Abandoned carts are every E-commerce owner’s nightmare.

The most common advice on how to reduce cart abandonment is using abandoned cart emails, but there is one problem with that…

Cart abandonment emails are only sent out if the person abandoning their cart exists in your email database. In other words, the abandoner needs to be on your email list.

Unless you have a huge email list or a lot of repeat customers, cart abandonment emails might not be the best strategy for you to use.

Luckily, there are a lot of ways you can reduce abandoned carts without using email. And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this post.

Let’s dive right in.

Use an abandoned cart email

If you’re looking to recover abandoned carts, the first thing you should do is set up an abandoned cart email.

And there’s no need to over-complicate it. You don’t need any other images or additional information other than what is related to what’s in the cart, and why the customer should complete their purchase.

The most effective cart abandonment emails are short, to the point, and have a time-limited offer like a percentage discount, free shipping, or additional loyalty points.

If you want to take your abandoned cart emails to the next level, use customer data like past purchases and browsing history to personalize the email and offer.

Here are a few abandoned cart email examples:

Swedish kids-brand Babyshop.se gives away a 15% discount in their abandoned cart email. This is a very effective promotion strategy to recover lost carts and reach customers when they’re not actively browsing the website.

Outdoor brand Huckberry uses a different strategy. Instead of using a discount, they play on your emotions and attempt to create a sense of urgency by saying “We can’t promise it’ll stick around, so now’s a good time to officially make it yours”.

Both these examples are great for recovering carts, and while you don’t need a discount to recover a lost cart, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have an incentive of some sort.

Use Exit-intent Popups in the checkout

Exit-intent pop-ups are an effective way to capture customers before they leave your website.

By offering a last-minute incentive, such as free shipping, a free gift, or a percentage discount, you can convince these visitors to stay and complete their purchase.

These campaigns convert very well on their own, simply because your visitor is already considering purchasing from you. Even a discount as small as an additional 5% can make a huge difference to your conversion rate.

Here is an example of an Exit intent popup in the checkout:

Swedish pet care brand Firstvet uses an exit intent popup in the checkout to attempt to make the visitor stay on the website. They are offering a 10% discount, but they also take the opportunity to collect some zero-party data about their customers. By asking you which pet you have, they can collect data that they can use to create segments, relevant content, and offers in other channels.

Offering free shipping as an incentive

The most common reason for cart abandonment is “too high extra costs”.

Your visitors will calculate the approximate cost as they add items to their cart, and if there are unexpected costs, most of them will abandon their purchase.

There are three ways to reduce abandoned carts due to shipping costs:

1. Be transparent about shipping costs upfront
2. Add the shipping cost on all products and offer free shipping
3. Offer free shipping as an incentive to grow your email list and reduce abandonment rates

Most marketers don’t consider free shipping as an incentive, but you would be surprised how effective it is as a way to reduce abandoned carts.

Not only does it make your customers feel valued, but it also encourages them to spend more.

Here is an example of a popup giving away free shipping as an incentive:

Huckberry hits you with a huge popup as soon as you land on their website. You get free shipping if you sign up, and this is a great strategy to set the tone before someone has started shopping since they know that they have free shipping.

Sephora uses a free shipping incentive to recruit members to their rewards program. This offer is placed at the most important conversion points throughout the customer journey, from product pages, to gift guides, and the checkout.

Offer a guest checkout option

Having to create an account is cited as the second most common reason for cart abandonment.

The most important page in your online store is your checkout, and you need to make sure the checkout process is frictionless.

Offer your customers the option to check out as a guest rather than requiring them to create an account.

This is how Sephora offers non-members to check out. Instead of forcing a new customer to log in or create an account, they only ask for the email address. By collecting the email address before allowing a customer to check out, Sephora assures they can send them an abandoned cart email if they would abandon their purchase.

Offer extra rewards in your membership program

Most of the members in your rewards program are members because of the benefits.

By offering loyal members additional reward points, you can reduce abandoned carts while encouraging repeat purchases.

Obviously, this strategy only works if the visitor is an existing member. Make sure you can target existing members from your CRM or Loyalty Management Platform such as Voyado, Rule, Mailchimp or Klaviyo.

On the other hand, if the visitor is not a member of your rewards program, you can ask for their email address, offer them a discount that they can redeem instantly, and ask them to complete their profile in a follow-up email. Not only will this help you grow your members, but your email and SMS list as well. Swedish fashion brand Indiska offers existing members bonus points if they log in to complete their purchase and a 10% discount to new members.

Swedish fitness brand CLN Athletics offers a 100SEK ($10) discount to new members.

Offer free samples and gifts

Free gift-with-purchase deals are a great way to remove any doubts in your customer’s minds and reduce abandoned carts.

Just make sure the free gift is useful and relevant to your customers – this will increase the likelihood of them completing their purchase.

Also, consider adding a deadline or quantity limit to your free gift offer to create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to act quickly.

Here are a few examples of how free gifts can be used to reduce cart abandonment:

Harry’s sells beard and beauty products for men, and they use curiousity as a strategy to prevent you from abandoning your cart. When you visit your cart, a popup appears with a mystery box offer. This is a really fun strategy, but make sure the mystery box is below the impulse-limit.

Verso is a Swedish skincare brand that ran a free-gift-with-purchase campaign during Valentines. If you placed an order for $100 or more, you got a free lip serum as a gift.

Learn how to create and use FOMO

By learning how to use FOMO and scarcity, you can entice customers to complete their purchases instead of abandoning their cart.

There are a few techniques you can use to create a sense of urgency in the checkout:

• Let customers know that others are also interested in the product to increase demand.
• Use limited-time discounts to create a sense of urgency. You can also generate unique coupon codes for an added layer of security and to stop misuse.
• Show how many products are left in stock
• Remind customers that the item might not be available at a later date.

Here are some examples of how Revolve, Fashion Nova,  and Zalando use FOMO to reduce abandoned carts:

Fashion Nova is notorious for their sitewide sales and aggressive discounts. Most of their product pages have some element of scarcity or FOMO. Here you see a label stating that sizes are selling out fast. But the best part is that it continues to the checkout.

When you’ve added a product to your shopping cart, they tell you how many other people have this in their bag, amplifying the sense of urgency and need to take action.

Revolve uses a similar strategy as Fashion Nova, where they state how many items are left to buy. Considering this jacket is extremely expensive (we just added a random item that happened to be very pricey), it’s probably logical that there are only a few of each.

Zalando uses FOMO when selecting sizes. If a size is out of stock they ask you to set up an email reminder, and when there are only a few left they tell you how many are left. This creates FOMO and incentivizes customers to complete their purchase.

Offer customers to save their cart for a later date

Letting your customers save their cart for a later date is an effective way to reduce cart abandonment.

This allows customers to take the time and think about their purchase decision without having to commit right away.

Also, you give them the opportunity to compare prices, read reviews, and shop around (they will do that anyway).

But the best part?

It also gives YOU the opportunity to send targeted offers, discounts, and other incentives that can encourage them to complete their purchase.

On a last note, giving customers the option to save their cart can also be used as a way to upsell and cross-sell related items to help increase your average order value.

Instead of taking the more aggressive approach and asking customers to complete their purchases right away, Swedish fashion brand Kappahl asks customers to save their cart for a later date.

Provide customer support

Having accessible customer support before, during, and after the purchase is very important.

Make sure customer queries are answered quickly, and any problems are taken care of in a timely manner. Assure customers that their shopping experience is secure and that information provided is confidential.

Utilize email marketing to keep customers informed about their order status and send notifications when their order has shipped.

These measures can help reduce the number of abandoned carts and ensure a positive customer experience.

Nordstroms offers phone and chat support during checkout so customers can make inquiries about their orders, shipping, or returns.

Retarget customers with ads

Retargeting is a great strategy to recover abandoned carts.

When retargeting customers with abandoned cart ads, you should consider dynamic ads as they can be set up to show the ads in the cart along with an extra discount.

Additionally, focusing on customer segmentation and targeting will help ensure that your retargeting ads are as effective as possible.

For maximum impact, create segments based on behavior and purchase history. Finally, test different messaging and ad formats to determine which works best for your customer base.

Here is an example ad from this article on Kargocommerce where they mention 4 ways to re-engage cart abandoners.

Glossier utilizes user reviews for its abandoned cart retargeting ads. This is a great way to engage your customers with organic, phone-to-phone-type content.

Use social proof strategically

Display customer reviews, testimonials, and how many people have bought the same item.

You should do this on the product page, but also in the checkout. Another thing to consider is to include customer photos and videos from social media. This is a form of social proof, and lets your customers see that other people are buying from you (and enjoying it).

Swedish beauty brand LYKO uses user-generated content from social media along with pictures from their customers to show off their social proof.

Nordstroms uses both social proof in the form of customer reviews, but they also tell you how many other people are viewing the product you are viewing. This is in the cross-section of FOMO and social proof, but nonetheless proof that other people are interested in buying the same thing you are interested in. Which, by definition, is a form of social proof.

Offer more payment options

Not having enough payment options is one of the top reasons customers abandon their carts.

It is highly recommended to use a checkout solution like Klarna or Adyen that supports most credit cards, buy now pay later, and monthly payments.

Don’t forget about alternate payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, and local payment options. Swish is huge in Sweden, and AliPay is big in Asia. So based on which countries you are selling to, it’s often very beneficial to add local payment options.

Letting customers pay on their terms is a dealbreaker and will help you reduce a lot of abandoned carts.

On a side note: consider integrating rewards programs, like store credits, to incentivize loyal customers to pay without using their cards.

Summary

In conclusion, abandoned carts can be a frustrating problem for e-commerce retailers, but there are plenty of effective ways to recover them and increase sales. By implementing these strategies, you can encourage customers to complete their purchases and improve the overall user experience on your website.

 

 

 

We’ve analyzed 25 of the largest and fastest-growing online retailers to find out which list building strategies they use.

Here they are:

1. Welcome discounts
2. Pre-launch signups
3. Abandoned cart popups
4. Seasonal events and shopping holidays
5. Post-purchase incentives
6. Referral campaigns
7. Back-in-stock notifications
8. Give away free products
9. Use Quizzes to capture emails
10. Add an opt-in form in your website footer
11. Promote loyalty program memberships
12. Spin the wheel-campaigns
13. Offer free shipping as an incentive
14. The plain newsletter popup

And here are the brands we looked at:

What is an email list?

An email list is a list of email addresses submitted by people in your audience for the purpose of receiving news, updates, and promotions from your brand. You can collect email addresses through website forms, popups, and when a customer places an order.

Your email list exists in your email marketing software which also lets you create and send your email campaigns. Some of the most popular email marketing services are Mailchimp, Rule, and Klaviyo.

When someone signs up for your email list, they are raising their hand saying “Yes, I want you to send me promotional information”.

Why you should focus on email

Email is one of the few channels where you can reach individual customers directly and personally while having full control over the content and message.

Here are some reasons why you should focus on growing your email list:

• You “own” the contact data in your email list.
• As you grow your list, you can spend less on paid ads to reach your audience
• You have full control over the customer experience
• You can create audience segments and personalize your message to different audiences
• 4.2 billion people use email (According to Radicati Group’s latest report).
• Email is a direct 1-to-1 communication channel between your brand and your audience

Keep in mind that you also need to actively work on growing your list.

How to get started building your email list

Getting started with building your email list is very easy.

1. Find an email marketing software. Mailchimp or Rule are two great options, and both have free account tiers. If you’re looking for more features like loyalty program features, or SMS sending, consider a software like Voyado or Klaviyo.
2. Find a personalization software to build and publish popups and forms on your website.
3. Build a form or popup that contains a headline with the text “Join our newsletter”, add an email form field, a submit button, and connect your email marketing software so that when you get a new subscriber they get sent directly to your email list.

If you are just getting started there is no need to overthink it. The steps outlined above are what you need to know to get started. You can figure out the details later.

The importance of personalization when building your list

Personalization plays a huge role in the long-term success of your e-commerce business. It helps you improve your customer experience, build authority, loyalty, and helps you set your brand apart from the competition.

The true value of personalization comes into effect when you know who your visitors are, and you have some data about their preferences, previous purchases, location, membership status, and so on. This is usually referred to as zero-party data.

In other words, personalization is really valuable when you have a lot of customer data to use. Less so in a stage where you acquire customers.

Since list building refers to capturing the emails of people you don’t have any data about, the personalization tactics you can use are limited.

Here are some of the best personalization methods you can use for capturing new subscribers:

• Geo-location personalization. If you are an international seller and have different promotions for different locations or countries, you can target visitors based on their location to incentivize them with relevant offers and information.
• Traffic source-based personalization. As you already know, different traffic sources have different conversion rates. And people are visiting your website for different reasons. By tailoring offers or promotions to people based on their traffic source, you can make your list building form more relevant.
• Device-specific personalization. If you are selling device-specific products (i.e. Laptop cases, or phone cases), you might want to consider tailoring your sign up forms based on their device. If you know that a visitor is on an iPhone, and you are selling iPhone cases, you can say “Get 10% off on all iPhone cases!” instead of a generic incentive like “all cases” or something like that.
• Previous promotion activity. With Triggerbee, you can target your sign up forms and onsite promotions to visitors based on their behavior. For example those who have, or have not, engaged with one of your previous promotions.
• Visitor frequency. A visitor who landed on your website 3 months ago and never returned is a lost case. However, a visitor who

By leveraging one or multiple of these personalization tactics you can double or triple your visitor-to-subscriber conversion rate.

1. Welcome discounts

Brands using this strategy: Revolve, Uniqlo, The Honest Company, Puma, and Fashion Nova.

Welcome discounts are one of the most popular and widely used promotion strategies. Welcome discounts usually appears instantly in a popup, and have a higher conversion rate than any other form of non-personalized messages. You can use static discount codes or generate unique coupon codes for an added layer of security and avoid code hacking.

We analyzed over 25,000+ of our customer’s popup campaigns, and we found that the instant trigger has an average conversion rate of 6.3%.

Welcome popups are very effective for two reasons:

1. The reward is immediate and can be used in the same session
2. Everyone loves a good deal, and by giving your visitors a deal upfront you will increase the chance of them buying in the same session.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know where to begin, this is a good strategy to start with.

Revolve

This US-based fashion retailer grows their email list using a 10% welcome discount popup that appears as soon as you visit its website.

Additionally, Revolve is also collecting gender data in their signup form. This is a great way to collect zero-party data that you can use when segmenting your email list, or creating segments in your CRM.

When you close the popup, it gets minimized and appears as a teaser on the right side of the screen.

Uniqlo

Uniqlo is a global fashion brand. They are using popups and exit intent popups to build their list:

Additionally, they also use an exit intent popup that appears when you are about to leave the page.

Uniqlo repeats the main offer in the exit intent popup, and as you can see, it has a shorter message with only a headline and a button to ensure that their offer is the only thing you see.

Note: When using exit intent popups, do NOT use a lot of text. The visitor is already in a state of mind of LEAVING your website, so make sure that your offer can be understood in under 2-3 seconds.

The difference between Revolve’s and Uniqlo’s strategies is that Uniqlo has chosen an absolute discount instead of a percentage discount.

If your average order value is below $100, you should definitely consider testing a percentage discount vs an absolute discount to see which offer grows your email list faster.

John Henric

John Henric is a Scandinavian menswear brand. They use an awesome welcome discount where they offer a 15% discount on your purchase.

Take note of how they use visual hierarchy. The main offer is written in huge text, and the button that states “Collect your discount” makes it impossible to not understand what you get if you enter your email address. Clarity is key!

Puma

This classic sports brand captures new email addresses with a 20% discount welcome offer. It doesn’t get more basic than this — but that’s a good thing. Simple works.

Fashion Nova

No matter what you think about Fashion Nova, they have managed to create a beast of a fashion brand. And to no surprise, they are using a 10% welcome discount as soon as you land on their website.

Notice how they use visual hierarchy to emphasize the discount. By this I mean that the “10% off” is written in a font at least 2x the size of everything else. People read the largest text first, because it’s the most visible. It sits on top of the hierarchy of visible elements.

If that wasn’t enough, Fashion Nova also uses an exit intent popup with the same offer.

Native

Native sells deodorant and skin care products. They grow both their email and SMS lists using a welcome discount of 20%.

This is a really clever way to grow both your email and SMS list simultaneously. SMS works great for a lot of brands, but it can be tricky to get someone’s phone number.

If you want to copy this strategy, test it out, and make sure you use a multi-step popup with a button that says “continue” instead of “Sign up”.

When using a welcome discount, make sure to only target NEW customers and visitors. With Triggerbee’s popup builder you can simply tick a box to activate the “new email verification”, and only show your discount code if the email doesn’t exist in your email list

Pre-launch Signup Campaigns

Companies using this strategy: Harry’s, Bubbleroom

The next time you’re launching a new product, or before running a huge sale, use a pre-launch campaign to gauge interest and build your list.

Pre-launch campaigns will help you get a list of potential customers before you launch, and it also gives you a reason to collect more than just an email address.

Bubbleroom

Swedish fashion brand Bubbleroom used a pre-launch campaign to build their list before launching a collaboration with an influencer. The collection sold out in less than an hour, and the demand was so high their site crashed for a while.

Zalando

Zalando is one of the largest online fashion retailers in the world. To no surprise, they have their list-building strategies down to a science. They use pre-launches for all their sneaker-drops to build a list of potential customers before the sneaker is launched.

Another benefit of running pre-launch campaigns is that they are not as common as welcome discounts or next-purchase discounts.

Your customers are probably not used to seeing them, so if they get a chance to get access to a sale or product before everyone else, they will sign up to receive a notification.

Abandoned cart popups

Companies using this strategy: Firstvet, Kappahl, Harry’s

Abandoned cart popups are extremely effective at growing your email list and recovering some lost revenue.

All you need to do is add an exit intent popup to your checkout page, offer the visitor a discount or free shipping, and watch your list (and sales) grow.

Most brands want to keep their checkouts free of any distractions. And while that might be a good thing, an exit intent popup will not appear until the visitor tries to leave the website.

• Exit intent campaigns won’t disrupt the normal browsing experience. They only appear when the visitor intends to leave your website.
• Exit intent campaigns in the cart have a natural relevance. A visitor with products in their cart are considering buying from you – and most of the time they only need a small push to complete their purchase.
• Abandoned cart popups usually have a click-to-copy rate of about 46-50%, and VERY high usage.

Firstvet

Firstvet is a Swedish pet care store, and they use an exit-intent popup in their checkout that offers the visitor a 10% discount.

Firstvet also uses this opportunity to collect zero-party data about which pet the customer has. They use this data to create more relevant email campaigns.

Kappahl

Kappal is a large fashion retailer in the Nordics. If you are in the checkout and try to leave the website, they offer you to send your cart to your email address.

Kappahl doesn’t offer any discount, but the popup and “offer” to save your cart is relevant because you might intend to buy the product at a later time.

Harry’s

Harry’s sells razor blades and shaving accessories for men. And they sell it as subscription boxes.

They use a special cart popup, which is not really an exit intent popup, but it was too good to leave out. When you visit the checkout, this popup appears:

“Add some mystery to your box”. Curiosity is a powerful emotion and they use it perfectly. A mystery box sounds pretty cool and for the very low cost of 5 pounds, it’s a very low risk offer that probably works great. They have had this exact offer running for a pretty long time!

Seasonal events and shopping holidays

Brands using this strategy: KICKS, Stronger

There are at least 18 seasonal events and shopping holidays every year. If you are not using them to build your email list, you are leaving money on the table.

Every holiday event has three list-building opportunities:

1. Before the event
2. During the event
3. After the event

Let’s take Mother’s Day as an example of how you can apply the before, during, and after-framework.

Before a seasonal event: Publish a pre-launch campaign

Mother’s day is a one-day event on May 28th. This means people are looking to order stuff from you at least 3-5 days BEFORE the day arrives.

One week before your sale, publish a pre-launch signup form to collect a list of people who want to participate and buy when your sale starts.
Make sure the main message is “VIP Access” of some sort. You can write “Get access before everyone else”, or something along those lines.

During the shopping holiday: Invitation to join the sale (+ an extra 5% off incentive)

When the day has arrived, offer an extra 5% discount to people who sign up for your email list.

So if you are running a sitewide sale where everything is 20% off, you can promote 25% off for anyone who signs up for your email list.

Since most of the gifts were purchased long before the day itself, promote gift cards for the last-minute shoppers.

After the seasonal event: Second chance sale

There is always a group of people who are late to the party. You can easily convert these people to subscribers and customers by running a “second chance”-sale. Offers 15% off for anyone who missed out on the big sale and is willing to sign up for your email list.

Post-purchase incentives

Brands using this strategy: Flowlife

This is not a list-building strategy per se, but it’s too valuable to leave out of this post.

Your customers are at their most receptive in the first few minutes after they have made a purchase.

The list-building part is already complete when a customer reaches your thank you page because you have already captured their email from when they submitted their order.

However, your receipt page and confirmation email are prime estates for collecting additional zero-party data. This data can be used for segmenting your audience at a later stage, and in other channels.

How Flowlife uses post-purchase campaigns

Swedish health-tech brand Flowlife uses a post-purchase survey to collect zero-party data about their customer’s interests, so they can send them relevant communication in the future.

This is a clever move by Flowlife because this survey gets them closer to knowing who their customers are.

Not only will this give them valuable customer insight, but they can use this data to create better ads, social media content, and segment their email database.

Referral campaigns

Brands using referral campaigns: Native, ASOS, Allbirds

A lot of big brands have been built on the back of long-running referral campaigns.

Referral programs are the perfect mix between customer acquisition and list building.

Even if the referred person doesn’t buy from you immediately, you can add them to your email list as long as you collect their consent in the invitation message.

If you can gain some momentum with your referral program, your list will grow faster than any other method on this list.

We recommend you use a double-sided discount when running a referral program for list building. People are more inclined to invite a friend if they know that their friend receives a discount when they are inviting them.

One-sided discounts can work, but they are not nearly as effective.

Here are a few examples of referral campaigns that are active at the time of writing:

Native

Native’s referral campaign is their main list building strategy. They are using a double-sided discount for maximum effect.

ASOS

ASOS has a referral campaign, but it’s only available for customers in the UK. They too use a double-sided discount of 20%.

Allbirds

Instead of using a percentage discount, Allbirds opts for a double-sided discount in absolute dollars.

Back-in-stock notifications

Brands using back-in-stock notifications: Zalando, Revolve, Fashion Nova, Huckberry

Back-in-stock notifications are GREAT for list building. Here’s why:

1. You effectively turn a loss of revenue today into a future revenue gain.
2. You get both an email subscriber AND zero-party data such as color or size preferences (this is a gold mine).
3. It keeps interested customers waiting for a message from you.

Zalando

Whenever a size or color is out of stock (which happens quite frequently on Zalando), they will replace the attribute with a link that opens up a modal where you can type in your email address and get a reminder whenever the product is back in stock.

Revolve

Revolve uses a huge back-in-stock notification that even lets you place a special order. This is pretty smart because these types of contextual signup forms lend themselves to a much broader use case than solely size reminders.

Fashion Nova

Fashion Nova offers both a back-in-stock reminder but they do something most others do not: Offer similar recommendations where the size you were looking for is in stock.

Huckberry

Huckberry takes a different approach from the others, and use their back-in-stock reminders as a way to drive new membership signups.

A new email subscriber is only as good as their intent. You might think that all email subscribers have an equal worth, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If someone actively asks to be reminded when a product is back in stock, you can consider it a very valuable email address. Compare this to someone who randomly signs up for your newsletter — both actions are valuable but have very different intents.

Use Giveaways for explosive list growth

Brands using this strategy: Snif, Nordstroms, Sephora, Estée Lauder

Giveaways are great to be used in combination with your main list-building strategy.

It’s one of the few strategies that can generate thousands of subscribers in just a few days if done right.

The key to maximizing your results with giveaways is testing which strategy works best for you:

1. Monthly giveaways
2. One giveaway leading up to a product launch
3. Free gift with purchase

If you are considering running a giveaway, pick a strategy and see what happens.

Here are some real-life examples of brands using giveaways as a list-building strategy:

Snif

Snif sells exclusive fragrances, and they run a monthly giveaway where they collect phone numbers for their SMS list.

If you’re a small busines starting out, focus on gifting your own products as a way to grow your brand and get more people to try them.

Use Quizzes to capture emails (and customer insight)

Brands using this strategy: Beard Club, Dr.Squatch

Quizzes are very effective at converting visitors and potential customers into email (or SMS) subscribers.

And the best thing is that you don’t need any fancy quiz software or advanced conditional rules to generate email signups with a quiz.

Beard Club uses a GENIOUSLY designed quiz to grow their list and get to know their customers at the same time. Here’s how it looks (and works):

They effectively combine three strategies into one to create a very powerful offer.

First, they make visitors take a quiz to claim a 15% discount and a free gift.

Second, you are asked to enter your email address to unlock your personalized results after completing the quiz.

This is a very clever move, and let me tell you why:

You can either view a quiz as an engagement tactic…

Or as a way for you to get to know your audience better.

Even if only a fraction of the people who go through the quiz enters their email address, Beard Club has collected anonymous data about your current beard status, your beard goals, and what bothers you the most about having a beard.

And they do it all in just three questions. Genius.

Even if BeardClub doesn’t get the user’s email address, they have collected data that they can use to write better copy in their ads, email campaigns, and more.

Add an opt-in form in your website footer

Brands using this strategy: Dr. Squatch, K-Rauta

The vast majority of ecommerce brands have an opt-in form in the footer of their website.

But unfortunately, they often look like this:

Just a plain email input with a text saying “Join our newsletter”. Bleh. These types of opt-in forms converts at 0.2% at BEST.

Luckily there’s an easy change you can make that will instantly double the conversion rate from your footer opt-in.

Instead of asking visitors to join your newsletter, give away a welcome discount instead. That is exactly what Dr. Squatch does.

Dr. Squatch

Dr Squatch uses their footer signup form to offer you a 30% welcome discount when signing up.

K-Rauta

Home Interior and construction equipment company K-Rauta give away a 5% discount at the bottom of their category pages:

A footer opt-in form will never convert like a popup or quiz, but if you want to grow your list fast, you need to make the most out of every point of conversion.

Promote Loyalty Program Memberships

Brands using this strategy: Estée Lauder, Åhléns, Sephora

If you have a loyalty or rewards program, you should spend all your efforts growing your membership base and not your email list.

There are a bunch of ways you can do this. Here are two:

Estée Lauder

Beauty brand Estée Lauder uses a 15% discount as an incentive to make people sign up for their rewards program.

Åhléns

Swedish retail giant Åhlens offers you a 10% discount when you become a member.

The main takeaway here is that you need to offer new members something in exchange for signing up. Because the main benefit of being a member of a rewards program is the rewards.

Use gamification to make signing up fun

Brands using gamification: Stronger, Webhallen, Lego
There are a bunch of different gamification tactics that you can use to grow your list.

• Spin the wheel popups
• Quizzes
• Digital easter egg hunts
• Advent calendars
• and any more.

Let’s start with Spin the wheel popups. It’s a very popular way to let your customers play a simple game with zero risk.

Stronger

Stronger is a nordic brand selling athletic apparel. They used a spin the wheel sign-up form to grow their email list as part of their valentines campaign.

The copy is on dutch, but let me give you a rough translation: “Valentine’s day – The wheel of love. Spin the wheel for a chance to win a discount code”.

Lego

When you visit the Lego website you are almost immediately prompted with a question if you’d like to shop or play games.

Lego is a huge brand, so they can afford engaging their visitors with online games instead of pushing them towards the checkout.

Webhallen uses account gamification

Webhallen sells home electronics and computers. They are one of the largest tech retailers in Sweden, and they are using gamification marketing to improve their customer account experience.

When you log in to your account, you are asked to customize your avatar and build a character.

You are awarded with points when you buy something, and the occasional discount rewards for being a loyal customer.

This is perfectly aligned with their audience, because a lot of their customers are gamers and techies.

Offer free shipping as an incentive

Brands building their list using free shipping incentives: Huckberry, Caraway

Most people don’t look around to see if you have free shipping before they get to the checkout. They find the information they need, as they need it.

Huckberry

This outdoor brand offers free shipping for anyone who signs up for their email list.

This is a perfect way of letting your customers know that they can shop with free shipping, as this is usually a deal breaker once they get to the checkout (if they do, they’ll most likely shop elsewhere).

Caraway

Caraway sells cooking tools and accessories. They offer visitors free shipping on orders over $90 if you sign up for their email list.

Caraway also ask you for your birthday, which is a great way to get permission to send out a birthday email once per year.

The no-offer popup

Brands using this strategy: Ralph Lauren, Nike

So… we wouldn’t recommend you use this tactic unless you’re a massive brand or don’t know where to start (you should though if you’ve made it this far).

It is exactly what it sounds like, and there are no tricks to it. Publish a popup that asks your visitors to join your newsletter. That’s it.

These are fairly common in the media industry and have an average conversion rate of about 0.24%.

If you have a massive amount of traffic, these will definitely bring in some subscribers. But it’s definitely not the most effective way to grow your list.

Below you’ll see how Nike and Ralph Lauren use this type of list-building strategy.

Nike

Known as one of the biggest brands on the planet, Nike grows their email list with a no-offer signup form. And to tell you the truth, it’s not like they need email addresses in the same way a small business does.

Even for a brand like Nike, it’s a way for them to constantly stay in touch with their audience, and have the inbox as one more place to be and stay top of mind.

Take note of what type of data they collect. Date of Birth, and shopping preferences are data points that can be used for segmentation in email campaigns, ad campaigns and more.

Ralph Lauren

Similar to the example above, Ralph Lauren probably doesn’t need more email subscribers. However, in the same way as any big brand collecting emails, it’s a way for them to stay top of mind and use the inbox as an advertising channel.

The reason even mega brands like Nike and Ralph Lauren uses a list building strategy AT ALL might be surprising to some. Or not…

Here’s the deal:
Around 25% of your subscribers will unsubscribe each year. In other words, you need to grow your email list by at least 25.1% to not have negative growth.

With email still being one of the biggest and most used digital channels in the world, it’s important even for the large brands to continuously build their list.

Building your list while being GDPR and CCPA Compliant

An important part of growing your list is staying compliant with privacy laws and regulations.

Disclaimer: we’re not going cover this topic in it’s entirety here, because it’s a beast of its own.

But here are the most important parts that will limit your risk and exposure the privacy regulations:

• Only collect customer data that you intend to use. For example, if you ask customers for their birthday but don’t send out a birthday email or need it for delivering your products, don’t collect it. Simple as that.
• Collect consent for marketing communication if you are marketing to EU-based customers. For example, you can’t automatically add new customers to your newsletter unless you have collected consent specifically for marketing communications like newsletters and promotions.
• Be transparent about the data you collect, and how you use it. Your customers are not stupid. They know you’re collecting data about them before they ever land on your website. And you need to be transparent about what data you collect, what you do with it, and how they can delete their data.
• Don’t do shady stuff. If you are partnering with another company and intend to share the email addresses you collect to them, mention it in the consent text and make sure to have a checkbox that is unticked. Don’t sell your email list, and don’t share personal data to third parties.
• Consider ALL data connected to a person as personal information. Transaction history, website visits, clicks, email opens, support tickets, and all other digital interactions that can be traced back to a person or household count as personal data both for GDPR and CCPA.
• Your customers have rights. To delete, access, and know what their data is used for at any given time. They also have the right to know if there has been a data breach.

This is not even close to everything you need to be compliant, but if you abide by these rules you should be pretty darn close.

Here are some useful links regarding privacy regulations:

• The official legal text for CCPA
• CCPA Compliance for Email Marketers
• The official legal text for GDPR
• GDPR Compliance for E-commerce brands in the EU

Summary

Whether you’re trying to build your email or SMS list, know this: you only need one main list building strategy, and a couple of strategically chosen support tactics like abandoned cart popups and back-in-stock notifications to supercharge the growth of your list.

Here’s our suggestion: For your main strategy, use a welcome discount popup. Then use abandoned cart popups, back in stock notifications, and pre-launch popups throughout the year before each shopping holiday and important event.

Good luck!

If you’re looking for inspiration for your Easter campaigns, you’ve come to the right place.

Easter is so much more than just candy-filled eggs and Easter bunnies, and you as a marketer have the chance to find your inner child and get a little creative.

It’s easy to think that Easter has nothing to do with your brand, but that’s far from the truth.

Marketing around Easter is about your customers – not you or your brand. In this article, we have 4 Easter campaigns that will help you capture more email addresses and increase your sales while engaging and entertaining your target audience.

Let’s jump right in.

Easter campaign idea 1: Spin the wheel

A spin-the-wheel campaign is a perfect way to offer your visitors a chance to win a discount code. You can generate unique coupon codes for an added layer of security and to stop coupon hacking.

The campaign is very simple and easy to understand, which is why it has an average of 6-8% conversion rate.

Here’s how it looks:

It’s a great campaign to use in short bursts and during 1-2 day seasonal events like during easter or in the week leading up to the holiday.

Easter campaign idea 2: The instant-discount popup

For children, Easter is all about colorful, candy-filled eggs. But as adult marketers, we want higher sales.

If you are hosting an easter sale, the most important part is guiding your visitors to the right category or correct place where they can find all the available offers.

Like this:

During one-day seasonal events like Easter, maximizing sales might be more prioritized than growing your list. After all, you will grow your list by acquiring new customers.

The benefit of showing the discount code right away is that you eliminate any doubt in your customer’s mind about whether there is a sale going on or not.

Easter campaign idea 3: Easter-themed lucky door

Bingolotto has its “Färgfemman”… and now you can give your visitors your very own Easter-femma!

The rules are simple and the game intuitive, which makes it perfect for a temporary Easter campaign.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a campaign with a teaser and up to 4 additional slides.
• In the first primary slide, add a signup form for visitors to enter before they start the game.
• Link the previous slide to a Lucky Door-slide, where you add however many doors (buttons) you wish to have.
• Make each door lead to a new slide, e.g. to failure or success. A 50/50 split will do!
• Make sure to reward the participant regardless of the where they land, though the value can be adjusted.

Having a signup form is of course optional, but you should really take this opportunity to build your email list.

Easter campaign idea 4: Bunny hunt

Everyone loves a good egg hunt. Spice things up this year by hosting your own bunny hunt.

Just place this little fellow on any page (preferably a product page or in the checkout — don’t make your visitors look too hard), and watch your sales grow:

At first, the only thing that is visible on the screen is the bunny’s ears. When you click, it pops up and gives you a discount code. Cute, fun, and engaging.

Easter campaign idea 5: Bunny-themed discount

It’s easter. Bunnies and eggs are the main seasonal graphics. You can’t go wrong using them for literally everything.

In this example, we’ve created a bunny-themed discount popup that lets you grow your email list, and increase your sales.

 

If you really want to make a lasting impact, make sure to add a discount that marks the end of your easter sale. Creating a sense of FOMO is almost always beneficial, especially when it comes to one-day sales and events.

Use this if you don’t want to go all-in, but still want to add some easter feelings to your marketing.

Summary

Easter is a special weekend in Sweden as it comes more naturally to e-retailers in a certain category than others. Home décor, cooking, and decorating brands have a more natural connection to Easter campaigns, but with these suggestions, we hope you can find some inspiration and give your customers an Easter campaign they’ll actually remember and want to take part in.

If you choose to do one of these campaigns, you should also think about how you can redesign them to have some connection to your brand. If you’re doing an egg hunt, perhaps the last egg could be a picture of a cracked egg with one of your products in it. Or if you’re running the rabbit pinata, some of your products could appear inside the broken pinata.

In this post, you’re going to learn how to use some of the most effective sales promotions and discount strategies that will increase your e-commerce sales and grow your email list like crazy.

From flash sales to abandoned cart campaigns, gamification, to referral discounts, and personalized coupons, we’re covering it all.

All of these strategies should be strategically considered when making a customer experience strategy, in your acquisition strategy, and retention strategy.

• Flash sales
• Abandoned cart discounts
• BOGO deals
• Seasonal sales
• Mystery discounts
• Tiered discounts
• Newsletter discounts
• Pre-launch discounts
• Loyalty discounts
• Referral discounts
• Sitewide sales
• and many, many more.

Let’s dive right in.

The history of coupon codes

Coupons as we know them today go back as far as 1887 when Asa Candler was working hard to get people to try a glass of his newly purchased beverage, today known as Coca-Cola.

Asa Candler had just bought the Coca-Cola recipe from the pharmacist John Pemberton. As a firm believer in advertising, Candler came up with an innovative marketing strategy: offer hand-written vouchers to the public.

Each voucher entitled the owner to a free glass of coke, which at the time retailed for 5¢.

The result? Well…

Between 1894 and 1913, it is estimated that around 8.5 million free glasses were distributed to the American people.

But keep in mind that it took Coca-Cola 19 years to give out these coupons.

However, it wasn’t until the 1930s, after WWI, that coupons became widely used by retailers and other companies.

Supermarket chains were the first to adopt the discount coupon, and the discounts were so steep they made a loss at every purchase that was made.

But they were confident that the loss would be regained through the number of new customers acquired.

If we fast forward 110 years to today, coupons, discounts, and seasonal sales are now essential strategies for most retail brands.

And we’ve learned a ton about what works and what doesn’t in this century of discounting.

There is only one thing that sets a good sale apart from a mediocre one: Psychology.

The psychology of discounts

Most discount strategies tap into one or multiple cognitive biases that affect our decision-making:

• Anchoring bias. This bias refers to the human tendency of relying too much on the first piece of information given to us in a particular situation or for a particular topic. In the context of retail and e-commerce, it often refers to the way a sale is promoted. For example, if you are having a sitewide sale with most products discounted by 30%, and a select few products are discounted by 50%, you can choose to promote your sale by saying “Sitewide sale – Up to 50% Off!”. The value “50%” will then become the anchor for your promotion and will influence your customer’s decision-making.
• Scarcity bias. This bias refers to the tendency to place a higher value on things that are rare or in limited supply. For example, discounts and promotions like flash sales, and phrases like “limited time only” or “while supplies last” can create a sense of urgency that leads your customers to buy a product without giving it a second thought.
• Endowment effect. This bias occurs when people overvalue things they already own, simply because they own them. Personalized discounts can trigger this effect, because the discount code is given to you based on your purchase history or membership status.
• Framing effect. Framing refers to the way information is presented and is a very powerful way to influence decisions and behavior. Discounts can be framed as a percentage off (15% off), as an absolute amount ($15 off), or as a money-saving discount (Save $15 / Save 15%). Framing can also be used to highlight certain aspects of an item to make it more appealing to certain audiences, for example by using labels such as “Vegan”, “All-natural”, “Organic”, or “Eco friendly”.

Pros and cons of discounting

I know there are some people who won’t agree with me, but as long as your margins allow, the pros greatly overweigh the cons of discounting.

Discounts help you acquire new customers, give a reason for loyal customers to return, and they can help you reactivate customers who haven’t purchased in a while.

However, if you’re using static coupon codes you might be vulnerable to coupon hacking. If you are worried about customers guessing your coupon codes or if you have a history of customers who misuse coupons, consider generating unique coupon codes for an added layer of security.

Here’s the deal (see what I did there?):

There is really only one con to discounting, but it’s a pretty big one…

If you overuse discounts and sales, your customers will eventually get used to buying at a discount and learn that they don’t have to buy anything at full price.

Remember, your customers can keep their money in their pockets for longer than you can go without selling any items.

The only way to avoid this is to use discounts strategically and thoughtfully.

Now, let’s go straight to business and start talking about the strategies.

Flash sales

If you need to run a promotion, flash sales are a GREAT way to increase your sales and get rid of old stock.

⚡ Here’s how they work:
A flash sale is a sudden and unannounced sale with deeply discounted products, only available between 12-24 hours.

Huge events like the Superbowl and shopping holidays like Black Friday are perfect opportunities for a flash sale.

For example, Nastygal took advantage of the Superbowl and sent out this email:

Flash sales work because it taps into multiple psychological biases and principles:

• Scarcity
• Urgency
• Exclusivity
• Hindsight bias

In short: A flash sale will make your brain light up like a Christmas tree.

However, you don’t want to run flash sales every week. Keep it limited to major events or for slow periods where you need an injection of sales.

Here’s a final flash sales tip: Make sure your flash sale is worth the effort. If you continuously run a 10% discount deal for new customers, why would anyone rush to your site to buy for 15% off? If you run a flash sale, make sure you make it worth it for your customers.

Abandoned cart discounts

More than 70% of all carts are abandoned, and you can never get rid of abandoned carts completely. But you can easily recover 10-15% of abandoned carts by using behavioral segmentation in combination with well-timed exit intent popups, and cart recovery emails.

⚡ How Abandoned cart discounts work:
Give a discount to any website visitors who have visited the shopping cart, with products added to the cart, but who are about to leave the website without making a purchase.

The most common way of recovering abandoned carts is with abandoned cart emails. But there is one tactic that is way more effective and yields results before the customer has left your e-commerce store.

Let’s take a look at both types of cart recovery strategies:

Website cart recovery example

If you add an exit intent campaign to your checkout, you can recover 10-15% of all abandoned carts while your customers are still on your website. Just offer an extra discount or free shipping to persuade people to complete their purchase. It’s a very effective strategy, and a great compliment to abandoned cart emails.

Swedish animal store Firstvet uses an exit intent in the checkout with a 10% discount to incentivize visitors who are about to abandon their purchase. The best part is that they are taking the opportunity to collect first-party data at the same time, which they can use to get to know their audience better, segmenting email campaigns, and running ads.

Cart recovery email

Cart recovery emails are very common these days, although our own research suggests that only 19% of Swedish retailers use abandoned cart emails.

Kappahl is a huge Swedish fashion retailer who sells clothing for men, women, and kids. In their abandoned cart email they do most things right. They include the products with were left in the cart, they keep the email short and sweet, the only thing missing is a time-limited offer.

Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) Deals

If there is one promotion strategy in retail that wields the power of a thousand salespeople, it’s ”Buy One Get One Free”.

⚡ Here’s how BOGO deals work:
Buy one get one-deals (BOGO) offers a full discount on a second item when a customer purchases the first item at full price.

They are super effective. In fact:

BOGO deals attract more customers compared to percentage discounts.

Here’s the best part:

This type of sales promotion taps into the psychological effect of framing.

You could run a promotion that says: 50% off

Or you can rephrase it and say “Buy one get one FREE”.

⚡ Here’s an example of a BOGO deal: 

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely conducted an experiment where participants were given a choice between a free Hershey’s Kiss for 1 cent or a Lindt truffle for 26 cents and then observed the buying power.

Here’s a quote from Ariely’s blog:

“In one trial of one study we offered students a Lindt Truffle for 26 cents and a Hershey’s Kiss for 1 cent and observed the buying behavior: 40 percent went with the truffle and 40 percent with the Kiss. When we dropped the price of both chocolates by just 1 cent, we observed that suddenly 90 percent of participants opted for the free Kiss, even though the relative price between the two was the same. We concluded that FREE! is indeed a very powerful force.”

It’s all about how you describe your offer.

50% off is the same as “Buy One Get One Free”. And a 33% discount is the same as “Buy 3 pay for 2” or if following Ariely’s study, “Buy 3 Get One Free” (this rhymes!).

So the next time you think about running a 50% discount — maybe opt for “buy one get one free”?

Mystery discounts

Curiosity can dramatically increase your customer’s motivation to purchase.

⚡ Mystery discounts work like this:
Offer your customers a discount code, but don’t reveal the amount of the discount until they apply it at checkout.

It might sound weird but it is scientifically proven to work.

Mystery discounts tap into the psychological bias of curiosity, surprise, and excitement.

Curiosity is very powerful to use in retail sales. Here’s why:

If something sparks your interest you don’t actively think “Oh wow, I am now feeling curious about this”. Instead, you just follow your interest without giving it a second thought. You keep looking for more information until you are satisfied.

It works almost the same when used as a promotion strategy.

By not revealing the amount of the discount, you will effectively keep your customers on a “curiosity leash”. All they know is that they are entitled to a discount, but not how much.

You can do it using spin the wheel popups:

Or you can offer a free mystery box with a purchase over a certain amount:

There is also a second psychological bias at play…

Loss aversion.

People are more motivated to avoid losses than to gain something of equal value. This bias is known to affect people’s decision-making, and once your customers see their discount they don’t want to lose it (if it amounts to a good deal).

Think about it:

Imagine walking into a store and one of the employees says “Hey, find some stuff you want to buy and I’ll give you a great discount once you get to the register.”

You don’t know how much of a discount you will get = Curiosity

Once you get the discount, you don’t want to just say no after you spent time choosing your items = Loss aversion.

Even companies like Dell use mystery discounts in their promotion strategy.

So if you think mystery discounts are not for you, think again.

Tiered discounts

If your go-to discount strategy is made up of flat offers like “10% off” or “15% off”, you’re going to love this strategy.

Tiered discounts are one of the best promotion strategies to drive up your average order value.

Here’s an example:

• Shop for $49 – Get 10% off
• Shop for $99 – Get 20% off
• Shop for $149 – Get 30% off

Shein distributes a tiered discount for new visitors to their website through this popup. It’s shown immediately, and lets visitors know what type of discount they can expect.

This strategy works especially well during intense shopping holidays like Black Friday (or Black Week), Christmas, or other seasonal events like President’s Day or the Superbowl.

⚡ Here are a few tips on how to run a tiered discount:

• Use small increments between each discount level to encourage higher spending.
• Discounts should be based on the total amount of the purchase.
• Match tiers with your average order value. Your minimum tier should be slightly above your AOV.
• Make even the lowest tier worth shopping for. Nobody feels excited about $5 off if they have to spend 10x that amount first.
• If your AOV is < $100 it’s worth testing percentage discounts vs dollar discounts.
• Keep your offer simple. If there is any form of complex logic involved your shoppers will leave and go somewhere else.

Tiered discounts are effective because they tap into the psychological bias of anchoring.

People tend to make decisions based on the first piece of information they receive.

If you have three tiers where 10% off is the minimum tier and 30% off is the highest tier…

You should promote your sale by mentioning the discount or saving from the highest tier in your marketing material.

Like this:

“Up to 30% off on selected items!”

Sacks Fifth Avenue which sells luxury clothing does exactly this in their tiered discounts:

As you can see, the lowest tier in their promotion gives you $100 off. The highest tier gives $300 off. A perfect example of how to draw shoppers in using anchoring.

Newsletter sign-up discounts

Here’s how it works:

Give your website visitors a 10-25% discount on their next purchase as a reward for signing up for your newsletter. Like this:

If you want to grow your email list FAST, use email subscription discounts.

It’s super simple and works like crazy.

The best part is that you can do it almost however you want. All you need is a great offer and make sure that your offer is understandable at a glance.

⚡ Here are a few tips on how to create the best email subscriber discount campaign:

• Don’t give away discounts to existing customers and subscribers. If you use Triggerbee, you can turn on email validation for all your campaigns with the click of a button.
• Target new or returning website visitors who have not yet signed up for your email list.
• Preferably use discounts over 19%. According to this study, discounts below 19% make your customers spend less while discounts above 19% increase overall spending.
• Write out the discount in the headline. Your website visitors are never fully focused on your website so you want to make sure that they can quickly understand what they will get by signing up for your newsletter.
• Don’t ask for both an email address and a phone number at the same time unless you want low conversion rates. Pick one or the other.

And that is all there is to it.

If you want high conversion rates for your email discount campaign, the discount rate and targeting are the two most important things.

Pre-launch discounts

When you are releasing a new product in your e-commerce store, you need to use pre-launch discounts.

Pre-launch discounts help you hype up the launch and generate a list of potential customers waving their credit cards in front of their phones.

⚡ Here’s a real-life example of a pre-launch discount:

Bubbleroom is one of the largest fashion stores for young women in the Nordics.

They used a pre-launch campaign to build up hype for a fashion collaboration with influencer Lovisa “Lojsan” Wallin. About 2 weeks before the big launch, they used Triggerbee to build and publish a pre-launch popup to capture anonymous website visitors. They also built and published an embedded form on a landing page targeted to their members.

The result?

The pre-launch popup had a stunning 40% conversion rate. And the collection sold out in less than an hour when it launched.

Pretty nice.

Here are a few tips to make the most out of your next pre-launch discount campaign:

• Don’t start too early. Let your campaign run between 1-3 weeks for best results. If the promotion starts too early, your customers will forget about it and you will lose momentum.
• Always use a countdown timer. Timers add a sense of urgency and give your customers a feeling that the date it’s counting down to is important.
• Give away discounts or early access. Discounts will always be the king of retail promotion strategies, but early access to hyped promotions is the queen.

Loyalty discounts

Loyalty programs are the secret sauce used by many of the world’s biggest retailers.

There are countless studies on the effectiveness of loyalty programs.

And according to this study, the primary drivers of what makes loyalty programs work are the economic benefits such as rewards and discounts.

⚡ There are a lot of different types of loyalty program discounts:

• Discount reminders
• Spend-based discounts
• Birthday discounts
• Personal discounts
• Permanent discounts based on tiers

All of these discount types are very effective at driving repeat purchases and boosting your average order value.

But let’s go through the three most common and effective discount strategies.

1. Discount reminders

A discount reminder is exactly what it sounds like. Remind your customers to use a discount given to them.

Here’s how it looks:

KICKS is the biggest beauty retailer in the Nordics, and they show a popup to club members who have received a discount but have not yet used it.

If you have a loyalty program and haven’t tried reminding your customers of their unused discount codes, the results might surprise you.

This discount strategy usually has a CTR between 30 – 60% across all retail categories and a very high conversion rate.

Sounds like it’s worth a try.

2. Birthday discounts

Birthday discounts are effective because 1) they are underutilized by most brands, and 2) they are personal and highly relevant.

Here’s how it looks:

As you can imagine the results are pretty mind-blowing.

Clickthrough rates usually end up between the 45 – 60% range across all retail categories.

3. Spend-based discounts

Your customers expect to be rewarded when they buy from you. Either in the form of points that can be redeemed in the future, or with an immediate discount as a special treatment.

Here’s one example of how you can do it:

The trick here is to know when to give away a percentage discount or dollar amount.

If your average order value is lower than <$100, assume that a specific dollar amount will give you a higher conversion rate compared to a percentage discount.

New customer discounts

If you want to acquire customers cheaply, you should consider shifting some of your marketing budget from ads to discounts. The results might surprise you.

⚡ Here’s how new customer discounts work:
Give new customers a discount before they make their first purchase.

Here’s the truth:

Customer acquisition is a budget game. If you are competing against brands with deeper pockets than you, they have the upper hand.

But you can get the upper hand by knowing how to use your marketing budget wisely.

The brand with the most money will win the advertising game 9 times out of 10.

Most e-commerce brands use a 10-15% discount to acquire new customers. But science says that any discount below 19% actually reduces overall spending.

Assuming that your margins are not extremely low, you should consider offering new customers a minimum of 20% off for their first purchase.

It’s aggressive. But it will help you accelerate your growth and sales pretty quickly.

You don’t have to increase your ad spending for this to work. Because if you target a popup to all website visitors who have never made a purchase, you will grow your email list and sales at the same time.

Here’s the most important part:

When giving out a high discount to new customers, make sure you use popup software that can validate emails and only show the discount to new subscribers and customers.

Referral discounts

According to this Nielsen study, 86% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than any other source.

That is why referral discounts are one of the most effective ways to drive revenue and grow your email list.

⚡ There are two types of referral discounts:

One-sided referral discounts

One-sided referral discounts only reward a discount code to the person who is referring a friend. These can work, but they are not as effective as double-sided referral discounts.

Double-sided referral discounts

Double-sided referral discounts reward a discount code to both the person referring someone else and the person being referred. Double-sided rewards are hands down the most effective referral strategy and the top choice by companies like Allbirds, HUEL, ASOS, William Painter, Tesla, and many more.

Here are three awesome examples of referral discounts:

How ASOS uses referral discounts

ASOS referral program looks great, and the rules are simple. Give a friend a 20% discount on their next purchase. When they’ve shopped, you get a 20% referral discount as a reward.

How Allbirds uses referral discounts

Allbirds chose to give away cash instead of a percentage discount. They are also a bit more aggressive with their referral discount rewards. You get $15 off for every person you refer who makes a purchase. The costs can quickly add up, and if you want to run a similar program, you need to make sure your referral revenue covers the costs.

How William Painter uses referral discounts

William Painter gives a $50 cash reward to you, and a $50 referral discount for a referred friend who makes a purchase. Your cash reward is given to you after your friend has purchased a pair of glasses. It’s very aggressive, but I can imagine it works very well for them.

Seasonal sales and promotions

Black Friday, Valentine’s, and Christmas are all seasonal holidays that drive a lot of website traffic and purchases.

If you’re a retail or e-commerce marketer, you have probably spent a lot of time preparing for seasonal events like Black Friday and Christmas.

⚡Here’s how a seasonal sale work:
Offer a discount or sitewide sale before and during a seasonal event like President’s day, Valentine’s, Christmas, Halloween, or any of the other seasonal events throughout the year.

Here are a few tips that apply to all seasonal and holiday promotions:

• Always display the last order date for guaranteed delivery. This will reduce disappointments and frustrated customers. Like this:
  
• Promote gift cards as an alternative to products. A gift card might not be a perfect gift, but it’s great for last-minute shoppers.
  
• Offer free shipping. Free shipping is expected by your audience and will increase your conversion rate by a big percentage.
  

The most effective promotion for seasonal promotions are:

Pre-launch promotions

One of the best marketing ideas for retail holidays is pre-launch promotions. The main benefit is that you collect emails from people who are actively looking to buy stuff from you.

Pre-launch promotions are especially effective in the weeks leading up to huge events like Valentine’s, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Black Friday, and Christmas.

⚡ Here’s how pre-launch promotions work: 
Pre-launch campaigns are marketing campaigns that companies run in the period leading up to the launch of a new product, a big sale, or a huge event. The goal of a pre-launch campaign is to create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to be among the first to buy your new product or get access to a sale before it’s publicly available. Pre-launch campaigns can take many forms, but most create a signup form to capture emails (or SMS numbers) of people who are interested in buying from you.

In fact, pre-launch campaigns are so effective that they can increase your signup conversion rate by up to 60%.

One of our customers ran an A/B test for a pre-launch campaign in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. In the original version, the message emphasized that Black Week was coming up. In the challenging version, they emphasized that you could “Shop before everyone else”.

The most impressive part? The copy is exactly the same but the visual hierarchy is different. By changing the visual hierarchy, the offer is perceived completely differently.

The small things matter.

Pre-launch extra tip:
Make sure you always use two variations of the same campaign. One variation targeted to anonymous visitors with an email signup form and the other variation targeted to customers with only a button. This ensures your campaign is relevant to your two largest audience segments.

Gift guides

Everyone struggles with finding the perfect gift. Creating gift guides is the perfect way to help your customers with suggestions they might not have thought of before.

And the best part is that you can create one guide, then customize it for every holiday and special occasion.

Not only will it help you SEO-wise, but conversion-wise as well.

Here are two gift guide examples from Nordstrom and Sephora.

Nordstroms valentines gift guide

Nordstroms promotes its gift guide on its homepage, and it shows links to different gift categories to help its visitors discover new products for everyone.

Sephora gift finder

Sephora uses a quiz to help you find the perfect gift. A quiz can be a great way to both engage your audience and help them out at the same time.

Calendar promotions

Any event that stretches over more than 3 days is a potential “calendar” promotion candidate.

⚡ The calendar concept is super simple and easy to implement. Here’s how it works:
A calendar refers to a campaign that changes each day during a multi-day holiday or event, similar to an advent calendar that you use to count down to Christmas.

Here are two ways to use calendar promotions:

Pre-launch your holiday calendar with an inline or popup form.

Run a daily deal for the duration of the seasonal event.

Simple but effective. The results from a calendar promotion will blow your mind.

The average conversion rate for the calendar promotion signup form is between 50-80%.

And the average click-through rate for daily promotions in a calendar format is ~70-90%.

Incredible.

Category discounts

Most online stores don’t use sitewide discounts more than a few times each year.

However, most online stores almost always have something on sale. And 9 times out of 10 it’s a category sale.

⚡ There are mainly two ways to run a category sale:

Brand sales

When items from certain brands are on sale — i.e. “20% off Levi’s jeans”

Product category sale

When you discount all items in a specific category — i.e. “20% off all spring dresses”.

Sitewide sales

A sitewide sale is a promotion strategy where every single product in your e-commerce store is discounted by a certain amount.

It’s a very aggressive sales promotion strategy, and will not work for brands with low margins.

Well-executed sitewide sales can increase your online sales very fast.

⚡ Here are a few things you need to consider before running a sitewide sale:

• Which audience are you targeting? You can offer a sitewide sale for only members or email subscribers, or all visitors regardless of customer status or purchase history.
• Time limit. Set a fixed time limit for your sitewide sale. Even if your overall sales increase, you need to check that your most important e-commerce metrics like overall spending, average order value, and revenue per session don’t take a dive.
• Discount level. Do your margins support a 30% or 40% sitewide sale? For a sitewide sale to be worth checking out it needs to be a great deal.

Because sitewide sales are so aggressive, most brands try to tie it to a holiday or event in order to have a reason for running the sale. But you don’t always need to rely on external events to motivate running a sitewide sale…

Offering a sitewide sale to subscribers or customers can be reason enough.

Here are three examples of sitewide sales from Fashion Nova, Casper, and MVMT:

How Fashion Nova uses sitewide sales

Fashion nova targets everyone in their audience for their sitewide sale. Note that they use a top banner, just below their navigation, with a countdown timer to mark the end of the sale and create a sense of urgency. They’re smart.

How Casper uses sitewide sales

Casper uses audience targeting to run a subscriber exclusive sitewide sale. They ran this just before Valentine’s, meaning during a quiet period. Instead of running an early Valentine’s sale, they decided to go for the targeted sale instead.

How MVMT uses sitewide sales

MVMT took advantage of Valentine’s Day to run a sitewide sale. This gives them a reason that almost always increases conversion rates. Having a reason for doing what you do can help you build more trust with your audience.

Clearance promotions and sales

All e-commerce brands have unsold inventory and it can quickly become a huge issue.

You need to have a strategy for getting rid of your unsold products.

For example…

Fashion giant H&M disclosed that they had accumulated over $4 billion in unsold inventory in a quarterly report from 2018.

Not great.

⚡ Here’s how clearance sales work: 
A clearance sale is when a retailer offers discounts on items that they want to clear out of their inventory to make room for new products.

Visit the website of any large fashion retailer and you’ll most likely see an outlet section. The “outlet” is just a fancier word for clearance sale. But rebranding clearance to “Outlet” is a smart way to have an ongoing clearance sale without it affecting your brand.

Unsold inventory is a huge liability if you don’t know how to get rid of it. But you can turn it into an asset by selling your unsold stock under an “Outlet” section or even build a new low-price brand.

Here are a few examples of clearance sales strategies:

Kohl’s clearance sale

Kohl’s promotes their clearance sale directly on their homepage. This leads to a lot of visibility, and they are helpful in guiding their visitors to different price points.

ASOS clearance sale

ASOS takes the opportunity to promote their outlet section that is filled with products and gifts for Valentine’s, items similar to what some celebrities wore on the Grammy’s, and much more.

Zalando built a sub-brand for their clearance sales

Zalando is huge. With thousands and thousands of products, they could easily run daily deals with new offers every day. But instead, they chose to build a sub-brand called Lounge by Zalando to sell unsold inventory from their main site. Pretty smart!

Boozt uses a sub-brand for their outlet sales

Swedish fashion giant Boozt built a separate sub-brand called Booztlet for selling unsold inventory. It allows them to use different messaging that can push deeply discounted items without affecting their main brand.

Personalized discounts

A personalized discount is a discount code given to you based on your previous spending habits, customer status, or purchases.

They are created and distributed to specific customer segments using customer data such as purchases, total spending, or customer status as criteria for the discount level.

⚡Here’s a very basic example of how personalized discounts work:

• Regular customer (1-5 purchases / year) = 10% discount
• Loyal customer (5-10 purchases / year) = 15% discount
• Irregular customer (0-3 purchases / year) = 25% discount
• Lost customer (5 purchases last 24 months / 0 purchases last 12 months) = 20% discount

The above examples of different customer segments are based on number of purchases. These segments are usually created in a customer data platform like Segment, an e-commerce marketing platform like Klaviyo, or in loyalty management software like Voyado. We chose to reward irregular and lost customers more than loyal customers because they need to be reactivated, and they often need a bigger push compared to those who return without needing an incentive.

Personalized discounts are usually distributed through email, SMS messages, and on the website.

Most brands only use email or SMS to deliver their discounts. But do not forget to use your website to distribute your discount codes. Your website is the place where your customers buy, and giving out a discount code closer to the point of conversion is always a good idea.

If you have a ~30% open rate on your email campaigns… that means 70% of the people on your list did not see your discount. One of the best ways to get more people to see your discount is to publish a discount popup on your website targeted to the same audience.

You can use Triggerbee to show a personalized discount code to specific audiences and lists in Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and more.

Here are 5 different types of personalized discounts:

1. VIP discounts

VIP Discounts are discount codes distributed to your most loyal customers, and offer them a great reason to return. Contrary to most advice, VIP discounts don’t need to be large if the customer is already loyal to your brand and returns without an incentive. If you use VIP discounts on your website, you can expect a ~40-70% discount click-to-copy rate and a very high usage rate.

2. Winback or Re-activation discounts

Reactivation discounts or win-back promotions are great for reviving and reactivating customers who don’t regularly buy with you. Treat these customers with extra care, especially if they have not been opening your emails. One of the best ways to reach churned customers is to target them with a reactivation popup on your website so that once they return they get a special offer.

3. Next purchase discounts

Next purchase-discounts are not really what you think about when you hear personalized discounts, but they are personal because you can give out a different discount code based on the purchase value. They are also a very effective tool to increase your customer retention. You can distribute next purchase-discounts in your confirmation emails, on the confirmation page, and straight on your website using personalized campaigns targeted to recent buyers. Just make sure you use a popup tool that can target customers that recently bought or specific segments from your e-commerce marketing platform.

4. Birthday discounts

What’s more personal than celebrating a customer’s birthday? It is one of the few strategies with almost guaranteed results. Send out a birthday email with a 15-25% discount and show a popup with a discount code they can click to copy on your website for maximum engagement. These popups usually have a click-to-copy rate of about 90% and very high conversion rates.

5. Unused discount reminders

Discount codes are given out for a reason. Even if you make losses on some discount campaigns, they keep customers loyal and coming back. Discount reminders can be considered a secret weapon. Most brands send out reminders via email, but the real power of a discount reminder is when it’s used on the website. Showing a popup with the message “You still haven’t used your 10% discount” on your website, is extremely powerful because the customer doesn’t want to lose something they already “own”. And if they are on your website, they are closer to the conversion compared to if they are receiving a discount reminder in their inbox.

Sending and showing personalized discounts based on customer data helps you connect with your customers in a way that most other promotions cannot.

Quantity discounts

Quantity discounts are great for increasing your average order value, and you can get very creative with how you structure these discounts.

They are similar to tiered discounts in that you get a better price the more you spend. The big difference is that quantity discounts usually have a fixed price for a fixed amount of items, i.e. “buy three pay $10 each, buy 5 pay $9 each”.

Here are the two most common variations of quantity discounts:

Bundled quantity discounts.

In short, the more you buy the less it costs. Use bundles to incentivize customers to buy more of the same product. This is perfect if you sell products that needs refilling or where many of the same product can bring more value, like beauty products, underwear, or sports products. Bundle discounts usually have fixed prices per item and are sold in fixed quantities:

Subscription discounts

Subscription discounts are a variation of a quantity discount because you purchase more than one product with regular payments every 1, 3, or 6 months. Subscriptions are a great way to keep customers locked in and guarantee revenue for a fixed period of time. If you’re a fan of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, take note that subscriptions are very trendy right now. Here’s how Native and Flutterhabit uses subscriptions:

 

Gift with purchase-deals

In the early 2000s, I remember getting a phone call from a salesperson who sold magazine subscriptions. I didn’t want the subscription, but when he offered me a free pair of headphones if I subscribed for 12 months I accepted the deal.

I never read the magazine, but I really enjoyed the headphones.

Free gift-with-purchase deals are a great way to give doubting customers a reason to make a purchase in your e-commerce store.

⚡ Here’s how they work:
Give a free gift in the form of a sample product or accessory when a customer purchases a specific product or meets a certain spending threshold.

Sephora and Nordstroms both use free gifts as a promotion strategy, and they partner up with luxury brands to give any doubting customer a good reason to buy now.

Sephora partners up with brands like Fenty and Olaplex to give away accessories and beauty products in trial sizes.

Nordstroms gives away free samples of perfume and scented candles from brands like Neom, Esteé Lauder, and many more when you buy a product from the same brands. They also label the products that come with a gift for increased visibility.

And beauty brand Verso offers a free gift with purchase as a valentine’s deal through a popup on their website.

Weekly discounts

Weekly deals give your customers a sense of urgency and can help you improve your customer retention as well.

If your customers see that you make a habit of offering weekly specials, like their favorite grocery stores, they are more likely to return to your store to see if anything they are interested in is on sale for the week.

Hosting regular weekly deals also means you need to distribute them regularly. For example, you can send out a preparation email that shows the deals for the coming week on Sundays.

You should also announce your weekly deals on your website with a popup, callout, or banner.

If you’re using Triggerbee, you can schedule your weekly promotions months in advance.

⚡ Here are two examples of brands using weekly deals:

Webhallen is a Swedish electronics store selling everything from vacuum cleaners to gaming computers. They use weekly deals to get customers to come back regularly and find deals from their favorite brands.

Philip Stein sells premium watches, and they discount a limited number of products by up to 50%.

Short-term deals and discounts

Short-term promotions like daily deals or weekend deals are a great way to increase customer retention and give your customers a reason to check in regularly. It’s also a great strategy for holiday sales if the holiday event spans multiple days.

For example, Black week is the perfect time to run daily deals. And for Christmas, you can use a calendar promotion strategy to inform about new products and daily deals.

⚡ Here are some examples of daily and weekend deals:

Daily deals

Daily deals work best if you have enough products to offer something new every day.

Daily deals are also a great strategy to use for the major holidays and shopping events like Black Week or Christmas where you can use calendars to distribute your daily deals.

Bubbleroom uses a daily deal strategy during Black week.

Nordic Nest uses the occasional daily deal for certain product categories.

Amazon is “the everything store”, and they have more than enough products to cycle through for new daily deals every day. They have a dedicated landing page for their daily deals, and it looks like this:
{Bild på amazon daily deals}.

Weekend deals

Weekend deals are a great substitute for daily deals. You don’t need a large number of products and you can discount specific categories that normally don’t sell that well.

Here is an example of how you can promote weekend deals on your website:

Nordic Nest is an interior design store in Sweden. Their products are normally quite expensive and their weekend deals are great opportunities for their customers to find bargains.

Minimum purchase discounts

Free shipping and free gifts with purchase deals usually require a minimum purchase amount.

Minimum purchase discounts can be great for increasing your overall store spend and average order value. Not only does it nudge customers to spend more, but it gives you a good reason to offer upsells (compared to upselling just for the sake of it).

Here’s how Under Armour and Banana Republic use free shipping as an incentive to get customers to buy more:

Special group discounts

Special group discounts can help you to build trust and loyalty while showing appreciation for certain members of your audience.

Depending on your brand and which products you sell, there are a lot of special groups to whom you can give discounts:

• Seniors
• Kids
• Veterans
• Healthcare workers
• First-responders
• Teachers

Just make sure your brand and products are aligned with the cause you want to support.

Most companies have some special group discounts. Especially large brands that want to show their support and enable everyone to shop with them.

Adidas gives out a 30% discount online and an additional 20% discount in outlet stores to all medical professionals, first responders, nurses, military members, and teachers:

Synoptik is a Swedish eyewear company with its own spin on the special group discount. Instead of giving out a discount for special groups, they give your age as a discount. This campaign has resulted in huge awareness for the brand and essentially covers its full audience while rewarding seniors the most.

 

Summary

There are so many ways to give your customers a discount. You can give them in the form of free products, percentage discounts, or absolute amounts. Some of the most effective strategies, that our customers have used to sell billions worth of goods, are discount reminders targeted to members in a loyalty program, abandoned cart popups with 10-20% discounts, and pre-launch discounts.

Which strategy you choose to use is up to you, but don’t forget to test both your discount format (percentage, absolute, 3 for 2, etc) and your messaging. Just because Fashion Nova can run frequent sitewide discounts doesn’t mean you can do the same.

Hope you got some value from this post, and that you learned something new. Good luck!