How many sales or promotions are too many?

[tranguyen]

Howdy folks ✨

June is around the corner which means many businesses are gearing up for the mid-year sales.

That's why this week, @DinaLRosenberg wants to ask:

How many sales or promotions are too many?

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Have you always wondered how other business owners handle slow sales? If you have a Question of the Week you'd like to ask the Seller Community, share it with us on this thread!

[JUYBoutique20]

I don't have regular sales throughout the year...if I do a special sale/promotion it's usually for Black Friday or if I need to move my last of items.  When I first began my shop, I had another boutique owner tell me not to train my customers to expect sales/markdowns.  I do promotions to announce a new release or an event and I have a loyalty program that my customers love.

[Tech-repairs]

I love the idea of a loyalty program! 

[JUYBoutique20]

I honestly thought it would be a waste of time in the beginning, but when I announced it and people started earning enough points to redeem, they were soooo excited.

[mksavage]

@JUYBoutique20 We similarly were advised early on not to do too many promotions, or people start coming to you only when there's a promotion (kind of a "Groupon" mentality). We try to price our items fairly, taking into consideration the quality of our ingredients, the fact that they're made from scratch to order, etc., and then charge what we believe they're worth. We do have the Loyalty Program, and people love accumulating points, which is cool. Other than that, we do very few discounts/sales.

[JUYBoutique20]

Absolutely....I think when you have a sale constantly it takes away from the quality of your brand.  

[TravisRenLeathe]

Exactly! If you want cheap, go to Walmart.

[JUYBoutique20]

That's always been my motto....

[Stacelyn24]

That’s actually a pretty good question…never thought of it like that.  We usually run promotions around Prom, Mother’s Day/Father’s Day, Wedding Seasons….hell when the weather changes lol.  I own a nail studio so we keep up with the latest trends and run promotions such as the “Pumpkin Pie Pedicure” during the holidays…we don’t discount the service…just breaks up from the norm.  We usually have a complimentary adult beverage which compliments the pedicure (so maybe a spiced nutmeg).  

I think having different sales every day of the week might get to be too much to handle.  “Madness Monday” “Tickle Toes Tuesday” “Whatever You Want Wednesday” …..just made these up by the way lol 🙂

[ProsperityPools]

This doesn't really apply to our service-based business, however, we do offer an incentive program. If someone recommends our service, we give them one free week of service (for existing customers) or a $25 gift card for everyone else. This has been very successful for us, in fact, we've not spent hardly any money on advertising since we launched our business in 2016 and we've grown all organically through word-of-mouth referrals and/or just the magnets on our trucks. Networking is the best way to advertise!

[Jasweeney1]

I'm new to this app .I love your ideas. 

[ChapterII]

My used bookstore features budget friendly books, online and brick and mortar.  When shelves are full, I schedule a sale of 50% off inventory with few exceptions.  For holidays and special events, displays dedicated to the event are set up.

[koalas_boutique]

I sell supplies to other soap and bath bomb makers. and I will be honest i am horrible with posting sales. i try to and intend to but stuff happens and I don't often get a chance to post them. But I do some, like my anniversary/ birthday sale which are both about the same time. and an occasional pre holiday sale, I send out samples that would work on the next upcoming holiday projects for those that order X amount. However, I often feel bad because my really loyal, long term, high purchase customers often miss the sales. so Each January, I use Squares customer directory to download all my customers into excel and filter the top most recent customers by # of visits and amount spent. then i send the top X number of customers a coupon for that year, usually a wee bit more of a % then my sales. and this way i don't feel bad if they ordered just b4 or just after a sale. and they can use it anytime they need to. most of my orders come through those vs my sales. this ability to see how many times and how much my shoppers spend is just one of the many reasons i love square.

[PartyManiaMD]

We offer a pretty hefty rewards program of 10% back using Square loyalty, people either love it or don't care about it. In addition I'll do an email blast OR text blast once every 1-2 weeks. I refuse to be like most companies that send daily email blasts and our conversion rate is decent and unsubscribe rate is low.

When it comes to promotions I know that I "should" be jacking up prices and doing flashier sales but I hate that gimmick, I'll either survive or lose by having fair margins with a small amount of room for promotions.

It's kind of ironic because JC Penneys at one point tried to lower prices and get rid of promotions and customers hated it.

[sweetteacoffee]

We are a small local coffee shop. We focused on affordability right from the get go. With that said, we are not offering any sales, promos or loyalty options. For us to offer those, we would need to mark up prices and that is something we did not want to do. 

[YGIM]

I own a maid service and we’re in our 2nd year, so though I don’t have much experience I’m noticing that 2 sales per year is great for our customer base - between the beginning of spring and Memorial Day, and Black Friday. We offer a $25 referral bonus for both clients as well all year long and well as reoccurring service discounts and other cleaning specials.

[mansour462]

@tranguyen Thats a great question. I would go about it to look at your business goals and offer sales / promotion to achieve your goals.  The other part is to look what are your competitors doing. I personal think it comes down to testing to find the sweet spot. 

[Roxxgoose]

It's kind of ironic because JC Penneys at one point tried to lower prices and get rid of promotions and customers hated it

[BodyInBalance]

We have three main sellers. Massage, facials,and waxing. We'll do a promotion for one at a time. One month will be massage, the next facials, and the next waxing. Just alternate them.

[SlimeStudioLV]

I do a sale anytime business gets slow. So far its been once a month just to keep people engaged.

[Bronze_Palms]

I only offer promotions when I have new staff to welcome them into the salon. Then, we offer rebooking promos at checkout from there! But, we never run first time clients specials.