Promotions allow businesses to offer incentives to customers buying certain products or services. They can come in a multitude of different forms. Depending on a merchant, these may be simple or extremely complex. Similar to prices, promotions configured by a product or a category of products and may vary by channel, region, store, and validity period.
There are many different types of promotion techniques used in Digital Commerce. We will explore here cart level promotions, coupons, loyalty, and referral programs.
Cart-level promotions applied on the cart page based on the cart content and customer.
Here are the common promotion types:
A definition of a shopping cart promotion consists of two parts: a set of conditions that evaluate the context of a shopping cart and a discount action applied to the cart when conditions are met.
The following types of conditions commonly used when configuring promotions:
When promotion conditions are satisfied, the promotion actions are applied to a shopping cart.
Typical actions are:
There are three different ways of how to calculate a discount:
Ecommerce Systems use rule engines to define promotion conditions and actions. They usually provide a business user with a friendly rule builder interface.
There is a lot of similarity between cart level promotions and coupons. The main difference is that a customer needs to add a coupon code to activate a discount on the cart page. Look at a coupon as a trigger or additional condition to activate the promotion.
Other than that, coupon conditions and actions are the same as conditions and actions for promotions. Discounts can be applied to the cart total, specific product, or allow for a gift.
Coupons are special codes that customer needs to enter during checkout to get a discount. Various kinds of coupons differ by their usage conditions.
Ecommerce system usually provides a mechanism to generate coupon codes. Here is, for example, the coupon generation interface in Spryker.
Coupons can be distributed in a variety of different ways. Published on a web site, send in an email, or offered to customers after the checkout to be used in future orders.
Sometimes, coupons are used as an incentive for the customer to sign up for a newsletter or create an account. As coupons are usually printed, they must be human-friendly to type. Avoid using 0(zero) and O, or 1 and l to avoid mistyping.
Ecommerce referral program is a system of incentivizing your current customers to refer new people to your business. The referrals come from actual customers and are typically given to people the customer knows and trusts. It is not surprising then that many referral page visitors take action.
Referral programs are used in many different types of digital businesses.
The point of the referral campaign is to provide enough value to both existing and new customers.
The program can offer discounts or actual money, or additional services like extended warranties for your products, free shipping on subsequent orders, or early access to new products.
Several things to keep in mind when implementing a referral program. In addition to a landing page, you will need to build links into various sections of your website:
You will need a mechanism to track referrals by implementing the generation of unique referral codes, automatic reward deliveries, configurable double-sided referral schemes, and rules to check eligibility.
A customer loyalty program or rewards program is a marketing strategy that rewards loyal customers that frequently engage with a brand.
By rewarding recurring engagement, you can increase customer loyalty and ensure continuous growth for your business. The idea behind an effective loyalty program is that the more loyal customers are, the more rewards they’ll get.
Loyalty programs offer monetary or non-monetary rewards.
Examples of monetary rewards
Examples of non-monetary rewards
Offering tiers in a loyalty program is a great way to engage customers and keep your brand top of mind. Further, tiers play on gamification aspects where members reach higher levels, the more they “play.”
The shop should make it clear how loyalty point is earned and can be used.
Redeeming loyalty points is another payment method that you need to set up in your online shop. It should be possible to combine it with other ways of paying for the order. Usually, the site limits the number of points used on a single purchase.
Next Section
Shopping cart is the heart of the Ecommerce. Learn what to consider when implementing Add-to-Cart experience, support for multiple & shared carts in B2, cart page, wish lists, and recover abandoned carts
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