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How to create successful eCommerce Christmas promotions

Just like the last couple of years this Christmas will be a feast of discounts and offers for the consumer. Consumers anticipate discounts and offers – so if you don’t offer any then you’re going to miss out on sales. In other words, not running promotions really isn’t an option.

There are lots of options when it comes to the type of promotions you run, and if you pick them and plan them well then you’ll come out a winner.

Seven Factors to Make Your Promotions a Winner:

There are seven Factors that you should consider in every promotion you run:

ñ Margin (The profit you’ll make)

ñ Easy to Understand

ñ What do you want the customer to do?

ñ End date

ñ Which Channels

ñ Which customers

ñ Spend Barriers

The first 2 are pretty obvious – make the promotion easy to understand, and run the numbers to make sure you’re not loosing money, or at least loosing it in the right place (such as an end of season sale when you need to turn unwanted stock into cash).

The third is not about then sending in a voucher code – it’s about what you want them to buy / or do. Some promotions are about collecting data, some about selling specific products, and others about pushing the customer up the ladder (first time buyer to multi-buyer for example). So you need to be clear on what you want the outcome to be.

Always include an end date. You don’t want to generous offers overlapping!

Target your promotions through the marketing channels and to the customer segments that will help you achieve what you want from the promotion. So if it’s all about getting new customers – then don’t send the offer via direct mail to your best buyers! That will be expensive and not get the result you want.

Finally consider spend barriers. This is a HIGHLY effective way to make it look like you’re playing the Christmas discounts game, but without giving too much away.

So it’s not 20% off everything – it’s 20% off Christmas Decorations, promoted to non-customers only.

By considering these seven Factors you should be able to create some really powerful promotions that both keep the customers buying, and mean you get what you need out of the Christmas period. And yes, this is more difficult than just slapping a Free Gift message on the homepage and emailing to the whole list – but it’s worth the extra effort.

Don’t forget there’s more than one type of promotion

As well as considering the above factors, you can also be a bit creative with what your promotions are, because free gifts and discounts aren’t the only options:

ñ Free Delivery Very powerful, and often less expensive than a discount

ñ Sale Pre-Xmas sales can do well – and allow you to control your margin

ñ Category offers E.g. just an offer on one category – not on everything

ñ Voucher codes Always useful if you want to track response, and also some will buy without remembering to use the code!

ñ Multi-buys If you can do it on your website, creating a multi-buy is a great alternative to a spend barrier – you’re making them buy lots to get the offer. Works best on complimentary or consumable products

ñ Free Gifts Only works if you’ve got the right freebie – should be something lots of your customers will want, or can give as a gift

ñ Half Price with Purchase A great way to increase spend, but again pick the right products to give at half price

ñ Prize Draw Can be very powerful, especially to reactivate customers, and to gather new data

ñ Gift to Charity Rather than give the customer something – give it to a charity. The charity needs to be picked carefully to fit with your business and be appealing enough to prompt action

ñ Last Chance to Buy Hugely powerful at Christmas time – please do promote your last order dates heavily. Especially with the way Christmas falls this year

ñ Preview / New Not necessarily great in the run up to Christmas, but a preview January Sale can do well.

There’s still plenty of time to up sales for Christmas – so think through the Seven Factors, and be creative!

About the Author

Chloë Thomas is author of eCommerce MasterPlan, and owner of online marketing agency, indiumonline.

‘eCommerce MasterPlan’ is available from all good bookshops, Amazon.co.uk, and direct from www.eCommerceMasterPlan.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chloë Thomas .