Here are a few letters your customers love. S A L E.
Do you know how we know? Because the days when retailers offer their biggest discounts are also the biggest shopping days of the year.
The stats say that sales from November to December 2020 were $876 billion.
But customers don’t just shop in the holidays. They value discounts and offers all year round.
That’s why it’s essential to run sales promotions and let them know what’s on offer. This type of promotion can attract new customers and encourage existing ones.
We get that coming up with new sales promotion ideas month in, month out can be a challenge. That’s why we’ve collected the best sales promotion examples we can find to inspire you.
These will help you to win more customers and earn more revenue.
Types of Sales Promotions
Before we get to the sales promotion examples, let’s take a quick look at some of the different types of sales promotions you can have.
Sales promotions can be an excellent short term tactic for boosting sales revenue. They’re also a great way to persuade customers who are wavering that it’s time to buy.
As you’ll see, most sales promotions use urgency and the fear of missing out (FOMO) to encourage customers to buy. These psychological techniques rely on the fact that we’re wired to want to act immediately in urgent situations and have a serious aversion to losing out.
Here’s an example of both urgency and FOMO:
Some of the types of sales promotions retailers use include:
- Percentage or dollar discounts or coupons
- Redeemable vouchers
- Free gifts or giveaways
- Buy one, get one free, known as BOGO or BOGOF
- Rebates
- Free samples
Retailers also offer:
- Loyalty or membership rewards or points
- Pre-launch or exclusive offers
- Bundles
- Seasonal offers
- Regular daily, weekly or monthly deals
Watch out for those offer types in the examples below.
Sales Promotion Examples
Now, let’s get to those sales promotion examples. If you like a particular campaign, you can easily recreate your own version in OptinMonster.
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization tool. It allows you to easily create eye-catching popups for your sales promotions.
OptinMonster comes with multiple eCommerce campaign types, like fullscreen mat, lightbox popup, floating bar, and countdown timer.
You can use OptinMonster’s prebuilt sales promotion templates to:
- Share discount offers
- Reduce cart abandonment
- Promote flash sales
And more.
You’ll also get to choose from special eCommerce targeting to control when and where you show your sales promotion.
Just follow our instructions for creating your first campaign, then customize at will!
1.Macy’s
Let’s start the ball rolling with this email sales promotion example from Macy’s. It’s pretty simple, but effective.
It uses information about the site visitor to show them sales promotions they’re more likely to be interested in. In this case, the site visitor has already viewed printed dresses.
You can do this in OptinMonster with our Smart Tags feature.
Here are some of the things you can use to personalize sales promotions on your website:
- Site visitor’s name
- Date
- Country
- City
- Previous pages visited
And more.
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Here’s how you can implement Smart Tags with OptinMonster.
You might also want to check out 5 creative ways to personalize your optins to boost conversions.
2. Christmas Lite Show
This coupon campaign is a great sales promotion idea from Christmas Lite Show.
The beautiful background evokes the atmosphere of the annual show, and the headline highlights the company’s experience. It all adds up to a compelling reason to click the button. When visitors do, they see a coupon code with a countdown timer.
Christmas Lite Show converted 30% of visitors with this campaign.
Copy this example:
To do the same, create a countdown popup in the OptinMonster campaign builder. Then use a MonsterLink™ to create a clickable link on your web page or in your menu.
3. Cosmetic Capital
Cosmetic Capital saw an 300% increase in leads daily, using this floating bar sales promotion. The free shipping offer immediately tackles one of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment.
The timer adds urgency, and the shopper knows they need to act soon if they want to grab this deal. The button includes the word “exclusive”, making the visitor curious about the offer.
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You could create something similar in OptinMonster by using the floating bar campaign type and editing the colors to match your branding. Here are some more floating bar examples to inspire you.
4. Chamaileon.io
Chamaileon.io was able to increase conversions by 200% using this sales promotion, and here’s the main reason why this example worked so well.
They included a Yes/No form, and these are proven to increase conversions by as much as 18%. Why are Yes/No forms so effective? They’re based on a psychological concept called the Zeigarnik Effect. The idea is that people are more likely to finish an action they’ve already started. So, once they click the Yes button, they are more likely opt in.
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If you wanted to achieve this with OptinMonster, you could enable our Yes/No forms in the campaign builder, as shown in the video below.
Then you can redirect visitors to a signup form when they click the Yes button. Here are some more creative ways to use Yes/No forms.
5. Stays.net
Here’s another example of an effective two-step optin from Stays.net.
Stays.net increased monthly sales by 10% using an on-click sales promotion. So, once the site visitor clicks on the link, they are presented with the popup to start a free trial.
Copy this example:
You could easily include the shareable MonsterLink™ we mentioned earlier. Include it anywhere on your site to trigger a popup when customers click.
6. Fastrack
Fastrack managed to recover 53% of abandoning visitors with a simple sales promotion idea. The lightbox popup is a white box with matching the brand colors. This puts the offer on center stage, making it a no-brainer for people to sign up.
Fastrack showed this sales promotion popup as visitors were leaving their site.
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You could easily recreate this in OptinMonster and follow Fastrack’s example by choosing when the popup appears. By default, OptinMonster popups appear after 5 seconds, but you can change it using the Exit-Intent® rule.
You could also change that so they appear after visitors have scrolled. To do that, go to Display Rules and set the condition If distance scrolled.
7. Win in Health
Next on our list of sales promotion examples is Win in Health. The retailer keeps it simple with a green and white popup, making it easy for visitors to focus on the 10% offer. It matches their website colors perfectly.
The copy is clear and straight to the point. Even though it’s not explicit, there’s a sense of urgency here. Adding the words “Today’s Promotion” tells the customer the deal isn’t going to be around forever.
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To create appealing campaign copy, check out our list of copywriting templates.
8. Scott Wyden Imagery
How do you know you’re showing your sales promotions on the right pages?
Scott Wyden Imagery only show this 2-step optin on the cart and checkout pages when the shopper tries to leave the site. It recovers 21.06% of abandoning carts.
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You can get similar attention for your OptinMonster popups by adding the Exit-Intent® and Page Targeting rule.
9. Kennedy Blue
Kennedy Blue is another example of the effective use of OptinMonster’s countdown timer theme. This floating bar picks up one of the logo colors while contrasting with the site as a whole. That makes it super visible and very effective, and that’s helped by the white countdown block and the yellow discount block. This popup helped Kennedy Blue increase sales by 50%.
Copy this example:
If you’re using OptinMonster, you can easily set the countdown from within the campaign builder. Click on the countdown timer in the live preview to bring up the editing tools, the set the desired end date and time.
10. KnivesShipFree
Even if you’re not into knives, you’ve gotta love this giveaway popup campaign from KnivesShipFree. We like it because both the pictures and text make it clear what you can win. Plus, the CTA is crystal clear. This campaign ran on both desktop and mobile, giving the company more than $10,000 in additional sales.
Copy this example:
You can easily create this by using one of OptinMonster’s templates, then edit the text and the CTA button to create your own offer.
11. Maca Team
Here’s an example of referral marketing, which eventually leads to more sales. We know that people trust recommendations from friends and influencers more than ads, so this is a smart move by the Maca Team.
Here’s what we like. The background image is of the source product, with an overlay showing the offer. Plus, they have made it easy by including a button so visitors can copy the referral link easily. We also like the inclusion of social sharing buttons.
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To do this with OptinMonster you could easily create your own custom campaign using the Canvas theme.
12. Nashville Pedal Tavern
Party bike company Nashville Pedal Tavern has a sales promotion example with a difference. They’re not offering discounts. In fact, this innovative campaign earned them $2300 in just two weeks, simply by promoting gift certificates. Here’s the campaign.
This campaign works because it’s helping people feel good about themselves by giving others a fun experience. Simple as that.
And the genius of it is the Nashville Pedal Tavern only showed it to people who were really interested in their site. They set it so only visitors who’d been there for 30 seconds or more could see the campaign.
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You could do the same by adjusting the timing as described earlier.
13. Padstows
In this example, the image of happy customers inside the restaurant makes for a winning combination for Padstows. The optin campaign is beautiful and inviting, and the voucher is an added bonus. One thing the company could do is experiment with split testing the call to action. More compelling button text such as “Enter to Win” may boost their conversions even more.
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If you’re using OptinMonster, you can change the image on any campaign simply by clicking the image button. That’ll help you make an appealing optin campaign for your visitors. Check out our list of free image sites to find the right image.
14. Baublebar
Baublebar’s sales promotion is bright and in your face, so visitors won’t ignore it. Plus, it’s offering a discount, which is another win.
Copy this example:
We’ve already mentioned how easy it is to change text and colors in the OptinMonster campaign builder. You could also follow our guide to get your CTA right.
15. AutoAnything
Here’s another discount promotion, this time from AutoAnything. The image clearly conveys the brand, and there’s no mistaking the bold 20% discount offer.
AutoAnything increased email revenue by 20% using this sales promotion.
Copy this example:
Want to do something similar with OptinMonster? Use our lightbox popup, and upload an image.
Then you can edit the text and set display rules as usual.
16. Spinsterz
This sales promotion is the first thing people see when they land on Spinsterz’s website. These colors also contrast so they stand out.
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You could create something similar with a custom welcome mat in OptinMonster. This’ll appear as visitors land on your site and is a great way to introduce them to what’s on offer. See the video below to learn more about welcome mats.
17. Skates
Sometimes you want to target people who aren’t doing much on your site, in the hope that they will. That’s exactly what Skates.co.uk did and it resulted in an extra £2000 in daily sales. The popup itself is simple. It’s red to match the brand colors, with white writing, and the discount code in black. They showed it to inactive users with OptinMonster’s InactivitySensor™.
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You can enable InactivitySensor™ by going to Display Rules and setting the condition If visitor inactive time.
18. Snack Nation
More leads means more sales, right? The next in our list of sales promotion examples are focused on lead generation. SnackNation offered free sampler boxes to people who signed up. That resulted in 1200 new subscribers each week and 15-25 additional daily sales.
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Snack Nation used a fullscreen campaign with a yes/no form to achieve this. We described how to enable both of those earlier.
19. Sportique
This is a really attractive fullscreen optin. Sportique has used the screen space to include a stunning image that fits with its active mission. We also like the informative wording in the email field, plus the accurate CTA. Those who sign up will have no doubts about what they’re getting. This campaign converts 4.9% of visitors and helped the brand triple its email list.
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You can edit the fields in any OptinMonster campaign. Just click on the email field to bring up the editing tools.
20. Urban Southern
Who doesn’t love a handbag discount, are we right, ladies? Urban Southern used a stark black and white color palette to offer a 10% discount to people who signed up. This campaign uses our Coupon template, and all they did was change the colors. The result? A 400% increase in sales.
Copy this example:
You can keep it just as simple as Urban Southern did. Create a new campaign using the Coupon theme. Then change the colors as described earlier to match your own branding.
21. Crush Empire
Crush Empire generated 460 sales using this coupon sales promotion.
You can choose to deliver the discount at another URL or via OptinMonster’s Success theme.
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An easy way to do this in OptinMonster is to edit the success message that appears when people opt into a campaign. You can easily add a coupon link to the success theme itself, or simply redirect visitors to a new page with the coupon.
22. Logic Inbound
Finding the best sales promotions for your business might require some testing.
Let’s look at one example.
This is a free trial offer, this time from Logic Inbound and ATLAS workspace. The optin converted at 25.71%.
Before using the above sales promotion, Logic Inbound was showing the below offer. But it only converted at 2.67%.
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Identify your best performing sales promotions using split testing. With OptinMonster, you can find the best performing designs, offers, copy, targeting, and more.
23. Cracku
Cracku increased conversions 300% using countdown timers. Countdown timers add urgency and encourage your customer to make a purchasing decision.
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You can easily add a countdown timer to any sales promotion using OptinMonster.
That’s it!
Now you have lots of sales promotion examples to use to fuel your own creativity.
Next, check out these resources for boosting sales:
- Email Marketing Made Simple: A Step by Step Guide [+ Examples]
- 5 of the Best eCommerce Marketing Strategies to Explode Your Sales
Ready to create a sales promotion that will win you more customers? Get started with OptinMonster today. It’s risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee.
