Discounts work.
Always have, always will.
So theoretically, the longer you run a sale, the more revenue you'll get.
Here's where it gets tricky.
And I'm going to introduce two concepts today.
You might already be familiar with this.
If this is new to you, it's essentially a phenomenon of your offer working…
Until it doesn't work anymore.
Longer promotional periods see this more evidently.
Take a look at this brand's Christmas sale, this is a classic case.
I want you to observe how:
Because this is the typical behavior all around the world, for the majority of brands, across a majority of industries, regardless of season.
See what happens with Brand 1, using an extended sale and no variation...
This happens because people get bored.
The same messaging over and over again doesn't make anyone excited.
Imagine that annoying neighbor who can’t get the hint and keeps on trying to get you to join their MLM selling exotic antelope placenta. They bring it up every time you meet in the hallway, bump into each other in the elevator, and every other week they have their MLM friends over, they knock on your door asking you to join. So I turn off all my lights when I know they have a meeting.
Real story by the way.
Like dude, get the hint man.
I can’t move houses, but I would if I could.
With email subscribers, guess what?
Mark as spam. Unsubscribe. Don’t open your email.
Maybe they buy once, but never again.
Here's the effect with simple offer variations during the same gifting season for Brand 2.
And here's what happens below with novelty effects for Brand 3.
(the jump doesn't look as obvious because in comparison to Black Friday's numbers, the graph doesn't show the spikes so much, but you still see it)
If you're a brand who's sick of trial and error, you'll like this.
This is also one of the modules we cover in our agency strategy trainings. If you're an agency and you want to level up your team, talk to our trainers and we might be able to help.
In your planning, create more offer variations with some novelty effect
Now this is an interesting concept.
The longer your previous promotion, the longer you'll typically need to "reset", before seeing another major uplift.
Of course there are nuances to this, and several factors that play a part.
But the general trend is still present.
Here's Brand 2 that didn't respect the Promotional Cooldown Period.
Each box represents a different promotion they ran.
As you can see, the effect isn't as pronounced, and the spikes get weaker each time.
In a desperate attempt to hit new highs, Brand 2 ran promo after promo since the last wasn't satisfactory.
On the other hand, we see Brand 3, which respected the Promotional Cooldown Period.
And they were rewarded for their patience.
Why?
Because with each promotion, customers (re)purchase.
And with each purchase, there is no need for another order again within a short timeframe.
If at all they reorder again, meaning their next purchase gets even longer, further pushing back their time between orders.
With a long promotion, there's less urgency to repurchase.
Many forget to even order.
A short time between promotions dulls the excitement of the offer.
I just want to put this out there.
There are exceptions for every brand and certain industries.
And nuances that I might not have covered in this post, in an attempt to keep this concise.
Stay sharp out there!