The cost of living crisis has hit eCommerce businesses hard. As online shoppers begin to tighten their purse strings, online retailers must work harder to drive interest, conversions, and ultimately, sales.
Evidence of the tough eCommerce market has never been more clear than in the golden quarter of 2022. In December, UK monthly internet retail sales had declined by 7.5% compared to December of the previous year, a shock to the system for those hoping to boost their revenue over the Christmas period.¹
With businesses facing tougher financial circumstances and more competition than ever, many are turning to new tools to help them drive conversions. Now is the time for businesses to think outside the box, and develop new and innovative growth strategies that will be able to withstand the economic climate of 2023.
In this blog, we look at how to improve eCommerce conversions by harnessing the benefits of a Promotion Experience Platform.
Suggested reading: Want to drive conversions in 2023? Read our eBook, ‘What Winning Your Promotional Strategy Looks Like’, to find out how.
Secure, single-use codes
Promotion engines, or software dedicated to delivering promotional offerings, are an integral part of any eCommerce sales strategy. They generate reward or discount-based promotions that encourage customers to complete the checkout process, avoiding cart abandonment.
However, not all promotion engines are created equal. Some only offer generic codes, which are easy to leak to third-party sites and can result in:
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Over-discounting and a subsequent loss of revenue.
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A lack of customer urgency, which can increase basket abandonment rates.
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Disinterested customers who do not feel a connection to the site.
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Decreased customer loyalty.
A Promotion Experience Platform ensures your codes are secure and single-use. Think of it like a secret handshake between you and your customers: only those who have access to the code can redeem it, making the promotion exclusive and valuable.
This not only improves your customers’ onsite experience, but also saves you from the loss of revenue associated with over-discounting. Customers get exclusive discounts that make them feel valued, the eCommerce site sees conversions increase, and you get the peace of mind of knowing your promotions are under control.
How Uniqodo utilised unique single-use codes and exclusive page access to boost customer interaction
Challenge: Beauty Bay collaborated with makeup influencer, NikkieTutorials, on an eyeshadow palette — a product that was guaranteed to sell out fast. To launch this campaign, Beauty Bay needed consecutive touchpoints that could support streamlined and valuable customer experiences.
Solution: Uniqodo provided exclusive codes to those who had signed up for early access. The landing page where the palette was sold was hidden using a gate to restrict entrance, and users could only gain access through a single-use early access code.
Results: The campaign saw a tremendous increase in sales compared to the previous year’s Q1, with a 23% revenue uplift in promotion-related sales.
Secure codes aren’t just about control, they’re also about improving your customers’ experience. Single-use codes make customers feel as though they’re getting deals that save them money, without forcing them to over-discount. With the right promotion engine in place, you can build loyalty with your customers, and improve your eCommerce conversion rates.
Exciting promotional formats
There are so many creative ways to make code distribution exciting, enticing, and engaging for your customers. However, this can be difficult with bulk or generic codes, especially when they have already leaked to third party sites.
This is where a Promotion Experience Platform can transform your promotions strategy. The promotion engine side of the platform offers customers secure, single-use codes, while its promotion experience integrations use enhanced visuals and exciting formats to drive interest across all product pages.
There are dozens of different strategies you can use to distribute single-use codes and keep customers engaged:
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Email customers limited-time codes.
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Run a mystery box or a wheel spin that generates a percentage discount with a single-use code to apply it.
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Offer exclusive early access to your products.
There are two things every customer loves: saving money on their purchases, and feeling valued by their favourite retailers. These strategies increase your conversion rates by helping customers feel like they’ve ‘won’ a discount, and would be missing out if they didn’t use it.
Unlike generic banner codes, creatively formatted single-use codes add a personal touch to each and every purchase. If you’re wondering how to incentivise customers, creative formatting is the way to go.
How Uniqodo helped Jacamo design VIP mystery codes for their Halloween campaign
Challenge: Jacamo sent emails to their customer base with new products and promotional offers. However, the standard discount offers became overused and led to falling response rates.
Solution: With the help of Uniqodo, the CRM team designed a VIP offer for their Halloween campaign. Instead of sending their top shoppers a standard discount, they set up a mystery offer that promised the chance of receiving a range of discount values. Uniqodo tailored the promotion to ensure the majority of discounts were capped at 10%, further controlling the promotion and preventing over discounting.
Results: This drove more traffic to Jacamo’s site, boosting responder open rates and click-through rates for their Halloween campaign. Jacamo’s top customers were rewarded for their loyalty, receiving discounts of up to 20% with their mystery codes.
Drive urgency with time-sensitive codes
Typically, the biggest reason why promotions don’t drive conversions is that customers don’t feel a sense of urgency when making a purchase. If there’s a generic code for first time purchases, the potential customer knows it’ll be available to them whether they choose to make their first purchase now or in two months.
A time-sensitive single-use code creates this missing sense of urgency, making customers more likely to engage with a promotion. When used alongside other Promotion Experience Platform features, time-sensitive codes can help to significantly improve eCommerce conversion rates.
For example, sending out unique codes as website pop-ups with a countdown timer will make someone more likely to put something in their shopping cart and make an instant purchase, as they don’t want to lose the discount. Or, you can email customers a code with a 24-hour window, and so encourage impulse purchases.
Unlike more traditional promotional methods, which might include offering free shipping or free items, Promotion Experience Platforms help eCommerce stores boost their average conversion rates without compromising short or medium term revenue targets.
How Uniqodo helped Beauty Bay with a new customer overlay
Challenge: Beauty Bay wanted to ensure that only new customers could use their first-order promotional codes. They needed a solution that would check the validity of a customer in real-time, while also displaying the correct overlay whenever the new users visited their website.
Solution: Uniqodo built an overlay that displayed whenever new customers landed on the Beauty Bay website, collecting the inputted email addresses in real-time. This triggered email sends, leading to immediate action on Beauty Bay’s part. To ensure protection against code misuse, Uniqodo applied unique, single-use codes, to be issued by the overlay upon signing up.
Result: This solution helped Beauty Bay drive its customer acquisition faster and more effectively, while ensuring total control and security over its revenue. The unique, single-use codes drove urgency as they only appeared to new customers, resulting in a 71% increase in promotional revenue within the first month.
Data-driven promotions
The key to successful promotions is targeting the right people, and offering exactly what they’re after. By running targeted, data-driven promotions, you make your customers feel looked after, saving them money and increasing their connection to your site. This helps to increase conversions, customer loyalty and repeat purchases.
Data-driven promotions are also effective because they provide eCommerce sites with a range of statistics and insights. This is especially valuable for eCommerce sites that don't have the in-house capabilities to track and analyse data; with these new insights, you can adapt and improve your sales and marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
This might mean developing your:
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Product ranges - according to what is most in demand on your site.
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Promotion offers - according to which discount ranges are most successful.
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Long-term strategies - eCommerce is a constantly evolving market. Be prepared to adapt your long-term sales strategy depending on how well your promotions perform.
How Uniqodo helped Firezza increase customer acquisition with referral and voucher codes
Challenge: Firezza was using static voucher codes to strengthen brand awareness and build its customer base. These codes were easily accessed and shared online, making it difficult for Firezza to tell whether customers had genuinely come from their partners.
Solution: They needed a solution to create closed-source promotion codes that could track the performance of their online, social media and affiliate marketing. Uniqodo provided Firezza with access to unique codes, allowing them to track and accurately predict customer behaviour.
Result: This targeted approach of using referral and voucher codes helped Firezza increase customer acquisition, grow customer retention rates, and boost their overall growth.
Pro tip: Explore our blog to learn more about improving eCommerce customer acquisition.
Uniqodo: The all-in-one Promotion Experience Platform
Improving eCommerce conversions of the biggest challenges faced by businesses in 2023. Uniqodo’s one-of-a-kind Promotion Experience Platform is designed to help businesses win and retain customer loyalty in a cost-effective way, offering secure codes, engaing promotions that, crucially, convert.
With Uniqodo’s Promotion Experience Platform, you can streamline your eCommerce customer’s journey and stay ahead of your competition.
Keen to see how our solutions can drive your success? Get in touch with Uniqodo to book a discovery call today.
¹ Internet retail sales value trend monthly in Great Britain 2018-2022
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