We’ve all heard the stats at some point. We know that it costs less to retain existing customers than it does to acquire new customers. The cash outlay required to build a sales channel includes personnel, infrastructure such as I.T. equipment and office space rental, in addition to marketing, advertising and promotional spend. Furthermore, you often have to offer pricing deals to entice first time customers.
Customer retention is an important part of any business’ marketing strategy. While, sales and marketing investment is unavoidable, it eats into your business’ bottom line. Maintaining your existing customer base on the other hand leverages the opportunity for repeat sales, upsells and cross selling.
Loyal customers, who continuously choose your store as their ‘go to’ for certain items are far more profitable (to you) than once off customers. Getting a customer to open an account and make their first purchase is great, but it’s only the first leg of the customer journey. Ensuring that your customers are satisfied and willing to make repeat purchases is the key to online business success.
Unless you sell a product that is completely unique, and one for which there are no substitutes, chances are that you are subject to the same marketing rules as every other online marketer. As an online marketer and entrepreneur, you need to ensure that you build a strong brand and that brand messaging is re-enforced at every touch point. That purchasing processes are seamless and that the quality of your product is outstanding. You also need to ensure that your products are competitively priced. With the help of Conditional Discounts for WooCommerce plugin you can make your prices dynamic.
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Who Doesn’t Love a Great Deal?
Customer’s love getting a great deal. Bargain hunting can be very satisfying, and increases the enjoyment of making a purchase. Countless studies support this premise. However, marketing strategies based solely on deep discounts are not sustainable. One way to overcome this conundrum is to apply discounts in ways which engender customer loyalty.
Eight Strategies to Effectively Apply Pricing Deals using a Discount Plugin
Knowing how to use the tools at your disposal to compete in a fast-paced, customer-centric online environment is essential. Let’s take a look at a WooCommerce dynamic pricing plugin that lets you configure discounts based on your customer’s order history, cart total, social networks, payment gateways and newsletter subscription.
Pricing Deal #1 – Discounting a Customer’s First Purchase
Assuming that your search game is on point and that your site is getting a reasonable amount of traffic, you will need to look at increasing customer conversion. One way of doing that is by offering a set discount on every new account purchase. One company who does this successfully is Forever 21. Forever 21 offers a 10% discount off every new customer’s first purchase.
Pricing Deal #2 – Pre-programming Limited Offer Discounts on Certain Products
Create a sense of urgency with time sensitive discounts. You can earmark certain products to run at discounted prices for a set time frame. Bookriot, a WooCommerce enabled site runs a Deal of the Day promotion, where certain items are discounted, highlighted and promoted daily.
Pricing Deal #3 – Using Promo Codes
Promo codes are the shopping coupons of the 21st century. Pricing deals can be linked to promo codes in a variety of different ways. Customers are usually encouraged to enter a promo code before checking out. In November 2017 Blue Star Coffee offered customers a 15% discount off all online purchases using a promo code #celebrate. This was a great way to encourage sales by positioning their Celebration blend ahead of the holidays.
Pricing Deal #4 – Offering Free Shipping on Orders with a Certain Monetary Value
Promote sales in certain locations by offering a shipping discount and link this geographic based pricing deal with a minimum order value. Wakami, a socially conscious jewellery brand, does this effectively by offering free shipping within the United States on all orders over $50. They also offer seasonal discounts such as a Valentine’s Day promotion where all items carry a 20% discount.
Pricing Deal #5 – Growing your Social Media Following
You can boost social media sales by creating exclusive offers for Facebook and Instagram followers. Online stores using pricing deals can also encourage their social media followers to spread the word by offering discounts on shared products. Herbapproach is a Canadian company selling medical cannabis products who has successfully employed this strategy.
Other big brands who have effectively linked social media sharing with pricing deals include Starbucks and Sephora. In 2013 Starbucks ran a beta campaign called “Tweet a Coffee”, whereby they offered customers the opportunity to gift a coffee to a friend using Twitter.
Sephora, the international make-up retailer offers promo codes for pricing deals for their Facebook fans and also encourages social sharing. These are just some innovative social media pricing deals that can become possible through the use of a discount plugin.
Pricing Deal #6 – Offering a Discount off a Customer’s Nth Purchase
Entice clients with future discounts. We’ve all come across discount cards of some type. Be it from your favourite juice bar, coffee shop or cosmetics line. This can be done online, using a discount plugin by assigning a dynamic discount to a product once it has been purchased a set amount of times.
Pricing Deal #7 – Package Deals & Perceived Value
Amazon is an excellent example of a company that links related products and gives you discount pricing based on a package deal. You can easily apply this kind of sophisticated discount technique, by using a WooCommerce discount plugin. The technology actually creates deals based on what’s in the client’s cart.
Pricing Deal #8 – E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing remains one of the most effective online marketing techniques. Pricing deals can be offered in exchange for e-mail addresses, thereby increasing your subscriber base. Whether you are using MailChimp, SendinBlue or an ordinary mailing list, you can tailor make discounts and pricing deals for subscribers. Almost every major online retailer employs an e-mail marketing strategy. E-mail is used as a constant brand reminder, increases share of mind and solicits click throughs.
Discount plugins allow online stores to replicate the success of traditional discounts, promo codes and loyalty programs. In the digital age it is much easier to automate loyalty programs, and tailor campaigns to customer needs based on customer likes and preferences.