Here are a few letters your customers love. S A L E.
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 in November to December 2017 were somewhere between $108 billion and $138 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’ll 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 promotion 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 from Chemical Guys:
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. Just follow our instructions for creating your first campaign, then customize at will!
1. Cameron Hughes
Let’s start the ball rolling with this email sales promotion example from Cameron Hughes. It’s pretty simple, but effective.
The blue and white theme reflects Memorial Day, and also builds trust, as mentioned in our article on color psychology. It also includes an email button that takes you directly to the shop.
Copy this example:
You could do this by using OptinMonster for email retargeting. Just set your coupon to appear on a particular page with page-level targeting, then share the link to that page in your email campaign.
What if you only want your email subscribers to see your campaign on your website? One easy way to do this is with adding a little bit of code to your link called a UTM code. Here’s a guide on how to track your marketing campaigns with UTM codes.
Once you’ve created your special link with UTM code, you can use OptinMonster’s display rules to create a campaign targeted only for people who click that special link.
Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough on how to target campaigns to links with UTM codes.
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. EMP
One of the best aspects of this sales promotion from EMP is its simplicity. The white background contrasts with the menu bar above and the slider below.
The text is slightly bigger to stand out, and the arrow at the start subtly directs visitors’ gaze to the offer. The call to action (CTA) button includes both an action and urgency, and mirrors the color in the menu bar.
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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. Fresh Direct
Fresh Direct also uses a bar to highlight its offer. In our opinion, though, the contrast could be better.
The offer is in a green button on the right, which triggers an attractive green and white popup. We like the color blocks and the checklist on the popup. There’s also a clear option for readers to opt out and close the popup.
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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. Grappler’s Guide
Next on our list of sales promotion examples is this email from Grappler’s Guide. This is a branded, almost plain-text email, which fits well with current email newsletter design trends. However, it includes a single link to highlight the sales promotion.
Copy this example:
You could easily include the shareable MonsterLink™ we mentioned earlier. Include it in an email newsletter to trigger a popup when customers click.
6. Hayneedle
Hayneedle goes for a subtle sales promotion idea. The lightbox popup is a white box with a border matching the brand colors. This puts the contest offer on center stage, making it a no-brainer for people to sign up. The simple white on black CTA button is pretty effective, too.
Copy this example:
You could easily recreate this in OptinMonster and follow Hayneedle’s example by choosing when the popup appears. By default, OptinMonster popups appear after 5 seconds.
You could also change that so they appear after visitors have scrolled. To do that, go to Display Rules » When should the campaign appear? and enable After scrolling down ‘X’ amount.
7. J. Crew
Next on our list of sales promotion examples is J. Crew. The fashion retailer keeps it simple with a plain white popup, making it easy for visitors to focus on the 15% offer.
The “Oh, Hi There” greeting is friendly, and starts to create a positive company image. It’s worth noting that the popup includes a link to details of the company’s privacy policy and GDPR compliance information.
Copy this example:
To create appealing copy, check out our list of copywriting templates. And learn how you could include GDPR checkboxes in your OptinMonster campaigns here.
8. Jones Soda
Jones Soda’s sales promotion is an example of good branding. It’s another two step optin process. After you’ve been on the site for a couple of seconds, a soda bottle pops up in the bottom right corner.
Click on that, and you’re asked to sign in to get a free soda. We think this is great marketing.
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You can get similar attention for your OptinMonster popups by enabling our Display Effects. Just go to that section of the OptinMonster campaign builder, and pick an effect.
Here’s how the Rubber Band effect looks.
9. Kennedy Blue
Kennedy Blue is another example of 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. Go go Countdown Settings to enable the timer, and 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.
Copy this example:
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 make 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.
Copy this example:
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. Postcard Mania
Postcard Mania’s sales promotion is bright and in your face, so visitors won’t ignore it. Plus, it’s offering a freebie, which is another win.
We like the way the campaign messaging is mirrored on the CTA button. That makes it clear what users are signing up for.
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. Pottery Barn
Here’s another discount promotion, this time from Pottery Barn. We love the subtle mirroring of the home page color scheme. Plus the envelope image makes it clear visitors will get email. And there’s no mistaking the bold 15% discount offer.
Copy this example:
Want to do something similar with OptinMonster? Use our lightbox popup, and upload your own image via the built in image gallery.
Then you can edit the text and set display rules as usual.
16. Ript
Ript runs a daily deal, and this one is particularly eye-catching. With superheroes all the rage, the background image gets attention, as do the gun flashes. Ript continues the theme by using speech bubbles to highlight the offer. These also contrast so they stand out.
Copy this example:
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™.
Copy this example:
You can enable InactivitySensor™ by going to Display Rules » When should the campaign appear? And enabling the InactivitySensor™ (Seconds of inactivity) rule.
18. Snack Nation
More leads means more sales, right? The next in our list of sales promotion examples is 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.
Copy this example:
You can edit the fields in any OptinMonster campaign. Just click on the email field to see the text in the menu, then replace it with what you want.
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. Virgin
Virgin’s taken the approach of rewarding existing customers, with a 15% discount coupon in the red and white brand colors. This appears immediately after placing an order, and gives people a coupon code they can use. Ideally, customers would also get this by email.
Copy this example:
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. Williams-Sonoma
This is another email offer, this time from Williams-Sonoma. It emphasizes free shipping, which is a biggie for customers, plus a large discount. Underneath, there’s a button to take you straight to the store. There are no frills, but then, who needs them?
Copy this example:
Emails like this often apply the coupon once the subscriber has clicked through. We show you how to apply a coupon via success actions in this Shopify popup tutorial.
That’s it!
Now you have lots of sales promotion examples to use to fuel your own creativity. Next, check out our guide for more email marketing tips, and see more eCommerce marketing strategies to boost your sales. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more eCommerce marketing guides.
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