Promotions and Promotional Campaigns in D2C Channels

Promotions and promotional campaigns in D2C sales channels have their own peculiarities in comparison to offline promos. In a past article, we learned how the trade promo differed from a consumer promo and highlighted the main features of effective promotional campaigns. Today we will deal with their practical application in D2C channels.

Branding and online promotions, especially with multiple sales channels, require a high level of organization, an appropriate technology base, and particularly a flexible and well-established promotion and product management system (PIM or Product Information Management).

Promotions in D2C channels can be divided into several main types:

Direct discount: applicable for specific items or on all purchases in the store. Such actions are most popular, for example, during holidays.
Discount when buying several items: for example, when purchasing two items, a third is free or at a significant discount.
The progressive scale of discounts: depends on the amount of the order, and it encourages consumers to make additional and more expensive purchases.
Hidden discounts that are not obvious on the product page and calculated at checkout. The use of this type of discount allows sellers to offer products at the RRP (recommended retail price), keeping its value for the consumers, but at the same time, the seller can then offer discounts to specific buyers.
Loyalty programs include an additional discount provided to regular customers, registered users, mailing subscribers, etc.
Universal gifts can effectively stimulate demand. The simplest case is a gift from the organizers to a customer when a predetermined amount is spent. You could also give the buyer several gift options.
Gifts to add to a specific product (complementary goods, accessories, etc.). This option is more complicated technically but expresses care for the end consumer.
Random discounts (gift from the brand) create a feeling of an unexpected holiday, introducing fun into the shopping experience.
Discounts for the payment method or delivery encourage the buyer to choose mutually beneficial checkout and fulfillment conditions. For example, the buyer is much less likely to cancel the order with online prepayment than when paying upon receipt.

When planning and managing a campaign, it is essential to consider the type of promotion, its timing and terms, and conditions for discounts and bonuses. It is also necessary to coordinate the new campaign with current promotions. An equally important aspect is the effective reporting of promotional conditions to end-users.

There are many ways to inform customers about promotions; we will list only the most popular:

Advertising on third-party platforms such asadvertising exchanges, thematic sites that are popular with bloggers, etc.
Advertising landing pages placed on a dedicated website, the company’s website, marketplaces, or other partner platforms.
Banners and notifications on the online store’s home page, in the catalog, mobile apps, and on marketplaces.
Mailings to regular customers to announce new promotions.
Contextual offers are visible under certain conditions and at a particular purchase stage, such as a discount offer when choosing the payment method that appears at the checkout.

These promotions require setting up many parameters for accurate operation and display in the online store, marketplaces, and mobile applications. For example, one SKU (Stock Keeping Unit, commodity position) can participate in several promotions, which can cause difficulties when using the standard box solutions for online stores.

The Syntes PIM platform helps to simplify the organization of promotional campaigns thanks to a user-friendly interface; the graph data model bypasses the technical limitations of multidimensional relationships within the database.

The Syntes PIM platform helps to simplify
the organization of promotional campaigns

Syntes, an international company, develops a next-generation MDM (Master Data Management) and PIM (Product Information Management) cloud platform and provides brands and manufacturers with services for creating, managing and automating D2C (Direct-to-Customer) sales and marketing channels. Syntes solutions and services are used by the world’s leading brands and manufacturers of consumer and business products such as Razer, Scarlett, Pantone, X-Rite, AVerMedia and others. Syntes is a registered trademark of Syntes, Inc.

Mentioned trademarks and company names are registered trademarks of their respective owners.