3 Creative Promotion Ideas for Your eCommerce Store

Any promotion can build interest in your brand and boost sales. But trying something different that your customers have not seen from every company they have ever shopped from can help set your eCommerce shop apart from your competitors. While there is nothing wrong with offering a 20 percent discount code for the upcoming week, this is not the most effective way to grab your customers’ attention because they have seen it many times. Here are three creative ideas for your eCommerce promotion strategy to highlight your store’s new, seasonal, or other products that can showcase the uniqueness of your brand!

Send Specific Customers Free Samples

Everyone loves to get something for free, and your eCommerce shop can capitalize on this by giving your customers plenty of new products to enjoy. Depending on the nature of your shop, sending specific groups of customers a small box of samples each season or other time your company releases a new collection can be a fun and simple way to help them find at least one new product they want to purchase. Although it’s fine to send a sample of one new product to everyone on your mailing list, it can be even more fun and creative to put together a package of related items to help specific customers that may be the most interested in a particular category of products find their new favorite.

Depending on the goals of a specific marketing campaign, your eCommerce shop can send samples to:

• New customers as a bonus for joining your email list
• Inactive customers that bought something from you years ago that you want to win back
• Your most loyal customers as a reward for becoming one of your favorites

Targeting a selection of samples to specific groups of customers gives them something to keep shopping for. Even customers that were not planning on buying anything in the near future can be swayed if you send them a box of freebies that happens to contain their new favorite beauty product, gourmet treat, or other item that they fall in love with and want to stock up on before you sell out.

Shopify even offers a Free Samples tool through its app store that makes it easy to handle samples right from your eCommerce shop. With this add-on app, customers can also request their own free samples in addition to any you choose to send. The Free Samples app also provides several options for analyzing data associated with how frequently samples convert into purchases of full-sized products, which can help you determine how to adjust this strategy in the future.

Run Contests and Giveaways

Running a contest on your social media pages or among your email subscribers is another way to give your customers the chance at getting something for free, especially if sending everyone free samples is not the best fit for your current budget. These prizes do not have to be small, either. Your shop can build up even more interest in your company by showcasing a big-ticket item or large prize basket filled with related products to give away once your Instagram page reaches a certain number of followers or you make a certain number of sales to first-time customers.

Although this eCommerce promotion strategy does not give everyone something for free, the potential of winning the best your brand has to offer can help to build interest in your shop and boost sales of related items. Customers that notice you are offering something similar to what they are in the market for as a giveaway may even hold off on making a purchase from another company until they are sure that they do not win your drawing. Plus, keeping your brand and product top of mind for a few days or weeks can increase the odds that they will end up buying the prize or something similar from your eCommerce shop instead of your competitor’s.

You can also run contests and giveaways directly through Shopify by utilizing its ViralSweep tool. This program, which can be found in Shopify’s app store, is an add-on purchase that is the most worthwhile if you plan to run frequent giveaways. ViralSweep offers several unique contest options, such as allowing shoppers to vote for winning entries within the platform, offering points for every dollar spent that can be converted into entries, and providing additional entries for signing up for your email list or completing similar activities.

Use Short, Steep Discounts to Encourage Quick Sales

While there is certainly nothing wrong with offering basic promo codes that offer your customers 10-30 percent off their order for a week or longer, getting a bit more creative with the concept of promo codes can give your eCommerce shop an immediate boost in sales. Many customers put off buying a product if they are not positive they want it yet, or even if they know they will get it eventually but are hoping the price will go down. Offering an even better discount for a short time can be a great way to push them to make that purchase and encourage impulse sales.

Although you cannot realistically offer discounts of 50 percent or more for an extended period of time without negatively affecting your revenue, running a major flash sale for anywhere from a few hours to a day or two at the most can lead to high sales that otherwise may not have happened on a particular day. Once your customers figure out that your eCommerce shop frequently offers promotions that exceed your competitors’ sales, they will be more likely to be loyal to your brand and wait to see if you offer a particular product at a major discount instead of taking advantage of an average discount from somewhere else when your product is not on sale.

You can manually set sale prices within your Shopify account by navigating to the Products page of your admin account. By using this method, your customers can view both the current sale price and a “Compare at” price that lets them know how much they are saving. Although this option provides clear value to customers, it can be a time-consuming process if your shop is large, and spending the time to manually set sale prices may not be worthwhile if you are running a very short sale. For a quick flash sale, simply having your customers enter a discount code to access promotional pricing may be a better option. By using a discount code instead of changing prices on your website, you can also only offer your special pricing to some customers and send these shoppers an email containing the discount code.

Add Some Life to Your eCommerce Promotion Strategy

At Future Holidays, we prioritize helping our customers plan promotions that go beyond the basic campaigns that every business has used at one point or another to build your customers’ interest in innovative ways that set your brand apart. We can help you optimize your email marketing campaigns to share details about your upcoming promotions, as well as refine your social media pages, build subscriber lists, brainstorm creative branding ideas, and find other ways to use the digital experiences your current and future customers have with your eCommerce shop to build ongoing relationships that keep them coming back. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you put a creative spin on your eCommerce promotion strategy or to get started!