Smallfish Promotions

20 December 2011

So, you've worked hard to get your store online. You've seeded the marketplace with the right messages. You've called in all your favours to spread the word. Now what?

Now it's time to play your trump card! The queen of discounts. The king of free shipping. The ace of 2-4-1. It's time to re-engage your customers with special promotional offers that whet the appetite for an impromptu purchase. All this is now possible (and seriously easy) through Smallfish Promotions.

What promotions can I run?

We've looked long and hard at the promotional activities of a number of e-commerce retailers, both big and small, and have distilled the list down to a collection of useful and flexible options.

Here's the list of options we've built in:

1. Product Specials ("Usually $30, now only $24.99")
2. Product Sales ("Get in quick to save 20% on our entire aquarium range!")
3. Cart Discounts ("Buy two, get one free!")
4. Coupons ("Enter this code at the checkout to get $20 off your purchase!")
5. Vouchers ("Can't decide on that gift? Grab a voucher!")
6. Shipping Discounts ("Spend over $80 and get free shipping!")

The vital statistics.

Product Specials

If you need to shift some old or surplus stock on a specific product, or give customers the immediate impression that they're getting a special 'deal', a good ol' Product Special is a great way to do it. All you need to do is pick a product and set the dollar amount to discount it to. The great thing about this type of special is that you'll get both values displayed next to your product so your shoppers can quickly see how much they're saving.

Product Sales

If you want to discount an entire range of products you use a Product Sale. This kind of promotion is great for targeting events like gift giving dates (Get 20% off all women's wear for Mother's Day!) or for other public events (Summer's coming! Take 10% off all sun blocks!). It's as simple as choosing a product category and setting a discount percentage. You can even create an entire storewide sale for a limited time with a few simple clicks.

Cart Discounts

A great way to drive bulk buying is by offering a Cart Discount. These work by applying a discount amount if the right criteria are met. For example: "Buy four bags of fish food and get an extra one free!" Or: "Get 20% off when you buy three or more items from our t-shirt range!" A cart discount is made of just two parts: a cart 'condition' (e.g. the cart must have at least two t-shirts/ the cart must have three fishbowls/ etc) and a discount (as a percentage or a free item offer). Easy.

Coupons

Coupons tick a couple of boxes: 1. They give your offer exclusivity ("This coupon is for your eyes only! Enter it when you check out to get 25% off! Just because we love you…"), 2. They are track-able (you can use one coupon code for your print advertising and another code for your online media allowing you to track the effectiveness of each). You can include terms and conditions, set the discount offer and send away! Like the other discounts there is a huge amount of flexibility for setting criteria and discount types. You can even create a coupon to promote a shipping discount offer.

Vouchers

Our old familiar friend Vouchers is now making an official appearance through the Smallfish Promotions system. A few crafty store owners just couldn't wait and were already using a manual system to keep track of their voucher sales. No more! It's all official and easy to track. Also, because you can copy and paste in hundreds of voucher codes, Smallfish vouchers are fantastic for managing orders from ‘Daily Deal’ systems.

Shipping Discounts

Even though shipping is a necessary part of online shopping it can often be seen as annoying or surprise expense so Smallfish now allows you to easily discount shipping or make it completely free. Like other discounts you can set 'criteria' to incentivise customers to take advantage of free or discounted shipping i.e. "Free shipping when you spend over $100" or "50% off shipping when you buy two or more products". You can also choose shipping discounts to apply to specific regions and product ranges. i.e. "Free Shipping for all New Zealand customers" To become more shipping savvy read our article on the hidden cost of shipping.

The brains behind the promotions.

Not only is our new promotions system easy to use, it is also very clever. We built this system with as many possibly scenarios in mind as we could – including the potential discount options we may add in the future. This means that, not only do these promotions work well individually, they work in tandem too. If your customer stumbles across two potential discounts, our Smallfish brain will immediately calculate the best deal for your customer and give them that discount. Here's an example...

Strap in space monkeys!

Right now we're ready to launch Smallfish Promotions as a general beta feature. This means that we have done all the necessary testing to prove to ourselves, have tested it on a few keen early adopters and are now ready for everyone to give it a whirl. As it is still quite new there is a chance of an undiscovered quirk here and there. If you find something, please let us know.

We'd love to hear your feedback on the new Promotions system. Love it? Hate it? Did we miss something? Is there something you need to be able to do that we have missed? Let us know! We're all ears – and, erm, gills…

Get stuck in and crank up your sales a notch, or two.