It won’t always be peak season. Your business’s sales function won’t always be a perpetual motion machine. Your product or service offering won’t always be an easy sell. Understanding the peaks and troughs that come with owning a business is key to knowing how to capitalise on the upward spikes and prepare for the leaner months.

At Six Circles, we’re champions of community building and the sustainable business benefits that come with it – and today’s post is all about sustainable sales tactics.

Special offers are a simple yet highly effective tool to have in your marketing arsenal ahead of off-peak periods for your business. Serving as an irresistible incentive for on-the-fence prospective customers and would-be repeat customers alike, the right offer can seal the deal any month of the year. Here, we’re laying out your options to help you find the right offer for your brand.

New customer offers

During proactive sales drives, onboarding new customers is generally priority number one. Incentivising prospective customers who are as yet unconvinced of the benefits of your product or service isn’t always an easy sell, though. The key is to create a sense of urgency, illustrating that, of all the times they could choose to invest their money in your brand, now is the most opportune time imaginable.

Try introducing an offer aimed exclusively at sweetening the deal when it comes to becoming a first-time customer. Whether it’s a percentage discount off their first order, a welcome freebie that comes with their first purchase or a one-time offer of free delivery regardless of their basket value, find a lure that leaves them in no doubt now is the time to join your customer base.

Customer retention offers

Every business will inevitably face its fair share of customer churn – but that’s not to say you should go down without a fight. Businesses offering pay-monthly services or subscriptions will be more than familiar with customer cancellations, but many of these attempts to break away from your business can be quashed with the help of the right customer retention offer.

Persuading a disenchanted customer of yours to stay won’t always be possible, especially if problems relating to your product or customer service are the cause of this disenchantment. However, if their reasons for leaving are financially motivated, it’s well worth offering a single-use voucher or limited-time product or service discount in the hopes that this show of good faith is reciprocated.

Email subscriber offers

A large and engaged mailing list is an extremely valuable asset for any business, particularly ecommerce brands whose customers often convert directly via monthly email marketing campaigns. As such, anything you can do to grow your subscriber base over time is a highly worthwhile endeavour – but potential subscribers sometimes need a little buttering up before they’re willing to hand over their all-important email address.

Wherever your email signup form appears across your company website, you can preface this form with a snippet of persuasive copy explaining the benefits of being a subscriber. Beyond this, though, you can further boost signup rates with a tailored offer that only comes as a reward for signing on the dotted line, so to speak.

Consider an exclusive voucher code that’ll be sent to their email address immediately upon subscribing – entitling them to free shipping, or 10% off their next order, or a limited edition add-on product, to name just a few of the possible options. Whatever the offer, the key is to make joining your mailing list the barrier to entry.

Limited-time offers

Whether it’s your summer sale extravaganza, Black Friday through Cyber Monday or the pre-Christmas rush, there’s nothing like a seasonal sale to get carts filled and orders made. There’s an undeniable sense of urgency that surrounds limited-time customer offers – and you can reap the benefits of a timely promotion at any time of year with an offer that’s tailored to the needs and interests of your audience.

Aside from the aforementioned peak seasons experienced by ecommerce businesses across the globe, there are countless other opportunities for you to make sure time is on your side, commercially speaking. You may want to build a limited-time discount or sitewide sale around an upcoming national holiday, current event or company anniversary, for example. The secret to success is giving your valued customers a timely heads-up and taking a liberal approach to sending countdown emails ahead of the big day.

Referral offers

The ultimate goal for virtually any business is to reach a point where new customers are constantly onboarding themselves and your outbound sales function is effective but ultimately unnecessary. Your best chance of reaching this coveted state of self-perpetuating sales is to launch a referral offer wherein existing customers benefit from converting their friends, family and acquaintances into new customers.

Particularly effective for businesses using a pay-monthly product or service model, referral programmes generally take the form of a discount or freebie offered to brand advocates who are sufficiently happy with your product or service that they’ll extol its virtues to their inner circle. Often, the new customer is also rewarded for climbing aboard – making offers like these a win-win-win situation, with all parties benefiting from this successful word of mouth advertising.

Loyalty offers

Loyalty is a virtue that businesses should be rewarding, particularly when it comes to long-standing customer relationships the likes of which your company couldn’t do without. Loyalty offers take various forms but can be reduced to the same sentiment: here’s a token of thanks for your continued custom.

Whether you give long-term customers an exclusive discount the next time they shop with you, give them access to a beta test of your new online feature, send a free gift to their shipping address or treat them to an online voucher they can redeem at their convenience, the key is to find a fitting reward they’re guaranteed to appreciate. There’s also the option to launch your own loyalty card scheme so that customers can actively earn loyalty points to spend as they wish (but, crucially, with your business).

It’s our company mission to help businesses connect with their communities. While offers are an undeniably valuable asset when it comes to converting prospective customers and rewarding loyalty, they’re just one piece of the community engagement puzzle. For everything else, there’s our state-of-the-art platform – get your free online demo by contacting our team today.