If you are a store owner of a real store or a Shopify store, giving customer incentives when they purchase in a store is not a new idea. We all know that everyone loves free gifts, discounts, bundles, and they might, of course, improve your sales. However, the question of how to optimize it is still making store owners wonder. Today, we will give you some recommendations to have a successful sales promotion campaign to increase sales.

Time and Duration

Sales promotions should take place during a certain special time. If you always run new sales campaigns, it doesn’t mean anything to the customers. There are always free gifts so why do they need to hurry? The best time for free gift promotion is during the rush time of your business in a year. Of course, the year end is always a good time to boost sales, however, there are some others.  No one understands your business better than you, so just take time to investigate customer behaviors.

Secondly, the duration of the promotion should be long enough for customers to get news and take action, but not too long, or it can demotivate customers.

The Perfect Offer

Some small incentives for customers just do not work anymore. When customer shops online, they need somethings more appealing, at least high-perceived in value and should be related to your products. For example, if you sell cosmetics; the best free gift is a travel size set or trial set. It does not only motivate them to purchase, but it also cross-sells other products.

Sometimes, giving a default gift for everyone is not a good idea. Everyone loves the personalized offer (type, color, size,..). It is best if you can offer them a list of gifts so that they can choose the one they love.

Simple Rules

As the saying “Less is More”, do not make the customers confused about how to obtain the gift offers or sales promotions. Customers choose shopping online because it saves their times and efforts, and there are no reasons why we should make them feel frustrated to wait or figuring out things.

Some simple rules example:

• Buy X get Y (BOGO)
• Buy 2 get 1 free
• Purchase over 500 USD get 1 (or many) gift
• Buy X, Y, Z to get 30% discount
• Buy 2X for 10% off, 3X for 15% off

Smart Display

You should understand thoroughly the customer’s path from entering your site to completing checkout, then decide where to display information about your sales, free gift program.

Home Page: This is the first place customers enter your website, so display the campaign here. It can be an attractive banner or a “Free Gift” label on featured products.

Cart Page or Cart Drawer: This is a step where customers look at their shopping cart to see what they have added and the total cost. Free gifts and discounts should be added automatically to their cart. If they haven’t met the rules to receive the gifts, make something to remind them to purchase more, such as a cart announcement text at the top.

I hope you will have a successful free gift or sales promotion campaign! Install Shopify BOGOS app now to get your campaigns up and running!