Using non discount options to convert and create branded experiences

Evolution of Discounting

Conversion wins nowadays do not revolve around giving the best or biggest discount. Online shopping has evolved to incorporate many of the considerations we make in-store. But it hasn’t been easy to ditch the discount that is typical for every sale cycle. Many brands claim they don’t want to cheapen their brand and at the end of the day, we don’t want you to do that either. 

Discounting your product or service is easy. It’s also hit or miss if it will help you in the long run when we consider AOV and customer lifetime value. These metrics require at least a follow-up message and ongoing communication to see a boost. But with discounting it’s more one-and-done. Intro pop-ups! Yes, the old way of getting a quick sale has been discounting. The new way to get a sale is all about understanding pain points, needs vs wants, and the lifestyle of your audience. 

When we consider discounts, we are addressing a consumer who is/was looking for a deal. Scratching that itch is okay but we should avoid overdoing it for fear of long-term issues. After an initial discount, top brands are creating engagement flows that offer more than an overused discount code and opting for more educational messaging, engaging how-to videos, social proof highlights, customization options, various payment options, and value-added statements that build trust over and over. 

Reading that through we should acknowledge what these non-discount alternative options are doing. They are building a steady stream of ways for shoppers to engage with a brand (actual clicks, views, and time) instead of using a code that is the same as what your competitor is offering. Talk about a forgettable moment. 

Never have I thought to talk about a brand that gave me “a great 10% offer”. I’m much more likely (and have) talked endlessly about…how a product works, how I will use it to solve my pain point, an educational video, or reading a guide about how my favorite influencer incorporates it into their routine! I am but one shopper, but I am not alone. This is the way word of mouth becomes impactful and leads to referrals. 

Non-Discount Incentive Suggestions

Let’s get into the top options to incorporate and test instead of using a discount code.

01. Free or Expedited Shipping

a. Shipping is a known friction factor for shoppers in any industry. So being able to showcase free or expedited shipping early lets you address that consumer fear head on. Additionally, you want to consider pairing messages like this with notices about shipping delays and “get by” dates related to gifting holidays. When you combine messages in this way you present a transparent and trustworthy front that you can then deliver on perfectly since you’ve set the right expectations. 

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02. Personalized Bundles

Personalized Bundles (based on real-time quiz answers, top purchased-together trends you see or influencer collaborations for example)

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a. Personalized bundles are a great way to achieve your AOV goals onsite while also using your customer data like a pro. Bundling products based on what you know about what customers are buying together organically or based on influencer preference are key ways to present the most engageable and shoppable content when you consider today’s social commerce adoption. Mainly because you’re able to show reliable use of data that to the consumer equates to “Oh, they know what I like!”

b. What marketers typically find useful in a product recommendation tool or feature is one that offers plenty of algorithms to choose from (like serving up most purchased items, previously viewed, you can see more here), the flexibility to pick and choose exactly what SKUs to show in a recommendation, and ideally no cost per click 😉

03. Quick Pay & BNPL

Quick Pay and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) Options

a. As they (I) like to say “more ways to pay, less time to sway”. Meaning the sooner you can present the options available at checkout for payment, the sooner you can attach the thought of ease to a purchase. This is especially important on mobile due to the various ways consumers are paying now. And we get it. There’s not a lot of room to work with on a mobile screen when you consider other marketing efforts. So we suggest a subtle approach with the use of banners or tabs to present these payment options. Want something more…branded? Consider embedded icons in your pages that indicate BNPL options and quick pay. 

04. Membership/Subscription Program

a. Giving membership access to a community or VIP tier lets you pivot into the loyalty and retention world. It is known that successful loyalty programs drive lifetime value so why not lead with that as your best foot forward. This route presents a ton of value upfront to the consumer and shows how involved your brand actually is post-purchase. Access to membership programs can be as relaxed or as grand as you’d like it to be. For example, membership into early access groups could be all about if they’ve shared their social handle with you. While membership with a cost would require you to deliver on something more than just your product. So aspects like price drops or access to bundles would be areas to explore for a more grand approach. In the end, presenting this membership opportunity instead of a discount lets you open up another channel to communicate. It is also an ”owned “ approach that you get to set the rules for. Have some fun with it! 

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05. Exclusive Products/Access

a. The ability to showcase exclusive products to a select segment or customer group is an experience that taps into the FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling that shoppers dread. You can also use this as an opportunity to see what this particular group of shoppers resonates with most in the select product line or category. From this you have solid consumer data on what is likely to be a hit, what needs some work, and what kinds of campaigns to put together around a new product launch.

06. Brand Swag

a. If you’re creating a new community or have a blooming community already, brand swag can get you so much more exposure than a discount can. And exposure is a step away from influencing. This means you get to give your audience (they don’t even have to be a customer to get swag!) a WAY to support you organically in their lives while also portraying a certain lifestyle that you're helping cultivate. My immediate thought goes to Costco's Kirkland brand selling t-shirts and hoodies. What a win when they make their own brand stand out from the crowd of brands they support through their likeness alone! Sure they could use some style tips but the concept is being executed well. A general example of brand swag is the branded water bottle that speaks to more of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra or health goals. This connects you to an even bigger cause, and again, to lifestyle habits. Using brand swag in free gift offers or surprises during the unboxing period is a stellar placement option for opportunities to share. 

07. Product Upgrade/Customization

a. It is so nice when an airline offers to upgrade your seat for free. Now imagine that feeling of enjoying first-class legroom and snacks. So good, right? That’s the same feeling you can give someone when you upgrade their shipping, product quality, style, membership tier, or loyalty points. These are great options to start with when considering what shipping experiences you can help “upgrade”. Another way to think about this is around your own branded holidays. One that will deliver results is an event (sale) around your brand’s birthday. But this sale doesn’t need to be discount-focused! Offering options to upgrade XYZ “today only” adds urgency while hiding under the umbrella of celebration. This doubles as a strategy around building your community.  

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08. Gift With Purchase

a. This is an incentive used all over the place and for good reason. A gift with purchase immediately makes someone’s dollar stretch further. A good feeling that leads to conversion-focused actions on site like continued browsing, add to cart, reading reviews, cart page view, etc. Gift-with-purchase offers are typically reserved to be shown on the cart page or after, but that is a little too late in terms of proactive communication. If the idea is to surprise then we totally get waiting until then. But an offer teaser never hurt anyone. One of the ways I see brands elevate this gift with purchase offers is by letting the user choose their offer (which can also be something you customize based on segments like cart abandoners or visitors that spend more than $X amount). So you present the offers and let the pop-up do the work by adding the one they select to their cart. And bam! They have another reason to follow through with their purchase! 

09. Cross-Brand Collaborations

a. This one could be a doozy but the point is to open yourself up to other audiences via other brands' outreach and likeness. Ideally, you partner with a brand, product, or service related or that pairs well with your brand's offering. The sync in your story together is that you fit into the lifestyle of each other's shoppers, therefore feeding your database with new consumer data and doing less work to sell yourself. The work is really behind the scenes in how you support the initiative to build solid partner relationships you are proud of. You can also think outside of the product world and look to sync on bigger initiatives like give-back campaigns or local community growth events. 

10. Free Samples

a. This one is different from free gifts and branded swag because it is more about giving them a taste of your product. Free Samples could also be your approach in the above option for cross-brand collaborations if you can make it make sense for your margins. A sample incentive speaks to someone’s intent to want to make a final decision or at least get to the next step in overcoming their objection. Therefore contributing to your marketing campaign cadence and the level of engagement you put out there. Free samples are awesome for bringing a concept or product to new eyes and existing customers when you are working to add to your catalog of products or categories. This offer is great to highlight in all channels and at various points on site. Take this offer a step further in its effectiveness by including feedback from customers about what they were able to determine after seeing or using the samples. This will give this offer more credibility in being something useful with social proof included rather than something forgotten. 

Elevated Placement Options

With all these new incentives to consider you’re probably wondering how best to present this on site. Perhaps you want to go with more than one incentive approach, or maybe you’re drawn more to present subtle offers throughout your website experience. The good news is that there is no wrong way to do it. There’s learning and optimizing as you implement any of these strategies around incentives. So here I’ll share the most effective placement options for your on-site messages to really deliver an engagement opportunity with your visitors.

01. Product and home pages - above AND below the virtual fold

• Product pages should be gold in terms of the content and it’s a good sign of things to come when someone is clearly looking to make an informed decision by scrolling through the whole page.  But this is not how all shoppers behave so you need to give yourself as many thoughtful opportunities to share your core marketing messages on site as you can. 
• This could look like a banner about your shipping offer at the top, for those who don’t happen to scroll past 20%, while also showing an embedded design of icons or reviews talking about your excellent shipping execution for those that scroll further down the page. Incorporating banners or embedded messaging, and targeting specific segments like the ad traffic example below, is a great step in creating experiences that use time and space effectively when your goal is to increase your return on spend.
• To take this example further let’s consider ad traffic and bounce rates that diminish our return. And when you consider the mobile aspect, well that means we have even less room to 1) match the CTA expectations and 2) show messages that rescue that traffic. This ad traffic may not scroll past 20% which is where your top banner or smart tabs come into play. But if they do, you should have an embedded variation of the incentive. Let’s say it’s shipping-related. Your embedded variation could be more focused on adding social proof in the form of reviews along with shipping icons that get the message across. 

02. Landing pages 

• Landing pages come in all lengths and CTAs and include content elements like:
  • Plenty of product images
  • Value add statements  - written out
  • Product Offer or Bundling Option
  • Review Highlights
  • Videos to showcase how-to-use or benefits
  • XYZ vs ABC comparison
  • Value Proposition - icons/image focused
  • FAQ sections
  • Quizzes
  • Testimonials
  • Offer Reminders
  • Lead capture (email, sms)
• They are great for converting traffic because they are meant to be hyper-focused on one goal and usually aimed to show to a targeted audience. Choosing which incentive to show on specific landing pages is easy since you already know the goal of the landing page and should sync with that. What’s changed about landing pages recently is how quickly marketing teams need to be able to deploy an optimized landing page. It makes sense when you consider the competitive market alone. More competition means more need to stand out with clarity on what makes you the better buy. Insert landing pages! With the flexibility to A/B test different landing pages and incentives you can find the offer that helps you reach your goals like higher ROAS, or increased time on site, and of course same session conversions. 

03. Checkout page or slide out cart

• Adding any of the non-discount Incentive options to your cart page, checkout or slide-out cart is an opportunity to show a ca n’t-miss offer that sweetens the deal. The way you present these offers should be a different variation than you presented before in order to grab that second of attention you need for interest to develop (nothing too drastic, but look to do color changes, copy updates, icons vs text, etc.). Think about how you’d aim to have at least four variations of hooks for your ad campaigns. The same strategy applies here. It’s great to place your incentives on more than one of these pages at this stage to deliver consistency and allow enough time for shoppers to make a decision. Remember that not everything is an impulse buy and you want to avoid adding any friction to the checkout process that could deter someone from getting to the final step. 

04. Post-purchase pages (thank you, confirmation, & tracking page)

• By now you’ve probably heard that these pages are visited an incredible amount. I’ve seen averages as much as 12x in my work with brands! Now consider all of those opportunities to yield at least one engaging click on an offer or one piece of information shared from a quiz/survey. That is gold in the world of retention. How your customers engage with the incentive on these pages is also telling about your customer base's interest/wants after the purchase. Use the data you gathered to determine if your strategy should be aimed at the next purchase or the current experience with your brand.

Next Level Personalization 

Next, you’ll want to consider the different ways you can personalize the presentation of your non-discount incentives in the places listed above.

01. Displaying in-page promotions that seem native to your website

This is a favorite of brands that don’t want to involve dev to make tweaks and optimizations to the pages on site. And the gist is that you can use this embedded state to display in-page promotions that seem native to your website theme. This means serving up on-brand and timely non-incentive offers based precisely on user behavior like scroll, scroll past a specific site element, or time on site for example. This one fits under this topic of personalization too because you can choose the embedded placement based on what you know about a visitor. If you know they typically exit after 3 pages then you’d probably want to save a “now or never offer” for later and not show too soon. This means your embedded experience could still have a subtle approach by showing as an in-page while also lending to the FOMO feeling at just the right time. 

02. Personalized product recommendations

• Product recommendations are available natively on most e-commerce platforms but can also be presented by apps that allow for more customization and tracking of recommendation performance. The algorithms that are used most by leading solutions are below and set the standard for evolved AOV-boosting strategies.
  • Upsell - Relevant products at a higher price
  • Cross-sell - Relevant products for each product category
  • Most-Viewed - Most viewed products for each product category
  • Most-Purchased - Most purchased products for each product category
  • Previously Viewed - Previously viewed products by current customer
  • Complete The Look - Accompanying products from the same collection
  • Current Cart Items - Products placed in the cart in the previous session
• Now you’ll combine the perfect product recommendation with a winning incentive to create an interaction that makes tons of sense and converts. 

03. Dynamic banners for continuous messaging

• Banners  are always a winner in my book. But their execution sometimes results in delays due to development resources that can’t keep up with changes in marketing campaigns. This is the point where you should find yourself a tool that allows you to showcase a banner based on segments or conditions like “if they’ve purchased or not before” so that you can present the best offer that gives you a chance at converting them during that same session. 

04. Geo-targeted messaging

• Geotargeted messaging deserves its own section due to how easy it is to deploy. The hard part is more about the way that you want to approach your shoppers from different regions. For example, someone who is not going to hit you hard if you cover their shipping would be the better segment, in terms of margins, to show an expedited shipping upgrade offer vs someone who is a bit more costly to deliver to. In the case of the more costly shipping, you can instead offer another more sustainable option that still delivers value.

05. Smart Frames

• Smart frames by Justuno are beautifully executed where just by recalling the pop-up you are served up the last place you left off in your pop-up experience. This allows you to stay out of the way while being available whenever the shopper wants. Usually, you’ll see a lead capture recalled upon tab click but smart frames allow you to avoid showing the same experience repeatedly. You’re able to pivot to a more conversion-focused strategy by presenting one of your non-incentive offers directly from the tab click to open up the last frame. Brands that are focused on this level of personalization love the ability to track clicks from different sources to understand which channels lead to engagement with incentives. Smart frames and tabs are especially perfect for mobile experiences due to their small size and are effective at creating a frictionless time on site. 

Non-Discount Strategies = Conversions that last

What you’ve just read through is a 3 step guide on using anything but a discount! An important takeaway is to consider your different segments and what offers will resonate best to address the pain points and fears they have. Looking for more insight on segments and targeting capabilities? Check out the Justuno tool for your free account to learn more about your shoppers to serve up the best on-site experience in the biz!