5 ways you can use discounts to increase sales

Discounts are a powerful way to capture your audience's attention and convert customers.

Here are 5 ways you can use discounts to drive sales:

Pre-launch offer. Before you add a new product to your online store, keep the product page hidden and email your existing customers with an exclusive invitation to buy it before anyone else.
Minimum purchase discount. Offer free shipping with a minimum spend. It works.
Abandoned cart offer. Shopify has built-in cart abandonment emails which are sent automatically. You can customize the emails and include a discount to make it even more enticing to come back. Be careful with this one. Customers are getting savvy about this offer and can leave your site knowing a discount is coming their way.
The fast follow. Directly after purchase, offer a discount on the user’s next purchase from your shop.
Loyal customer discount. This is a nice way to say thanks, especially to your most loyal customers. Look at your store’s analytics to see who your top customers are, and reward them with an exclusive discount.

[,MUSIC PLAYING] Discounts are a powerful way to capture your audience's attention with a time sensitive or special offer like offering a percent off, money off, free shipping, or a free gift with purchase. Any of these can be added to Shopify with either automatic discounts or discount codes. Did you know discount codes raise the chances your potential customer will complete their checkout by 25%? So they're worth considering for sure.

Here are five ways you can use discounts to drive sales. Number one, the pre launch offer. Before you add a new product to your online store, keep the product page hidden and email your existing customers with an invitation to buy it before anyone else. With exclusive access, your discount doesn't need to be massive, maybe 10%, 15% off, and encourage them to lever a review on the new product.

When you launch the product publicly, it will already have a product page filled with reviews from happy customers. Two, a minimum purchase discount. You've seen this before when shops offer free shipping with a minimum spend. It works. Free shipping is the easiest one to set up in your online store but you can also consider a percentage discount once they meet a minimum purchase threshold.

For example, 20% off for orders over 200. Three, offers with abandoned carts. As you can see from your shop's analytics, customers tend to add products to their cart and then leave without purchasing. Shopify has built in cart abandonment emails which send automatically. You can customize the emails and include a discount to make it even more enticing to come back and complete the order with an extra 10% off.

Be careful with this one. Customers are getting savvy about this offer and can leave your site knowing a discount is coming their way. Monitor the use of discounts and play around with discount levels. Four, the fast follow. This is a real pro move. Directly after purchase, offer a discount on the user's next purchase from your shop. You can even include messaging, telling them to purchase now to get it included with their previous order and have everything arrive together and only pay to ship once.

Frame this offer as a thank you and consider including the messaging directly in the receipt email. And finally at five, give loyal customers a discount. This is another nice way to say thanks. Look at your past orders and who your top customers are. Maybe everyone who has made more than 4 orders or customers who have spent more than $500.

Consider 5% to 15% off or free shipping as a gesture that you appreciate their business. Discounts can drive customer loyalty, acquisition, and conversions. But be wary, too many discounts can devalue your business and hurt sales. If your audience is constantly seeing discounts, they'll only buy on sale. So be savvy.

The best approach is to choose a goal for every offer. Start small and measure the results. Learn, repeat. Make friends with discounts, they'll do your business good. Before you go, look at the notes below, we've added loads of helpful links. And make sure to check out Compass for more videos like this. See you next time.