Ecommerce Promotions

By Angus  |  24 Apr 2015 14:00:00

In previous posts I have discussed a range of popular marketing methods used by ecommerce merchants. Some of the techniques mentioned concern optimization and direct marketing efforts, whilst others are more abstract (but no less important) such as branding and strategy.

I am however yet to fully discuss the range of built in promotional tools available to Sellr merchants that can be used to increase the overall volume of sales, as well as the value of each order.

In this post I am going to go through the list of promotional features offered by Sellr, highlighting opportunities and scenarios where they can be utilised to improve the profitability of your website.

Promotions

Available on all Sellr packages, promotions may be less advanced than some of our other marketing features however as a way of boosting sales they are highly effective.

Promotional codes are entered at the checkout by the customer and always relate to the subtotal of the order, therefore they are limited to one code per order. You can use this feature to offer either a percentage or actual amount off the order value, or alternatively the code could relate to free shipping or a redeemable gift.

Promotional codes are also useful for measuring marketing as you can use a different code for each communications channel in order to compare effectiveness and optimise you marketing. Sellr shows you how much money you have made from each code, as well as predicting future revenues.

Whilst an attractive promotion is likely to increase sales, convincing the customer that they are making a saving, the main drawback of this feature is that because codes are not unique, as a merchant you will have to be prepared to potentially offer this discount to anyone at any time.

Whilst this in itself may be fine as it should bring more sales, as a result of the risk involved in a large number of people using the code or customers reusing the code, you need to be careful to balance the attractiveness of your promotion with your ability as a business to sustain it profitably.

An additional drawback is that an over reliance on promotional codes can cheapen your brand and customers can come to expect discounts.

Coupons

Coupons differ from promotional codes in that they relate to specific products rather than to the order total, thus allowing the merchant more control and discretion over the offer.

A key advantage of coupons is that you can tailor your offer to individual customers. Firstly this increases the chance of the coupon being redeemed, assuming you use information on a customer’s purchase history to offer a discount on a product that appeals to them.

This has the additional advantage of building a relationship with the customer by demonstrating an understanding of their tastes.

If you are starting out and have only a few customers, I would highly recommend taking the time to understand your customers’ tastes, not only using purchase history but also seeing which email headings get opened. If you can use this information to get a repeat purchase then you have a good chance of keeping the customer for life.

To begin with, when deciding which products you wish to promote using coupons, you can consult Analytics to see which product pages have the most time spent on them as an indicator of the likely popularity of an offer.

So the main point with coupons is that they can and should be used tactically. One tactical use is to try and sell off slow moving stock to existing customers before having to discount them on your website, something which should be done sparingly so that you do not end up cheapening the value of your brand.

Promotional Algorithms & Coupon Algorithms

Promotional Algorithms and Coupon Algorithms are a useful feature for saving time should you wish to use a large number of codes.

The algorithms allow the merchant to define what makes a valid code, allowing you to use one of a number of online tools that allow you to generate multiple unique codes relating to the same offer.

An example of when using unique codes is handy would be if you were sending out flyers which each contained a different code.   

Dynamic Promotional Codes & Dynamic Coupons

These features are intended for email marketing, whereby codes relating to the same offer are randomly generated so that they cannot be reused.  

Prospect & Customer Autoresponders

In the last post I highlighted the huge significance of email marketing on the success of your website, and these two features, both available on Sellr Advanced and Sellr Business are arguably the single most effective tools for increasing profitability.

How autoresponders work is when a prospect or customer signs up to a form using their email address, this acts as a trigger for a predefined sequence of emails.

For the prospect autoresponder, as discussed in a previous post, getting visitors to your website to sign up to your form is clearly the major challenge. Ideas for overcoming this challenge and additional email marketing tips can be found here. The main point to be made is that due to the potential effectiveness of email marketing and autoresponders, this is something worth dedicating significant time and thought to.

In brief summary, emails should mostly contain a mixture of informing and entertaining content to build a relationship with the recipient with the occasional (ideally tailored) promotion.

Product Autoresponder

This is a great tool to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing by letting you set up an autoresponder sequence based on certain products that are purchased. This compliments coupon marketing by sending coupons for specific products you suspect to be of interest to a customer based on a previous purchase.

Welcome Back Autoresponder

This is another relationship building tool that can have a positive impact on sales. When a customer visits your website again after a period of time, a friendly welcome back email will create a positive feeling towards your company, and paired with an offer this could go a long way to turning them into a repeat customer.  

Tracking Emails

This feature which is available on Sellr Business level allows you to closely monitor information about your emails such as clicked hyperlinks to help you optimise your email marketing by seeing what content gets engaged with.

Offers

We are now onto some of our more complex marketing features. These can be devastating in terms of increasing order value and for certain businesses can form a fundamental part of your sales strategy.

“Offers” allow fully customisable promotions such as BOGOF or (buy a specific quantity / spend a certain amount / spend a certain amount on a specific product or group of products and get a specific product / the same product for free or for a special price).

Offers suit certain businesses especially well, namely where the products being sold are ones that are purchased with relative regularity, such as T shirts or health supplements. Having this level of flexibility enables the merchant not only to increase overall sales through a single order but also to encourage repeat customers by building an attractive business model based on ongoing offers.

Bundles

Bundles allow the merchant to sell a group of complimentary products to the customer can select / mix and match for a fixed or discounted price.

A good example of merchants making use of this feature would be selling an E-cigarette starter kit with a selection of 2 different flavours of E-liquid. We also have a merchant who sells bespoke picnic hampers and the customers’ choice of the selection of food and drink in the hamper is a fundamental part of the overall offering.

The advantages are the choice that this enables you to offer to your customer, but also the predictability that you get as a merchant of knowing that each order value will be a certain level.       

Cross Sell & Up Sell

Sellr Business level users gain access to Sellr’s cross-sell and up-sell functionality, a feature utilised by many of the most successful ecommerce businesses such as Amazon and Play.com to name two.

The cross-sell theory is that if you display complimentary products or products that appeal to a similar customer before the checkout then customers are more likely to add these to their basket as well.

With up-selling, the idea is that if a customer has already decided to purchase something from you, (the hardest barrier to a conversion), then if you show them a slightly better and more expensive product there is a good chance that they will be persuaded to upgrade their order.  

Not Completed Notification & Abandonment Emails

Aimed at improving your conversion funnel by reducing cart abandonment, Not Completed Notifications will email you when a prospect abandons their cart and Abandonment Emails will send the prospect an email to remind them of their purchase with an offer of assistance.

This concludes the list of inbuilt promotional tools in Sellr that can help improve sales on your website. It is well worth considering the potential benefits to your business of some of these features before selecting a package, however if you wish to trial any features that are not on your existing package then you can always try them out for a month with our 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.