How To Use Discounts And Gift Cards For Customer Conversion

When running a small business and dealing with a multitude of tasks, the topic of customer conversion can sometimes feel overwhelming. However, this doesn't have to be the case, there are many techniques that can be leveraged in order to improve your company's performance in this area. This blog aims to provide insight into the ways you can utilise promotional discounts, coupons, and gift cards to improve sales and customer conversion.

Why Use Discounts And Coupons

Discounts and coupons are powerful tools that can be used in a variety of ways to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction and improve brand visibility. Although sales and coupons can reduce the return on an individual sale, they more than make up for this by increasing the total number of sales on your products and services.

When utilising sales, discounts and coupons remember:

They Are a Powerful Marketing Tool.
Sales and discounts are a great way to expand your marketing reach, and make for engaging social media posts.
They Improve Customer satisfaction.
Have you ever purchased a product on sale, leaving you feeling satisfied that you got a great deal? These feelings can improve a person's view of a brand, and make them more likely to become a repeat customer.

How To Use Discounts Effectively

To make the most of your discounts, use them in a way that directly benefits your business. If you have ordered too much stock of a product, you could run a promotion in order to lower your excess stock, such as a buy one, get one half off, or even a buy one get one free offer. Remember, your discounts and offers should be limited time, as this increases both urgency and the likelihood of your promo post getting shared.

Selling Gift Cards

Offering gift cards on your store is a great method to provide alternate ways for your clients to purchase your products and services. Gift cards can stimulate the growth of your business, and reduce costs by:

Growing Sales: Not only are gift cards the single most requested gift during the holiday season, but 59% of gift card recipients will spend more than the amount on their gift card, according to Blackhawk Network research.
Reducing Returns: 63% of shoppers display interest in receiving a gift card in exchange for a returned retail item. By offering these gift cards, you ensure that spent money stays in your business, even if a specific item gets returned
Reducing Lost Sales: When you run out of inventory on an item, you can still close the sale by offering a gift card to redeem when the item is back in stock.

Our SMARTeSTORE eCommerce platform has built in digital gift card generation tools, to make selling gift cards on your store easy. To learn more about SMARTeSTORE, please visit our free Kickstart Component: Open For Business

Mailing List Offers

When it comes to providing sales and offers to customers, there are a number of ways you can utilise this option to both grow your mailing list and increase sales. A great example of this is offering sales available only to your mailing list subscribers, with promotional posts alerting your followers of how to access these offers. The value of mailing lists cannot be overstated, as they can allow your business to connect and engage with leads, prospects and customers. Mailing lists allow you to build relevancy and market visibility for your brand.

If you would like to learn more about a variety of digital solutions, or need guidance in creating and setting up your own business, you may be interested in our Business Digital Solutions Kickstart, our online program where you will learn everything you need to create, manage and promote your business, including how to:
• Mind Map your business.
• Prepare your branding and content management strategy.
• Build your integrated solutions to support automated sales, customer service and support.
• Get your eCommerce or courseware systems up and running.
• Learn the best practices and strategies for utilising social media for your business.