Discounts: An Overlooked Internet Marketing Tactic
June 27th, 2009 by Bob Bly
Internet buyers LOVE discounts, yet most info marketers don’t use them nearly enough.
A case in point: on 4/9/09, we sent an e-mail to my list offering one of my e-books at the cover price of $79.
It generated 32 orders and $2,528 in revenues — not great, not bad.
Thursday of this week we sent the identical e-mail to the same list but added a P.S. offering the book at $49 — a $30 savings — if they ordered by midnight Sunday.
While orders are still coming in, we have already sold 155 copies at $49 each, generating $7,625 in revenues so far.
Does it bother me to let people have a $79 product for only $49?
Of course not. What’s important is not profit per sale, but profit per e-mail blast … which the discounting tactic will more than triple before the weekend is over.
P.S. Of course, discounting works with products where you have a large enough margin to sustain it — and in the case of e-books, the margin is close to 100%.
I wouldn’t do this with my own services, because discounting would lower my revenue per hour.
While my supply of e-books is limitless, time is not: you only have so many hours in the day to work, and when you work for less per hour, you are working harder to make less money.
Who wants that?
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 7:17 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Actually what’s important is lifetime profit per client. Keeping the doors open to be the most helpful to each person brings the best results for everybody. For example, when somebody has a “Fire Sale” I unsubscribe them and tell them why. It makes them very angry to hear why I think Fire Sales are bad business.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Chas: you are making a common error: being guided by your personal preferences. YOU may unsubscribe when someone sends you a fire-sale e-mail, but let me assure you that you are a minority. When we offer a discount, our unsubscribe rate does not spike one iota, AND our sales increase substantially. Offering discounts actually INCREASES lifetime customer value, as customers love when you offer them a special bargain for being just that — a customer!
June 27th, 2009 at 9:50 am
This is actually a TOP technique of another famous millionaire marketer, I’ve got his famous course that outlines how to do “discounts” the right way.
The name of that marketer… Frank Kern.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
I agree, discounts are great for generating extra sales and upsells. Works very well for eBooks and other downloadable digital products. As Bob has pointed out, you are not decreasing your margin or reducing inventory.
Everyone loves a price break, especially in these tough times.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
[...] Discounts: An Overlooked Internet Marketing Tactic… [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
It’s important how well you market. Not all can buy market it as good as you do because you need a base to stand upon.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 am
discounts can work well but beware – if they appear to steep people may be scared away thinking the product has little value
July 5th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
[...] Discounts: An Overlooked Internet Marketing Tactic [...]
July 7th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Nice Post!
The Internet provides great opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but doing business online presents unique challenges and requires new skills. Per my experience search engine optimization would be the best practice to improve your online business.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
This style of marketing seems to be the new trend or maybe it’s an old principle. This is a similar strategy to what I am using in video marketing. I create short, catchy videos that lead viewers back to free offers or discounted offers. I accumulate a majority of my traffic from posting my videos free to http://www.Adwido.com and letting them help me target specific keywords to boost targeted traffic.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Many SEO companies claim that the SEO process can generate profitable traffic. I do not agree to this statement because I think that the issue is far more comprehensive and needs expertise from other professionals, persons who known more than merely the IT business
July 20th, 2009 at 5:18 am
The internet provides the many on line business. the SEO is the such a on line business. any who know about suffering to internet, that start his online business.
August 12th, 2009 at 5:01 am
I agree with you. The online business is the home based business. you may earn money on your home and part time.
August 18th, 2009 at 9:51 am
It is fact that most of the online buyers like offers, and they buy more if there is a discounted sale is offering by a website, compare to non discount sale offering by the same website, even though they hike the rates temporary and give them discount on that. There fore it is suggested to give discounts to increase sales on your website. It will be prove to be a success shot.
August 27th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Good Info,
Driving quality and targeted traffic to a website is the key to success for any online business. I think SEO is the best option to promote any business.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Hi
Yes you are right. As we are also having a marketing department so we can understand that what the client needs and what extra from our side we can offer. Discounts are best strategy for the business growth.
May 14th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
I completely agree about discounts when your clients truly benefit and it is a genuine offer, as you can see from what we are doing here: Daily Internet Marketing Savings. Thanks for posting the stats Bob. Very interesting.
February 10th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
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May 26th, 2012 at 9:05 am
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