What comes to your mind when thinking about a marketing offer? It might be something like this:

10% OFF ON SUMMER SALE

10% OFF ON FIRST ORDER

10% OFF ON ACCESSORIES

10% OFF FOR MEMBERS ONLY

Designing Effective Offers

There are a lot of concepts on designing effective offers. We can see offer as a trade, where parties agree in exchanging one thing in return of other. In this case there are 3 things to consider:

(1) You want something in return of your offer

You might want to design offers to maximize sales; maybe to acquire new customers, up-sell products with additional services, cross-sell with accessories. But you might also want to increase customer engagement with your offer.

First purchase discounts will introduce new customers to your business but will also increase your Customer Acquisition Costs.

(2) You should offer something that customers desire

Your offer can be products/services with some discount, in pre-sale, free shipping or with other advantages. But you might also want to offer relevant content through a loyalty program.

We know it’s more cost effective to sell new products to existing customers than to new customers. Cross-selling and up-selling offers can help maximizing revenue, like selling accessories on top of the main product.

(3) Your offer will probably not be applicable for everyone

You will probably target customers based on their interest (e.g. Products that are bought together) or their stage on the sales funnel (e.g. First Purchase, Members only).

Using offers with a registration step is also a good strategy to find qualified leads. You will be able to share specific content based on customer’s interests.

Using Coupons

GET $10 OFF ON SUMMER SALE – Coupon: SUMMER10OFF

Offers can often be combined with a coupon code for redemption. This will be very important with e-commerce offers and can also be used on other sales channels.

There are many pros in using coupons and offers:

• Effective offers can drive customers to your business.
• Offers can help introducing new products and increasing awareness.
• Offers and coupons can drive next purchase and build loyalty.
• Accelerate sale on specific products.
• Nurture interest with targeted offers.
• Using coupons with limited time help giving the urgency to finish the order.

There are some drawbacks too:

• Offers with discounts will Lower Profit on sale and Increases Customer Acquisition Cost.
• With recurrent coupons, customers may wait for coupons to finish orders.

Increase on Customer Acquisition Costs can balance with return in future sale and Customer Lifetime Value. It’s important to define a strategy that works for your business.

Offers in SAP Marketing Cloud

Offers can be maintained directly from Manage Offers app or import these offers (and any assigned coupons) into SAP Marketing using the OData offer import service.

With Offers you can maintain information regarding:

• Eligibility: Assign static Target Groups with eligible consumers.
• Marketing Location: Where offer is valid
• Products and Categories: Products and Product Categories related to the offer.
• Coupon: Coupon codes to use the offer.
• Offer content: Image URL to be used on external web pages to advise and explain the offer

SAP Marketing Cloud works strictly as a distribution system for offers and coupons created and maintained by users in an external system, such as SAP Commerce. All price calculation and coupon redemption is handled by the external system, not SAP Marketing.

SAP Marketing Cloud allows you to use Offer Recommendation Algorithms to present relevant offers to your contacts.

Building Offer Recommendation Scenarios

Build Offer Recommendation Scenarios to find the most relevant Offers to the consumer. These recommendations can be requested based on the Products on Shopping Cart, for example.

This guide helps you configuring recommendation models based on Eligible Offers and Items bought together.

Using Offer Recommendation on a Web Page

SAP Marketing Cloud has recommendation model templates to help suggesting relevant Offers to customers. Offer Recommendations can be consumed via OData API.

Offer Recommendations will return a list of offers based on contact profile. You can also Preview a Model in Manage Recommendations App. Scores will be provided based on the recommendation algorithm.

Using Offers in Email Campaigns

SAP Marketing Cloud allows using Offer Blocks when designing Emails. These blocks allow you to dynamically use the content and information maintained in Offers. You can also design a Personalized email with Offer Recommendations, providing customers the offers that are more relevant to them.

Conclusion

Effective offers can drive customers to your business and nurture interest in your products/services. Analyze if Customer Acquisition Cost is influenced with your offers and make sure you have return from your offers.

SAP Marketing Cloud offers Analytics Stories for Offer Management. Explore Offer Preview Story to have an overview of offers that are planned during the next 3 months and analyzes the planned offers. Explore Offer Success Story to have an overview of the offer success and compares the success according to various criteria.

For more Analytics Stories, watch this webinar on Taking the Reins on Revenue – Measuring Marketing Campaign Performance.