Ecommerce: Five Steps of Successful Promotions

[mandy]

To execute a winning promotions strategy, retailers should follow these five essential steps:...

2. Get creative with promotions. The goal of promotions is to cut through the noise created by the market, and ultimately get a consumer to make purchase. For this reason, promotions must be creative and offer real value. Think beyond discounts. New promotional concepts -- such as shipping destination, shipping methods, "x" first customers, every "nth" customer, every "x" order, items per promotion, apply offer to "nth" item, returns-based, payment method, free product choice, rebates, multiple bonus products and many others -- are starting to be used by some of the most innovative retailers on the Web.

Some retailers are even starting to use stock-level based promotions to move excess inventory. Although there is a lot of flexibility with online promotions, one warning to the wise: Be sure to have rules in place for managing promotions to avoid pitfalls such as giving away double offers or unintentionally not providing a consumer with the best available promotion...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/86nFcrHk...ions.xhtml