5 promotional pricing strategies for increasing sales

Shopify merchants don’t need to shadow the retailer game book of running sale after sale. Instead, they’ve got an identity — propped by a backstory — to attract and retain customers.

We preach the above. A lot. So it may sound like we’re averse to promotional pricing. 

Not so. Promotional pricing strategies are advantageous for stirring demand and boosting sales in the short term.

We’re just judicious in their use, as should every Shopify merchant walking the tightrope of staying true to itself while remaining profitable and maximizing customer lifetime value. 

Before we walk through five of the most common techniques and our advice for employing them, let’s start with the pros and cons. Make sure to stick around until the very end for best practices for protecting your bottom line. 

‍

The benefits of promotional pricing 

Who doesn’t like to save money?

There’s a class of consumers who get a rush from snagging a deal. Others depend on discount pricing to improve their money management. For the financially fraught, saving a buck is a necessity. 

The last is especially true in times of economic slowdowns. A September 2022 report cites that 40% of U.S. consumers shop for deals because of rising prices.  

Economy woes aside, there are other reasons to embrace promotional pricing:

‍

• Rid your Shopify store of excess inventory. Products that sit around for too long do no good and take up space. Moving them at a reduced profit could be a better alternative. Think “last chance on this low-stock inventory.” Flash sales — bargains pinned to a minimal timeframe, like just a few hours — are a fantastic route for drumming up urgency.  

• Launch a new product. An addition to your product lineup deserves extra attention, and a sales promo hits the spot. Drive extra excitement with a pre-sale event exclusive to subscribers, customers, or any segment of your audience. (PS: Seguno has a pre-built email campaign for a product or collection launch. Read our guide for creating awesome product launch emails and you're gold.)

• Reward customers. Showing appreciation to supporters should be a part of every Shopify merchant’s playbook. Extend a discount to a first-time buyer for their next purchase, for example, as part of a post-purchase email strategy. Or provide price breaks when loyalty program customers reach a milestone. (Good to know: 79% of consumers are more likely to support a brand because of its loyalty program.)

‍

• Drive brand awareness. We always encourage Shopify merchants to toot their horns on occasion. Promotional pricing can be the caveat before switching to what makes you different or simply saying, “thanks for helping us live our dream.” A shop anniversary — or the shop owner’s birthday — is the perfect time for this approach.

The disadvantages of promotional pricing

Now for the cons. Or, let’s rephrase that: the possible downfalls of promotional pricing with Shopify discounts.

• There is a real risk to your profitability if you’re not strategic. Overly focus on revenue with too many promotional pricing events or haphazard planning, and you invite a business slump. McKinsey & Company outlines four questions for formulating a smart markdown strategy. 
• You may damage your average order value (AOV). You could be training your audience to never pay full price because they know another sale will be on the horizon. And if a deal was the catalyst for a new customer, they may likewise only bite when another rolls around or abandon your brand altogether. 
• You could sabotage your shop without protections in place. Let's say that your margins limit how many deals you can provide. So you build a discount code like CELEBRATE20 and send it to subscribers. That code is leaked on the Internet for anyone to grab. (Hang tight — we’re exploring the intelligent approach to discount codes later.) 
• Your brand image might suffer. Frequent promotional pricing events or excessively slashed prices can convey that your shop is inferior to competitors. No one wants to be perceived as subpar. 

As we’ve alluded to, these downfalls are avoidable by building in safeguards. 
‍

‍

5 promotional pricing strategies (with email examples)

You’ve identified a business goal. Next up is selecting the best-aligned promotional pricing strategy. 

Five options typically rise to the surface as the most common: discount pricing, buy one get one free (BOGO), tiered discounting, bundling and free shipping.
 

Discount pricing

Discount pricing is the most popular promotional pricing strategy. It works for several goals, whether giving your store a lift or clearing inventory. It comes in one of two forms: 

• Dollar value discount; i.e. $10 off
• Percentage-based discount; i.e. 10% off

Studies show that a dollar value discount holds greater sway for higher-priced items than a percentage-based one. The research defines the cutoff as anything more than $100. 

For products under $100, the brain perceives a percentage off as a better deal than a dollar discount. 

Either way, our general advice is to limit discount sale events to select products or collections. Choose the higher-priced items to benefit your AOV. 

Some other tips: 

• State the end date to conjure a sense of urgency and ensure clarity; this tip goes for every promotional pricing strategy hereafter     
• Reserve sitewide discounts for special times of the year, such as the Black Friday Cyber Monday dash
• Emphasize the savings by showing the regular price (typically crossed out) positioned next to the discounted price

Bonus: lead with the condition and follow with the reward when marketing your discount. For instance, phrase your promo “Spend $100 and get $10 off” rather than “Get $10 off when you spend $100.” Studies show that the “bad news” before the good resonates more.
‍

Buy one, get one free (BOGO)

Which is more appealing from a shopper's standpoint? 

• Buy two, get 50% off
• Buy one, get one free

Both result in paying the same price. But the BOGO phrasing sells better because of the psychological pricing strategy of innumeracy. Put simply, humans avoid math. BOGO is a lot simpler to grasp than the alternative.

The BOGO standby is appropriate for some, but not all, products. Don’t apply it to luxe products and those with small margins. 

Some other tips: 

• Don’t presume that everyone knows the BOGO acronym, so communicate what the deal entails. BOGO of equal or lesser value is the standard language. 
• If BOGO is too much to recoup, then “buy one, get one ½ off” may be palatable. Or B3G1. You get the idea. 
• Feature product photos or illustrations to reinforce that the shopper gets more product for the same amount of money. 

One word of caution: careless parameters can undervalue your products. You don’t want to trigger thoughts like, “They make so many of these that they’re giving them away."
‍

Any promotional pricing strategy email needs a stellar intro to be noticed. We’ve got some subject line ideas to announce your sale, plus tips.

Tiered discounting

Unlike the straightforward discounting and BOGO strategies, the “buy more, save more” approach of tiered discounting aims to raise your AOV. 

The greater the cart value, the greater the savings. Here’s where merchants can make a case for both cross-selling and upselling. 

The premise is that shoppers lose out when their spending level is short of meeting a threshold. If you only need to spend another $5 to receive $20 worth of free product, why not keep shopping? So the thinking goes. 

You’ll need to do some math if you want tiers to work in your favor. Start with a minimum purchase discount strategy. Calculate your AOV over the last few months. Add 10% to 20% to determine your first threshold, then add subsequent tiers. 

Ecommerce guru Nik Sharma demonstrates how this could play out:

Use Seguno’s Dynamic Banner Suite to create discount tiers and automatically apply them to shopping carts.

‍

Bundling

The promotional pricing strategy of bundling involves packaging complementary products and selling them at a reduced price. Enter cross-selling and another shot at raising AOV. 

Customers benefit in other ways aside from cost savings. Bundling can: 

• Introduce products they may not have considered or are unwilling to pay full price for
• Provide convenience with an all-in-one solution 
• Expand understanding of how to use the product(s)

Some businesses favor the pure bundling concept, in which there is no other way but to buy the products as a unit. But we like the idea of mixed bundling — making all components available for individual purchase. After all, mixed bundling is promotional pricing, by definition. 

Our tips: 

• Demonstrate that the consumer is getting more for their money by displaying the bundle price versus the tally of individually priced products
• Show what's inside the bundle; visuals speak volumes

Pro tip: bundles are a great solution to help gift-givers.

‍

Free shipping 

Baymard Institute research shows that the average cart abandonment rate hovers around 70%. In other words, only three of 10 shoppers who reach a Shopify store checkout typically proceed with a purchase. 

Shipping costs are a significant culprit behind shoppers jumping ship. Per the Baymard Institute, 48% of consumers abandon a cart during online checkout because the extra costs — shipping, taxes and fees — are too high. 

We know that most Shopify merchants can’t absorb their customers’ shipping costs. And since 58% of consumers will add items to their cart to qualify for free shipping, set a minimum purchase requirement to meet them halfway. 

Make sure the threshold isn’t an arbitrary number infringing on profits. Once again, do the calculations. 

Build protections into your promotional pricing strategy

Making progress in ecommerce calls for a promotional pricing strategy from time to time. Executed without forethought, discount pricing or other tactics can quickly lead to disaster.

After you define your goal and choose a promotional pricing strategy that fits, build in safeguards to protect your margins. We mentioned some options throughout this post, the primary one being setting minimum spending thresholds. You could also limit your discount to a higher-priced product or collection.

Don’t feel pressured to open up a sale to everyone, either. It’s not always feasible. Market to your email and/or SMS subscribers, or limit it further to your most valued customers. 

Assure control over the discount by providing unique coupon codes. Individualized alphanumeric sequences are better than a generic code, like SALE15, that anyone can get their hands on. You can create unique codes with Seguno email marketing; use Seguno's bulk discount code app if you have a different email marketing provider or want to leverage unique codes in different marketing channels.

Otherwise, we caution that you resist seeing promotional pricing strategies in revenue terms alone. That’s short-sighted thinking. View it as one resource for attaining a healthy bottom line over the long haul.