There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to pleasing your customers, but there’s one thing they have in common: they love a good deal. Whether it’s a great discount on a product they’ve had their eye on for a while or an exclusive deal on their favourite hotel, there is always a way to entice customers.
Executing promotions in the most effective way possible is challenging, especially in a saturated market where customers are constantly bombarded with offers. But once you have their attention, you're one step closer to encouraging them to convert and giving them what they want.
Getting promotions right can seem a bit overwhelming, which is why we’re going to look at how you can achieve it like a pro — with Promotion EX.
The basics of Promotion EX
If you’re wondering what Promotion EX is, don’t worry, we have you covered! Here’s an article all about it that we’d recommend reading first — ‘Promotion EX: How Great Customer Promotion Journeys Increase Conversion’. The short version is: Promotion EX stands for Promotion Experience, and it’s all about providing a seamless, end-to-end online promotion journey to improve customer experience and successfully drive conversion.
The starting point is understanding that consumer demands and expectations have changed online — growth is less about product, and more about meeting and exceeding digital expectations.
Building your brand online is reliant on you doing the hard work around connecting the entire breadth of digital touchpoints, and this includes the way you deliver your promotional marketing strategy; it’s crucial to engaging customers and competing in the growing eCommerce landscape.
Creating a unique Promotion EX will also create lasting impressions and encourage repeat purchase with both existing and new customers. Here, we’re going to take a detailed look into the four key steps that will help your business shine in the crowded digital commerce environment.
1. Leverage control
Gaining control over your promotions is a must. Code misuse can lead to diluted margins and other marketing activity can get impacted. That means less capacity to provide really exciting offers to the customers that matter and risking damage to your brand’s reputation. These aren’t options if you’re looking to improve your business through effective promotional marketing.
How a Promotion Management Platform delivers control:
The optimum control over promotions is achieved by using unique, single-use codes — no leaking, no over-sharing and no distribution to invaluable customers. This is all possible with a Promotion Management Platform because the control of your campaigns is in your hands — even through third party websites!
You’ll be able to ensure your discount codes work seamlessly and that you can deliver controlled distribution. On top of that, a sophisticated platform — like ours! — will provide expert support on controlling your promotional parameters, which is invaluable to Promotion EX.
2. Accelerate discovery
Discovery is critical to customer promotion success. As we’ve said, the place to ensnare customers is online, but, within the online world, there are various places to execute promotional marketing. Let’s look at some examples.
Your owned channels such as:-
Your website
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Your apps
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Email
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Social media
Your paid channels such as:
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Third-party channels like partners and affiliates
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Digital display
Once you start marketing across different channels, it becomes harder to offer a seamless and controlled Promotion EX. Secure and robust integrations are the key to embracing new partnership opportunities and having smooth communication channels that attract new and existing customers.
How a Promotion Management Platform accelerates discovery:
A Promotion Management Platform ensures that no matter the channel, your promotions are delivered to customers in the right way. You’ll be equipped with automated, validated and secure promotion codes that are personalised to each customer.
This platform can deliver on-site promotions as well as leveraging digital marketing channels. Your affiliate campaigns will also remain secure with permissions-based access to the code generation and analytics functions they need to do their job in the best way possible.
3. Advanced code validation
Promotions like site-wide discounts or fixed value offers are boring. Customers demand more exciting or unique offers to grab their attention.
Consumers are more likely to choose your brand if you’re offering relevant, appropriate and intriguing discounts that are based on trading data. Let’s look at some examples of offers that create buzz:
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On-site codes based on browsing/purchase history— when customers come to your site and browse, a pop-up or overlay can provide a unique, single-use code on a specific product or product line that they were viewing, increasing the chance they’ll convert with you rather than leave and shop elsewhere, or go hunting for codes elsewhere.
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Mystery discounts — customers seek newness as well as emotional connection, and promotions like mystery discounts can deliver this. Provide a code that offers either 5%, 10% or 15% off and the customer will more likely get to checkout to redeem their code and reveal their mystery offer! This element of gamification, a strategy 93% of marketers say they love to implement, can be incredibly effective.
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Exclusive access to products — offering your most loyal customers a promo code to access certain products or services is a great way to show them you value them. This feeling of exclusivity will make customers feel special and encourage them to make repeat purchases with you.
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Set specific criteria to encourage upsells — letting customers know that they could get a discount if they choose specific products or services can help them feel like they’re getting a better deal. For example, if a customer is searching for a hotel for a weekend break, displaying a promotional message to encourage them to book an extra night for a great discount on the stay can help drive capacity at key locations and on low capacity days.
These different ideas can be implemented with both new and existing customers. However, remember, good Promotion EX should always factor in existing customers. A customer retention rate of just 5% can boost your profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%. Chasing repeat purchase is a no-brainer.
How a Promotion Management Platform delivers advanced codes:
An advanced platform can help you deliver on all of these engaging forms of discounts and use them to your advantage. It will offer you unlimited scope for personalisation, automate code deployment for seamless gamification, customise discounts, and criteria for tiered offers and automatically create fixed-discounts for repeat purchases. It can even integrate with your existing CRM or eCommerce platform to pull relevant customer data to help you implement the right promotions.
Making the most of advanced code validation is critical to executing Promotion EX. Something that in-house promotion engines can’t deliver alone.
4. Activate
Offering promotions is redundant if the customer journey is unclear, confusing or incomplete. Promotion EX should curate the entire promotional journey from the moment a code is discovered, all the way through to the basket and purchase.
Here are some ways you can guarantee successful discount conversion:
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Make sure your customer always lands on the right page or stage of the buy funnel/book flow to use their discount
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Build widgets that calculate the cashback available or discount earned as a customer shops
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Signpost throughout the customer journey e.g. with overlays to remind them of promotional offers or codes
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Display practical error messaging for invalid codes so customers can rectify their baskets and qualify for promotions
Build better customer experiences by activating your promotions. 90% of buyers will pay more for a great customer experience, so nailing Promotion EX will help you convert more sales and grow your business.
How a Promotion Management Platform activates promotions:
The right promotion platform supports you in delivering successful promotion activation.
A Promotions Management Platform creates advanced rules to control visibility over promo codes — customers are steered in the right direction and offers don’t go to waste. You can also make the most of activation solution features that send the error messaging you need, helping customers convert rather than become frustrated with a dud code and purchase with another brand.
Delight customers with Promotion EX
The foundation for implementing a promotion strategy like a pro is delivering a Promotion EX that delights customers and keeps them coming back for repeat purchases. This is really hard to achieve without the assistance of a Promotion Management Platform, which we’ve seen is critical in ensuring successful control, discovery, advanced code validation and activation of your promotions.
In a time where eCommerce is booming, it’s key that your business is focused on providing customers with a seamless digital experience from the start to the end, and even beyond their purchase journey with your brand. Ensure you have the four stages we’ve discussed here covered, and invest in a Promotion Management Platform to provide an effective Promotion EX.
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