5 Promotional Marketing Myths on Shopify Plus
Written by Debra Weinryb, Content Strategist at Diff Agency.
Sales promotions are almost always an integral part of a retailer’s digital marketing strategy, which is no surprise as they can increase customer engagement and drive conversions.
What are sales promotions?
Sales promotions involve offering shoppers a deal that will enable them to either purchase a product for a lower price (ie. $20 off), or get more value out of the sale (ie. free shipping). Promotional marketing done well can reward your customers, encourage buying, and walk shoppers through your sales funnel. However, when mistakes are made, it can result in wasted time and money, negative PR that tarnishes your brand reputation, and lost revenue. Therefore it’s important to identify and isolate trends that merchants should avoid.
Learn from promotional marketing mistakes
If your promotional marketing strategy isn’t boosting sales, you’ll want to analyze where you’re going wrong. Whether the issue is in the concept or execution, a poor promotional marketing campaign can result in ambiguity and a frustrating shopping experience for your customers. No matter the size of your business, it’s important to learn from promotional blunders and correct your marketing strategy for increased conversions.
In our first Justuno partner blog, we interviewed Director of Solutions, Rob Hammett, about what being on brand really means. In our second Justuno partner blog, we talked about 4 ways to make your retail brand voice stand out on Shopify Plus. To bring a new spin to our conversation, we asked Rob about common misconceptions brands have about promotional marketing. Here are five promotional messaging myths Rob identified that brands make on Shopify Plus, and how to fix them:
Myth #1: Not believing in promotions as a sales strategy
One major misconception that Justuno’s team often hears from customers is, “I don’t believe in promotions because it cheapens my brand.” Aside from top luxury brands, like Rolex, who don’t need to discount due to popularity, most retailers use promotions to incentivize shoppers to engage with their website, including recognizable upscale brands like Pottery Barn and West Elm.
With Justuno’s advanced targeting and personalization features, you can target users with exclusive discounts or critical points in the sales funnel. For example, if a shopper is abandoning their cart, a trigger email can be sent reminding them of the products they left behind. Or if they haven’t gotten to the checkout and don’t have their email address yet, you can target the shopper with a promotion designed to fire when they’re exiting the cart page to try and save the sale.
The key to success in this strategy is to maximize opportunities at crucial stages to improve your conversion rate and move specific segments of shoppers through the funnel. Retailers should be looking to add promotions to their website that provide a clear value and incentivize a purchase.
Myth #2: Increasing conversion rates from low value traffic
Another misconception is feeling like you need to focus on increasing conversion rates from low value traffic. While capturing emails from Snapchat traffic may seem enticing, the fact is that social media traffic can be tough to convert into a sale. Sure it’s high volume, but comes with just as high of a bounce rate. “Bounce rate” is the percentage of single-page visits, without continuing to browse the rest of your website. Unlike other Google metrics, this is the number you want to see go down on an ongoing basis. The lower your bounce rate, the fewer people leave your site immediately after landing on it.
Social media bounce rates vary between sources, but as a channel has a higher bounce rate, sometimes as much as 3X that of other traffic channels. Social media is tough, making it a common mistake to focus too much on trying to convert visitors from these channels. You likely won’t see the same return on effort as you will from high value channels that already work, like email, organic, or direct traffic. That’s why it's essential to take advantage of promotional opportunities from high value traffic first, while still encouraging low value traffic conversions to maximize your return on investment.
Myth #3: Using broad messaging to drive conversions
In our second Diff Justuno partner blog, we talked about letting visitors know that you offer worldwide shipping with a promotional banner, because most shoppers won’t assume that. If a shopper is in Australia and your store is based in America, you’ll want to make it clear from the start that shipping will be free despite the distance. A great way to let your customers know you have fast or free shipping worldwide is to use messaging banners across your site.
If you’re a US-based store, however, that space could be put towards better use for your US visitors. You could target international visitors with a “free shipping worldwide” banner, but target US visitors with personalized messaging based on the ad or email they came from. Broad messaging can be easily solved through personalization in the form of targeting rules, altering the banner to be relevant for each visitor.
Myth #4: Use varied promotions to strengthen your brand
Maintaining consistent branding across channels is arguably you most valuable strategy for customer acquisition and staying on brand. Use on-site messaging to reinforce content messaging when someone clicks through from another channel, such as email, organic traffic, direct traffic, or social media. For example, if someone clicks from an email a code that says, “20% off all purchases today,” it would be inconsistent if they click to your landing page and see a banner that reads “10% off all purchases today.” If the landing page doesn’t reflect the value of the message on your promotion, visitors will be confused and unlikely to convert.
It can also become overwhelming for your shoppers if you show too many promotional discount messages on the same page. For example, displaying a “20% off all purchases” banner next to to a “25% off your first purchase” is a confused user experience. Instead, create a single focus for your landing page promotions by showing how your products will make their life better in some way.
Myth #5: Showing email pop ups to return visitors more than once per session
The goal for new visitors in almost every ecommerce scenario is to get their email, but not necessarily the sale. While the sale should be your end goal, most brands don’t bet on same session conversions from new traffic. Most of the time, shoppers coming in as new traffic need to be nurtured to submit an email, especially with a higher average order value (AOV), which is the average amount of money each customer spends on transactions from your store.
For return traffic, however, your goal should be a conversion. If shoppers click through to your website via an email, this indicated they are a return visitor and already subscribed to your contact list. There’s no need to show them an email popup. Instead, there are many options for onsite retargeting to move returning shoppers closer to purchasing. With Justuno’s AI conversion suite, for example, you can use key data points to create promotions tailored to specific returning visitors. By doing so, you’ll take your website to the next level with an optimized onsite experience that’s targeted and designed to convert.
Failure leads to better choices
Marketing requires careful planning to minimize mistakes and ensure that your message is effectively communicated to achieve your desired results, whether it’s to increase engagement, reward customers, encourage buying, or walk shoppers through your sales funnel. Learn from others’ failures (as well as your own!) and make your next campaign a success!
Want to learn more? Sign up to our newsletter to find out about our next Justuno partner blog on Why identifying your target audience can help boost conversions!
Missed our last Justuno partner blog? Read 4 ways to make your retail brand voice stand out on Shopify Plus
