However, shoppers are also very sensitive to cost. Even loyal customers love time-limited sales. In the best of cases, clever timing can get customers into the habit of buying from your store regularly.

People respond very well to exclusive offers because they feel like they are one of the privileged few who get access to the deal. In addition, this is one of the effective methods of lead nurturing.

One of the less intuitive ways that time-limited deals can boost sales is through stopping cart abandonment. This is because a time-sensitive offer encourages customers to take immediate action—leading people to move their mouse away from the exit button and towards the checkout process.

This means more sales for your business. Here are some ways that you can apply these powerful tools to your business:. Free shipping is an incredibly powerful incentive for encouraging new and existing customers to make a purchase.

For example, 1 Body uses an exit-intent popup that offers free shipping specifically when customers are about to abandon their carts. You would only take on the added expense of offering free shipping at the time that a customer needs a final push to make the decision and complete a purchase.

This would not affect customers who want to move directly to the checkout page. The fifteen-minute countdown clock also leads to more sales by establishing a very limited period of time that the offer is valid for. Sending out free samples and products also helps with customer retention.

People feel valued and like the opportunity to try out products that they may end up loving and then decide to buy in the future. The addition of a countdown timer is a great way to get customers to act fast. The sight of a timer ticking down, second by second, is one of the best psychological triggers that can be used to create a sense of urgency.

Seasonal sales are a natural place to use limited-time offers to boost sales because they have a built-in expiration date. The Halloween Giveaway in the example below is over once the calendar passes October 31st. When you consider the huge interest that customers have during certain holidays Christmas and Black Friday —the two biggest , you can see why seasonal sales can generate tons of revenue.

The lead-up to a limited-time sale is a great opportunity to build strong email and SMS lists. The fact that the upcoming sale will be for a short period of time, means that prospective customers will plan ahead for it.

Here are some effective templates that can help you clear out the inventory you want to sell. You can use them to display your most exciting limited-edition products. Online store owners are always confronting the problem of high bounce rates and not enough first-time visitors entering their sales funnel.

Limited-time offers for first purchases are a great way to ensure that more visitors make it from your landing page to your checkout process. You can also take advantage of your limited-time promotion by getting visitors to join your email list.

That way, you can send them future offers as well. Pro Tip: Always use a branded business email address like john yourbrand. com to share these promotional offers with your email lists. So that your email does not end up in a spam folder, you also get higher open rates.

Choose to run your campaign from any time period, ranging from just a few hours to a full hour period. Best Buy became famous for their daily deals because they showcase a large discount on a different product each day. Sticky bars are a great tool for promoting your limited-time offers across your entire site.

If you want more customers to make it all the way through your conversion funnel, a limited-time offer is one of the best ways to guide them along. Why not try out one of the limited-time offer popup templates on your site and drive sales now? Skip to content. What is OptiMonk?

Build your list Increase sign-up rates from single to double digits. Increase sales Help visitors shop and boost ecommerce revenue. Grow AOV Maximize Customer Lifetime Value with proven tactics. Stop abandonment Explore powerful strategies to win back lost sales. BY TYPE. BY GOAL.

BY BUSINESS PROFILE. ON DEMAND. Why run limited-time offers? What is a limited-time offer? Helps boost customer loyalty Even loyal customers love time-limited sales. There are plenty of reasons why your customers may not use your offer right away.

Reminders can increase the chance of your messages standing out. Unlike typical follow-up messages, those with coupons and other incentives carry tangible value for consumers, so may be less likely to be perceived as noisy spam.

Learn more : Examples of top re-engagement promotions. You can gamify your sales promotions by setting conditions on actions customers have to do to earn the incentive.

For example:. To make customers more interested in your promotions, you can offer mystery coupons. Launch a coupon campaign with several variations and don't tell customers what they got. Then, you have them one step closer to completing their order!

Promotions gamification builds unique customer experiences that increase engagement, loyalty, and retention. Learn more : 10 examples of gamified promotions. Your partner can advertise this offer via their channels and drive new audience to your store. You can incentivize responses to surveys, filling out profiles or leaving reviews by giving a discount coupon for those who do it.

This type of campaign is great to build better customer relationships and improve areas of your business that you never expected needed an improvement. You can launch a promotion campaign for the customers who have purchased a certain number of times from you, to foster further purchases and help them build a habit of purchasing from you.

A promo campaigns with free samples is a great idea that may be more beneficial than you probably think. The research shows that simple gestures significantly influence buying decisions.

The key is to offer a free product, sample or discount before a customer purchases — reciprocity makes your potential buyers feel obliged to repay and order or sometimes to order more than they intended at the beginning.

You can segment customers based on the revenue they bring and create exclusive offers for those who bring the highest revenue. Remember to emphasize the individual character of the discount, to make your customers feel special. Social media promotions are a variation of a standard referral program.

Social shares make your company visible for customers outside your regular audience. Even satisfied customers need additional motivation to share your message. Therefore make sure to offer valuable rewards for tagging your brand name on a photo or leaving a positive review.

You can also reward your customers for social media activity and interacting with your brand. While trying to cover a particular area with your services, you need to learn about the local audience and their habits. In the long run, global success depends on how well you can fit your sales strategy and promotional marketing to local markets.

Sales promotions with local events are a chance for small companies to inscribe into local societies and compete with global market leaders.

You can launch a location-based campaign that target audience within a specified location, for example:. Also, customers tend to shop less when the weather is worse. You can counteract it by launching promotions during bad weather days in specific locations.

Social contests can be a great sales promotion example. Contests are the best when based on things that connect your clients such as common passions or hobbies. For instance, Dove regularly runs social campaigns to share their values and showcase unique stories of customers.

You can launch influencer or affiliate campaigns with sales promotions. Then, you can count the number of customers acquired with that code and compensate your influencers or affiliates for the brought traffic accordingly. You can create campaigns only for a specific customer group, for example only for NHS workers.

For instance, offer a free coffee for NHS workers only if they purchase any food item in your cafe. This one can be also used for b2b sales promotion ideas. Learn more : Examples of creative cart abandonment campaigns.

The frequent customer program is a variation of loyalty program that rewards customers for their loyalty. As a frequent customer, your audience can earn free credits for the making X number of orders, leaving a positive review or referring your company to family and friends.

Customers can later use these credits to get discounts, charge gift cards for free or get exclusive, complimentary services such as free dinner at selected restaurants. You can divide the program into different tiers with different perks — the more points, the higher the level and better perks.

This kind of sales promotion can be tricky. On the one hand, it is a very common and effective tactic to enlarge a number of new acquisitions and a list of your subscribers. In the case of a sign-up promotion, we recommend starting by checking the performance of different discount variants before you decide which one should be your standard sign-up offer.

This is another example of psychological marketing. Adding a temporary free balance drives customers into loss aversion behavior. People endowed with unexpected gains usually try very hard not to lose them. This kind of sales promotion pairs well with gift cards.

Discounts, gift cards or coupons can say more than a simple "we're sorry" to unsatisfied customers. It's good to have a promotion ready to be triggered every time your team lets down a customer. The best effect is achieved if you deliver a discount in a personalized message.

Keep an eye on special days like national holidays to send wishes with an exclusive discount. Learn more : How to include seasonality in your promotion marketing strategy? Each sales promotion idea you decide to use needs to be enrolled on a micro-scale first.

Not every discount or buying scenario will fit your audience. Ultimately, the way you design promotions should target your audience.

Any successful sales promotion is a combination of a clever idea, endless testing, customer tracking, and target adjustments. I hope that this list of examples and inspirations will help you find an appropriate promotion strategy suited to your business, wallet, and creativity and boost sales and revenue.

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How to propel your business growth with discount coupons? What limits to use and how to build an effective coupon journey? Learn the best practices of all successful coupon campaigns.

As there's a very wide variety of sales-promotion activities, the calculator may not offer all the data-entry options you need. Enter these values for your product or service to check whether your marketing activity will deliver a worthwhile ROI.

Compare the profit and revenue from your promotion with what you'd make with your normal pricing. Search Menu. Menu Close. Starting a business Starting a business. Starting a business. Running a business Running a business.

Running a business. Industries Industries. Home Running a business Marketing and sales Marketing, advertising and promotion Marketing activities Sales promotions and discounts Marketing activities.

Ways to advertise your business Using direct marketing Using trade shows, exhibitions and other events Sales promotions and discounts Managing public relations and the media Using professional marketing services Marketing on a small budget.

Role of sales promotions Sales promotions are frequently used as part of the promotional mix and influence the final stage of the purchase process in the customer journey. Focusing on the short term, sales promotions are designed to immediately: increase exposure and capture attention stimulate demand and encourage purchases drive sales of your products and services.

Depending on your business model , marketing objectives and target segments , sales promotions can be directed at either: customers — businesses and consumers trade — distributors, resellers, and retailers.

Motivate your staff Consider offering incentives for your sales staff to promote these special offers. Benefits of sales promotions In addition to increasing immediate sales, sales promotions can also help your business: attract new customers encourage loyalty and repeat purchases get insights into customer behaviour respond to opportunities in the market control and move excess stock.

Before you start Think about whether the promotion will fit with your marketing strategy and support your plan for growing your business. Refer to the end-to-end process for advertising and direct marketing to help plan and manage your promotions. Make sure that your sales promotions align with your sales: plan targets techniques ethics.

Decide if you have the skills and expertise to do it yourself or need to seek the support of external partners. Types of sales promotions Sales promotions typically emphasise a lower price or higher perceived value.

Effective sales promotions focus on the following customer behavioural drivers: urgency — 'act right now' availability — 'it won't last, so don't miss out' exclusivity — 'this is an offer just for you'. To spur your thinking, consider the following 8 techniques. Expand all 1. Short-term price discounts motivate potential customers to make an immediate purchase decision.

Depending on what will be most appealing, you can show discounts in: percentage e. You can offer discounts in many ways, for example: flash sales — discounts for a short period e. for 24 hours location based offers — deals for specific locations e. in a retail setting seasonal discounts — reduced pricing in periods of lower demand e.

outside school holidays discounts on perishables — end-of-day clearance prices e. salads referrals — for example, where both the existing customer and the new customer are rewarded with a discount after a successful referral.

Buy-one-get-one promotions. A well-known and popular sales promotion is buy one, get one often referred to as BOGO. Coupons and vouchers are a popular sales promotion because: they're very versatile the results of the sales promotion can be tracked as you'll know how many people took up the offer.

You can use them to: attract new customers e. first-purchase coupon thank your existing customers e. a special birthday voucher. Consider: using a one-time-only coupon or an online code to encourage immediate action launching a promotion through a coupon website using digital or printed cards to encourage repeat purchases as part of your customer loyalty program.

For example, a local coffee shop could offer every 10 th coffee free of charge working with another business to cross-promote your businesses or services.

With that in mind, this route is great when needing to provide extra value without risk. You might include throwing in a premium feature only available at a higher tier or giving them "extra" of something that otherwise has limits. Subscriptions are a sales promotion as products are often sold at a lower rate if a user subscribes to a plan.

If a customer were to simply buy the product or service each time they need it, they would end up paying more for the overall subscription cost. For example, if you offer a free trial size item with every purchase, a customer in your loyalty program may be enticed to buy because they want to try something you offer without having to pay for it.

Similarly, an extended payment term is another way to handle price objections and is a good choice for high-ticket sales because it makes the sticker price a little less intimidating.

All you have to do is spread out payments over a period that makes sense, like 3 months. By providing extended-use terms, you give the prospect more time to consider your solution's value before extracting value payment renewal from them.

In the right situation, this builds confidence in your product and builds rapport. The average cart abandonment rate is As a result, a valuable sales promotion idea is to send abandoned cart promotions. In practice, you can track when customers abandoned carts on your site, and follow up with a promotional email with a code or discount to incentivize a purchase follow through.

A great way to run a sales promotion is to partner with an influencer and leverage the relationship they have with their community. To add further incentive, the influencers you partner with can share a unique code or affiliate link that gives audiences a discount if they use it to make a purchase.

Swag is a promotion you provide to sow good will, interest, and loyalty. You can offer discounts on your products and services based on the locations your customers are in. For example, you can run specific promotions if your customers visit specific storefronts. Customer feedback is crucial for business success, and you can combine it with a sales promotion to entice customers to give it.

A discount can then incentivize customers to make a follow-up purchase. If you work closely with other businesses, you can offer discount codes to customers that are also patrons of your partners, and vice versa. Leverage a healthy incentive focused on time savings or additional services.

For example, you might offer a prospect an additional 15 hours of onboarding support for free if they sign by Friday. Even a free six-month checkup can be attractive to prospects who are nervous to sign the contract.

Offer free peace of mind in return for their trust and business. Many businesses run promotions on specific occasions to inspire purchases. For example, you can offer birthday discounts, holiday discounts, etc, to inspire people to make a purchase for those holidays.

With a referral sales promotion, you give your existing customers a referral code to share with someone they know to give them a discount for their first purchase from you.

The person with the referral code also receives some sort of reward, which can incentivize them to actually take the steps to recommend you to others if they get something out of it. When you give cashback you return a portion of the money customers spend with you after every purchase.

You know when your slow periods are — maybe July in Phoenix or December in Australia. Giveaways are a simple way of creating awareness for your product while also rewarding customers or new prospects for being keen supporters of the business.

All users had to do was select a chip flavor. They then created a Facebook page that allowed users to participate by submitting a proposal for a new potato chip flavor.

And guess what? It worked like magic! The campaign received about 3. They achieved over They create a sense of urgency for customers to buy now.

You can organize flash sales every month, or annually. Just get your social media channels on board with such flash sales, so that you can create even more buzz for it. Four words: Free shipping.

Free returns. Exactly why free shipping is effective! You can either provide free shipping on a minimum order amount or on all orders for a certain time period like in the below example:.

If you have a new product or one that needs to be cleared from your stock, buy one get one free is a great sales promotion tactic for just that! The word free in itself does all the talking and entices customers.

Take a look at this classic example:. Read more: Social Proof: 8 Ways to Use it to Get More Sales! Building suspense for an offer is a great way to evoke curiosity among customers. This is what American Eagle does too! When they send offers to their subscribers via emails, their subject line simply reads:.

Take a look at the newsletter that follows:. This can build more anticipation and leads your customer to the website. The CTA here emulates the same feeling as opening a present. Amusing technique, right? An effective loyalty program is a smart investment and a gift that keeps on giving!

You can create VIP programs that are activated once a customer attains a certain amount of points based on their orders.