AllenCrawley
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[The following is a modified version of a post in my progress thread on the Inside.]
Sales are great to get a nice boost to revenues but do they hurt your brand?
There is a website my wife loves to shop from. The products are great quality and they position themselves as a premium brand. However, my wife waits until there is a sale before she buys. She knows that they send out at least one email per week with some kind of sale or discount. They have conditioned her to wait until they discount the product.
I’ve eliminated running regular sales and discounts. My email list too had been conditioned to wait for sales and it was hurting overall website revenue and brand perception. I think it's more important for those of us that have a premium brand. If you want people to think luxury or premium then you cannot continually offer discounts as an incentive to purchase. To help get my email list out of that mindset I had not emailed them anything for about 4 months. (During that time I had also been building up my email list using Facebook.)
So during holidays and those times you'd like to generate additional sales I'd suggest using other types of incentives.
For example, I recently sent a "Thank You" email to my list. To show them my appreciation for being a part of our community I gave them an exclusive $5.00 gift card to use on our website. No minimum purchase required.
I could have sent a $5 off coupon code but that does not have as high of a perceived value as a Gift Card. It's basically the same thing. I go into my dashboard, create a discount code for $5, make it a one time use per customer. What would you be more excited about - a friend walks up to you and hands you a coupon for $5 off or a friend giving you a $5 gift card?
Now, I did make the gift card expire July 15th. This will give me time to send a couple more emails reminding them to use their gift card before expiration. So far I've sent two emails. The second was sent to those who didn't open the first. Those two emails have generated almost $520 in sales. (I have a little over 1000 people on my list.)
Here's another example...
Here in the US, Labor Day is less than a week away. Everyone's email inbox will be getting flooded with sales of 10-50% off. Instead of following the herd, I've created a "Free Gift with Purchase" promo. The product I'm giving as the free gift is $20 retail. It only costs me $1 to manufacture and weighs only 1 ounce. This product happens to perfectly fit in with all my other products but you could do something completely different. Aliexpress could be a great place to find products to use as your free gift.
Another example would be to offer Free Shipping. I thought about doing this for the Labor Day promo but that would not be as great of a value for my customers. They could get $7 in free shipping or get a $20 product for free. Plus my cost is only $1 vs. $7. Nevertheless, free shipping with no minimum purchase promos could indeed help generate additional sales.
Here's an example that does involve a sale/discount. The "Inventory Sweep" sale or blowout. This can be used when you have too much inventory of a particular product. I would not suggest using this as a storewide sale. Even though this is a sale, it's not necessarily conditioning your customers to wait for sales. This is a limited time, limited product, limited quantity discount that only comes once or maybe twice a year. Use sparingly.
I subscribe to many premium brands emails. It really helps to see how they run promotions without devaluing their brand.
Would love to read others experiences or ideas. Feel free to share other ideas for special incentives/promos that do not condition your customers to wait for sales.
Sales are great to get a nice boost to revenues but do they hurt your brand?
There is a website my wife loves to shop from. The products are great quality and they position themselves as a premium brand. However, my wife waits until there is a sale before she buys. She knows that they send out at least one email per week with some kind of sale or discount. They have conditioned her to wait until they discount the product.
I’ve eliminated running regular sales and discounts. My email list too had been conditioned to wait for sales and it was hurting overall website revenue and brand perception. I think it's more important for those of us that have a premium brand. If you want people to think luxury or premium then you cannot continually offer discounts as an incentive to purchase. To help get my email list out of that mindset I had not emailed them anything for about 4 months. (During that time I had also been building up my email list using Facebook.)
So during holidays and those times you'd like to generate additional sales I'd suggest using other types of incentives.
For example, I recently sent a "Thank You" email to my list. To show them my appreciation for being a part of our community I gave them an exclusive $5.00 gift card to use on our website. No minimum purchase required.
I could have sent a $5 off coupon code but that does not have as high of a perceived value as a Gift Card. It's basically the same thing. I go into my dashboard, create a discount code for $5, make it a one time use per customer. What would you be more excited about - a friend walks up to you and hands you a coupon for $5 off or a friend giving you a $5 gift card?
Now, I did make the gift card expire July 15th. This will give me time to send a couple more emails reminding them to use their gift card before expiration. So far I've sent two emails. The second was sent to those who didn't open the first. Those two emails have generated almost $520 in sales. (I have a little over 1000 people on my list.)
Here's another example...
Here in the US, Labor Day is less than a week away. Everyone's email inbox will be getting flooded with sales of 10-50% off. Instead of following the herd, I've created a "Free Gift with Purchase" promo. The product I'm giving as the free gift is $20 retail. It only costs me $1 to manufacture and weighs only 1 ounce. This product happens to perfectly fit in with all my other products but you could do something completely different. Aliexpress could be a great place to find products to use as your free gift.
Another example would be to offer Free Shipping. I thought about doing this for the Labor Day promo but that would not be as great of a value for my customers. They could get $7 in free shipping or get a $20 product for free. Plus my cost is only $1 vs. $7. Nevertheless, free shipping with no minimum purchase promos could indeed help generate additional sales.
Here's an example that does involve a sale/discount. The "Inventory Sweep" sale or blowout. This can be used when you have too much inventory of a particular product. I would not suggest using this as a storewide sale. Even though this is a sale, it's not necessarily conditioning your customers to wait for sales. This is a limited time, limited product, limited quantity discount that only comes once or maybe twice a year. Use sparingly.
I subscribe to many premium brands emails. It really helps to see how they run promotions without devaluing their brand.
Would love to read others experiences or ideas. Feel free to share other ideas for special incentives/promos that do not condition your customers to wait for sales.
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