Discounting strategies and tactics that you can apply in your ecommerce

What will be the most effective discounting strategies and tactics during the Christmas period, Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Offering the right discount, to the right shopper, at the right time is the ultimate goal. Brands that routinely achieve this goal are constantly testing different discounts at different times to optimize in time for the vacations.

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Site-wide collections vs. specific collections

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By creating product categories, shoppers can fall prey to the paradox of choice if they are offered a store wide discount. To focus customer attention, it is suggested to discount specific product collections.

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Discount duration

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Highlighting certain offers during specific times of the year is only part of the equation. Discounts should act as a motivator and result in accelerated or incremental purchases. You will reduce your margins if you train customers to expect a discount. Your promotions will also lack urgency if they are perceived as open-ended. Exhausted usually experiments with discount duration. Campaigns aligned with a specific catalyst such as "Banned Books Week" tend to be most effective when they last a week. Other campaigns promoting a new release tend to perform better if they last only 48 hours.

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Scheduled discounts

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A scheduled discount motivates shoppers to buy immediately. With these discounts it's all about scarcity and the ticking of the clock, as the amount of discounts available and/or how high the discount is, decreases over time.

For example, during the first hour of the offer, the discount available might be 20% and then decrease by 1% every hour for the next 10-12 hours until the end of the offer. This incentivizes consumers to shop early to get the biggest discount on the largest shopping carts.

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Discount Presentation

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Don't take sides in the "dollar off versus percentage off" debate. Exhausted uses both depending on the segment you are targeting. For example, first-time site visitors are offered a percentage off discount code.

Almost all brands plan to discount. Not all will invest the time to perfect their approach. Those that do will gain customer loyalty and more sales.

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Damon Baca

Co-Founder

Crossborderit (CBIT)

www.crossborderit.com/IOSS