There's a lot of data out there about the do's and don'ts of running sales, the best times to run one, the best types, and this post will give you a rundown of some of the information you need to make the most of your customers' time spent on your store.
You can check out Ted's tutorial on sales, coupons and gift cards here:
Sale Strategies
Flash Sales
The first type of sale we'll go over is flash sales. A flash sale is where the sale is determined only to run for a specific timeframe, so for example, let's say you want to run a flash sale on the weekend, from Friday morning to Sunday night, and this sale will only happen once per month - this is a flash sale.
Marketing your products is about understanding your customers, their wants, needs, their problems and how you can solve them. Payday sales are incredibly popular and many businesses use them, if you take some time to browse websites around this date, you'll notice banners such as "PAYDAY SALE! 30% OFF EVERYTHING UNTIL SUNDAY!". The reason this strategy is widespread is that it works - it's often the time of the month when people have the most money in their pocket, and spending a little on their favourite hobby is most likely.
Nearly Permanent Sales
Another strategy that we see sometimes on Tebex is seemingly permanent sales. If you have a consistent churn of customers coming and going, you can potentially use this strategy, but be prepared to alienate a portion of your loyal customer base by doing so. Near permanent sales can undermine your customers' trust, and they may be less likely to purchase from your store in the long term. Not to mention, if a sale is going to last for 6 months, your customers will be far more likely to put off making a purchase because the end isn't in sight anytime soon.
You should also avoid endlessly extending a sale as well, if you have set your sale to end at a set date, stick to it.
Permanent Super Deep Discounts
We sometimes see stores running with huge sales, often as high as 99%! To make this strategy work, the product needs a very high, often unreasonable, base price. Think of selling VIP for $500 but running a 99% discount sale, your customer will be able to purchase your VIP for just $5. It's almost certain that no one would purchase this VIP at full price, but $5 is far more reasonable. This strategy hopes that the illusion of a bargain will tempt the customer into purchasing, and this can happen, but be warned, you can easily damage the integrity of your business by overpricing your products just so you can run sales - your customers aren't naive. Not to mention, we've seen a meme or two about stores that operate this way (getting social media traction can be great, but negative traction can be devastating!). Overall, while this strategy can work, it can create a negative impression of your brand.
Marketing The Sale On Your Store
Watch this introduction to email marketing via Mailchimp below:
It's a fantastic idea to spend some time working on some graphics for your home page, as well as for an email campaign. When you launch a sale, splash your big bright SALE! graphic on your homepage with information about when it will expire, what's included in the discounts, and any other important information a customer should know. Just having "50% off today only" in plain text on your homepage is boring, easily missed, and low effort. While some customers won't care if you don't make the effort to include eyecatching images on your store, you need to grab their attention.
It's a good idea to have a folder of images for various occasions, especially for annual holidays, such as an Easter sale graphic perhaps with a cute bunny, or a Halloween graphic with a pumpkin, so you can be prepared for all occasions ahead of time. Doing this means you can easily be ready to launch your sale without a last-minute rush, so you can focus on your community.
informing your customers is one of the most important parts of launching your sale:
I hope this post has been useful to you in understanding how you can strategise sales and automate as much of the process as possible.