The growth potential of eCommerce has been evident since the dawn of online retailing — and the pandemic lockdowns worked as fine fuel to supercharge it, taking the market to new heights in record time. However, even though online shopping is still favoured post-lockdown by customers, online retailers are already struggling to reach the peaks of profit that they achieved in lockdown.
Concerns around economic and political turbulence, employment and income loss due to the pandemic and an overall drop in consumer sentiment are just some of the issues affecting the eCommerce market. The ever-increasing competition in the digital space, of course, is another primary factor leading to a loss in revenue for many online retailers.
To address these challenges and come out on top, growth-oriented eCommerce businesses need to venture into more sophisticated online promotion strategies that focus on the customers without missing out on their business goals.
The Golden Quarter has historically been the time of year when businesses expect to gain maximum sales. However, in this digital era, it’s important to come up with a promotional strategy that drives profit throughout the year. Instead of focusing on a single quarter — which naturally adds to the overall business risk — the right strategy should help you to meet your goals every month. This blog will show you how other businesses are capitalising on fresh and exciting online promotional strategies, and how you too can implement them in your business.
Implement secure promotions with unique, single-use codes
Uncontrolled promotions are a major risk to eCommerce businesses. When codes are leaked, there’s a high chance of over-discounting and a huge hit to your ROI. Many businesses are unwilling to invest in the technology that’s needed to protect their promotions because of the cost, but this ends up costing them more in the long run. Putting the money into a tool that can provide secure, single-use codes that won’t leak will save your business money long-term and result in a higher ROI. This is because your promotions aren’t snowballing, but are instead controlled and reaching the right people.
Exclusive, unique and single-use codes tied to specific customer accounts can eliminate any chance of code abuse. They will ensure that your codes reach only the right people.
How Uniqodo helped OVO Energy to acquire new customers
Challenge: OVO Energy was struggling to increase its customer base. The company website lacked a promo code field. This meant they had no way to design exclusive yet secure promotions for acquiring new customers. They partnered with Uniqodo to help them overcome the challenges with the right technology.
Solution: Uniqodo added a promo code field targeted by URL into specific signup flows, allowing the brand to incentivise new customer sign-ups and renewals. Once a customer with a live supply redeemed their code, a bill credit or discount was automatically applied against the order ID.
Results: The code injection helped OVO Energy to leverage social channels for acquiring new customers. It also enabled the brand to offer exclusive incentives through promo codes without worrying about code misuse along with a seamless onsite experience.
Enhance the journey for your customer no matter where they land
With the rapidly growing competition where every brand is vying for customer attention, your promotions don't start and end just by providing an exclusive offer or discount code. An effective promotional campaign should encompass the entire customer journey — right from receiving the code to making a purchase — and must be tailored for a seamless and engaging user experience.
Your promotions and website should be designed considering the total customer journey while maintaining proper consistency. You don’t want to provide a customer with a less than perfect experience or exclude them from something just because they are arriving on your website from an affiliate or email link instead of your main landing page. A major benefit of an enhanced customer journey is that it reduces drop-off. Having user-centred design that enables a seamless customer journey will minimise the chance of drop-off and maximise the chance of conversion at every stage.
How Uniqodo helped SKY to improve conversion rate from affiliate and partnership links
Better your strategies with A/B testing
Deciding what will work and what won’t is one of the major challenges of any online promotion strategy. The digital space is changing quickly, and so are the preferences of your customers. Instead of going with one of the options, A/B testing your strategy before a full rollout is the most logical thing to do.
It will help you to clearly understand which method is driving the best results and conversion - giving you total confidence before a full-scale rollout. You can even combine the most positive test results from both tests and create an even more enhanced customer journey. This sophisticated approach is critical for eCommerce businesses to prepare in time for Q4 and stand maximum chances to achieve their goals.
How Uniqodo helped EE Mobile to design a more enhanced customer journey through A/B testing
Challenge: EE mobile wanted to use A/B testing tools to monitor the conversion rate uplift between their original journey and a new enhanced promotional experience. They were also struggling with the heavy administrative requirements for managing promotions and code distributions. They needed a streamlined and smart system for managing the campaigns while enhancing customer journeys for higher conversion.
Solution: Uniqodo took up the challenge and came up with innovative solutions. Highlighted strips were embedded into the existing page content throughout the purchase flow. To establish the impact of the new journey, control and a test group — split 50/50 — were established for the traffic received by the original journey vs. by the enhanced experience messaging. URL parameters were targeted to identify traffic sources.
Results: The changes provided excellent results. EE mobile recorded a 23% uplift in orders and a 19% hike in conversion rates. The huge successes noted propelled the brand to roll out the enhanced experience to other closed group journeys.
Leverage the outreach power of influencer marketing
In recent years, social media and social media influencers have been just that — influential. Endorsements and exclusive offers provided via affiliate links from the influencer to their dedicated followers and network have added considerably to overall conversion rates. Influencer marketing campaigns work because of the trust that social influencers have built with their followers, and their recommendations serve as proof of quality for your product or services.
All you need to do is tie this with a compelling customer journey once that link has been followed or the code is received, and you'll have a slew of new customers irrespective of the golden or silver quarter.
How Uniqodo can help
Uniqodo has made influencer campaigns and social media marketing more effective and secure than ever before for multiple online brands. Using Uniqodo's onsite canvas tools you can issue exclusive and single-use codes directly on your site from influencer promotion traffic.
The customer will just need to follow a link from the influencer's story and it will directly lead them to the brand’s web page where an overlay will be displayed with their unique promotion code. The codes are shown only to the customers arriving on the site from the influencer’s link and they are unique for every new customer. This prevents any risk of code leakage and also makes it simpler to track the true performance of a channel.
So, if you want to reap the best benefits of influencer marketing in this era of social media, Uniqodo’s unique code generation tool is what you need. Oh, and we forgot to mention, you just need to give us ONE master code. We’ll take care of the generating of the codes. Not a batch in sight!
Maximise the customer experience by employing exclusivity
Everyone likes ‘special treatment’ and when it comes to rewarding your loyal customers, exclusivity can be a great incentive. While discounts and offers do work, exclusivity can be the icing on the cake.
Providing your loyal customers with products or services designed just for them is an excellent way to enhance the overall customer experience and make them feel special. These can be used like an end of summer or back-to-school sale, generating some of the excitement Q4 brings, just earlier in the year!
Exclusive offers make customer journeys exciting and work as a promotion in itself, even without a price discount. Exclusive access to products or services alone is enough to make customers feel heard and valued, leading to higher customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value and better ROI.
Think creatively to design an exclusive journey for your customers. You can send unique codes to specific customer email addresses, which then can be used by the customers to unlock and purchase exclusive products hidden behind a gate on your website. You can even gamify your campaigns. Go for a treasure-hunt theme and provide your loyal customers with clues in the form of codes to find products available just for them. Be creative and let your customers enjoy a unique experience.
How Uniqodo helped BT Shop to offer products exclusively to their existing customers during lockdown 2
Challenge: During the pandemic lockdowns with all non-essential retail shops closed, eCommerce was under immense pressure. To protect the manufacturer's reputation, BT Shop needed to restrict the sale of the newly launched PS5 consoles only to their existing customers while ensuring a great customer experience.
Solution: A gate was deployed on the BT Shop website to restrict access to the PS5 console page. Unique and one-time use codes were issued to the existing BT Broadband customers. Only the customers with a valid code were directed to the BT shop domain, allowing the purchase of a PS5.
Result: Uniqodo made it possible for BT Shop to keep a complete check on the sale of the new consoles during a time of extreme demand. The campaign led to a 50x increase in normal demand with a 10x incremental conversion rate on average purchase rate. With a 77% engagement rate, the brand had a 10,400% return on the total Uniqodo investment.
Appealing to customers with charitable incentives
Creating a charitable incentive around Q4 has its unique advantages. Engaging with customers and offering an opportunity to give back at a time of giving and of mass consumption is how you can set yourself apart as a company from those who are focusing their promotions exclusively on making more sales.Q4 doesn’t have to just be about Christmas sales. Those are tried and true but aren’t anything new. Instead, think about incentives to give back around the festive season, with promotions with charity sites like easyfundraising, or a ‘pay it forward’ promotion that can incentivise customers to spend over a certain amount with a percentage donated to a charitable foundation.
Uniqodo enables your brand to carry out multiple promotional campaigns simultaneously so that you don’t have to depend completely on a new strategy to begin with. It gives you freedom for more experimentation and creativity in your promotions.
The Uniqodo platform along with its account management team can ensure the most intuitive use of online promotional techniques to garner maximum results without the administrative headache or misuse risk while running multiple consolidated campaigns at the same time.
How Uniqodo helped Samsung to implement exciting new promotional strategies
Challenge: Samsung wanted to run promotions in the buildup to Black Friday for both new and existing customers. They were also keen to shift overstocked SKUs, putting extra pressure on them to have a successful Black Friday sale.
Solution: Uniqodo helped monitor and segregate the two simultaneous campaigns for new and existing customers. Emails were sent out containing two unique codes, each leading to a different mystery discount. Uniqodo built and deployed 2 interstitial pages, creating simplified CTAs to specific categories.
Results: The solution brought the brand complete freedom to venture confidently into different and unique online promotion strategies without worrying about code abuse. It directly added to the overall profitability as over-discounting from leaked codes came to a total stop. It also opened up the opportunity to run simultaneous promotions more often. Moreover, now the brand has a streamlined way to measure campaign performance on different channels, helping them to come up with an online promotion strategy that works best for the brand. 
Conclusion
Your online promotion strategy for the golden quarter — and every other — needs to focus on designing an end-to-end journey for your customers. It should be a comprehensive and consistent communication with the right touch of exclusivity, creativity and fun. The measure of effectiveness of an online promotion strategy comes from the value it adds to the overall customer journey while a well-designed strategy works as the key for businesses to enjoy higher KPIs and sustained growth.
Uniqodo helps brands to design a better online promotion experience that is effective, comprehensive and secured at the same time. The platform eliminates limitations in online promotions, helping you to implement the most creative ways to stand out from the crowd. It improves overall effectiveness of your campaigns and increases the total ROI without losing control or shouldering extensive promotion management responsibilities.
To know more about how exactly Uniqodo can make your online promotion strategy more effective, not only for the golden quarter but also throughout the year, book a discovery call today!
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