create a discount code to qualify for this offer. According to statistics, automatic discounts help improve customer retention and increases sales.
All types of discounts should be tested multiple times before implementation to ensure they work exactly like planned. Common problems with automatic discounts are different calculation methods, overlapping promotions or discounts not working at all.
BigCommerce automation and Shopify automation apps can assist you in setting up a whole automated promotion campaign. Based on triggers and conditions, you can schedule not only automatic discounts but also auto-publish content, product, categories, pages, changing banners. One of the most functional and efficient app – Atom8, an automation app are available through the two eCommerce platform, check it out:
- BigCommerce version
- Shopify version
Discount codes
You can use codes as a mean to segment customers or track performance of different marketing campaigns. Discount codes are entered at checkout and customer can obtain them through various ways. For example, limited-time code on promotion banners, individual codes received through email marketing, minigames or loyalty programs.
