Nowadays almost all brands can be found online – health, medicine, retail, fitness products, you name it. Obviously online shopping is not the same as checking items in-store. Some customers can be very particular if they are unfamiliar with the brands.
It can be difficult to establish a good customer base online with certain products, like clothing, shoes, jewelry, and health items. Of course the brands need to earn the trust of their customers. However, doing this via a website is easier said than done.
That is where promotional marketing comes in. In the past few years, running promos has proven to be effective for thousands of brands across the globe. The new innovational promos have opened many doors in the fields of creatives and marketing. So how exactly does it work?
What is Promotional Marketing?
To begin, let us start with the basics of promotions in the context of e-commerce.
Promotional marketing is when incentives are used, thus driving customers to take actions to increase awareness about a brand, increase general sales, or even create brand loyalty. This is typically, but not limited to, the following:
- Brand discounts (example: d’aniello boutique coupon code)
- Free products for an email subscription
- Free shipping for a minimum spend
These are utilized by online retailers to encourage on-site customers to do things like checking out with discount codes like d’aniello boutique coupon code, registering their email for brand updates, etc.
So how do you know if the promos are benefiting your brand? You would have to look at the promotional lift, which is the percentage increase in brand sales or site traffic that is attributed to a promotional campaign (using any of the strategies listed above, or more).
The efficiency of using promos like this is actually measured by a certain formula – you arrive at the promotional lift by calculating the percent change in sales or traffic between a regular (non-promo) time frame vs. a time period with a promo.
Does promotional effectiveness vary per industry?
Last 2019 Ben Choy wrote an article about Promotional Effectiveness Metrics and it breaks down everything perfectly. He even examined it per industry and here are some results.
The three industries with the highest promotional lift and effectiveness are the following:
- Health: 3150%
- Home & Garden: 615.71%
- Sports: 538.26%
Meanwhile, the three industries with the lowest promotional lift were:
- Beauty: 149.06%
- Marketplaces: 142.82%
- Arts & Entertainment: 135.18%
You may be wondering why these industries performed this way. There are many factors behind it but we will name the most essential ones.
Firstly, the Arts and Entertainment industry comprises visual arts, photography, audio/music, and design stores. The numbers from Choy’s article reveal that the industry already has a high conversion rate to begin with.
A low promotional lift does not indicate that an industry is “not doing well” or generating sales – rather, it shows that the industry is already stable, regenerating activity without the need for extra promos.
Now let us talk about the Health industry with a whopping 3150% promotional lift. Apparently, one of these Health brands used an animated exit intent promo which is famous for incentivizing site visitors to stay and make a purchase. They also used sales and email engagements, which resulted in more visitors who otherwise would not have visited their site at all.
Running all sorts of promos can be a big help for any brand, and we think it is definitely worth exploring. It tells us a lot about consumer behavior and the shopping habits of society today.
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