Defining Deal-of-the-day campaigns – what?
Deal-of-the-day, daily deal, flash sales, one deal a day promotions type are part of e-commerce business models in which a website offers a single product for sale for a specific period of time. These promotional campaigns are not a new concept. They require a well-planned process that involves marketing, distribution and customer support teams. In the first place, potential buyers receive these online offers through email or social networks. Then, they receive the product or book the service. As you can imagine, this approach to achieving quick sales can be used in many industries and not only in retail. For example, Spas use it to bring in new clients, and Hotels to cover last-minute cancellations or increase bookings in their low season.
In our experience, this type of marketing campaigns can have a positive impact on business revenue. As a matter of fact, they can support your business growth by presenting your services/products to new clients.
How can a contact centre support deal-of-the-day marketing campaigns?
Our contact centre supports multiple marketing campaigns for our clients. Arema Connect services (from telephone answering service to social media including e-mail handling) allow marketing departments to launch campaigns and manage the increase of customer enquiries timely.
Example of marketing campaign support services provided in the past includes:
- Purchase line for advertisement campaigns: Ads on TV can impact on the number of people buying products. We experience an increase of 600% phone calls after ads are showed on TV.
- Management of loyalty & rewards programmes: enquiries about points, or how to redeem them – are our bread and butter.
- Booking of pre-purchased online deals: check availability, capture details, book and provide confirmations. Easy steps to
- Customer support (e-mail & live chat) for a deal site: booking, enquiry about deadlines, process refunds…
Over the years, we have achieved a wealthy experience in this area, which can translate into the following 4 tips.
Deal-of-the-day tips for marketers
Planning is everything for the success of this type of marketing campaigns from a customer perspective.
1. Test and track your customer journey
Don’t think that this ‘promotional opportunity is a quick sale’. You should avoid the temptation. Before you launch this campaign, test it. Steps need to be well designed, and evaluated to identify potential issues. Make your customer journey easy and they will repeat their business with you. Remember to set key performance indicators (KPI) for each step – eg. How many visitors in your website? How many buy your product or service? Do they share the campaign with their social network? How many buyers contacts your customer support? How long does it take the delivery? Testing and tracking will help you to reduce mistakes, evaluate your success rate and learn for the next campaign.
2. Carefully manage your Database
The deal-of-the-day campaign will allow you to capture the information of new clients. You should ensure that their information is captured safely and the process complies with the new GDP regulation. Therefore, you should at least… ask for their contentment to use it for future promotional campaigns, don’t assume anything, keep it accurate and provide them with the ability to unsubscribe. Remember that you will share this information with your warehouse, distributors, and contact centre team – so ensure that the data is carefully managed and you are the data controller.
3. Align your key players: Marketing, Distributor and Customer Care Team
In your customer journey, each defined step will have a key player or leader:
– The marketing department will ensure that the campaign is well-promoted and your website has all the information required.
– Warehouse / Couriers (if you sell products) or your in-house team (if you provide services) will ensure that delivery is smooth and enjoyable for your clients.
– Customer care team will answer enquiries, troubleshoot any problem and capture clients information
Information needs to flow between each key player to guarantee customer satisfaction. You should ensure that there is a platform or a process designed to share information. Furthermore, all your team should share the same key values in order to provide homogeneous client support.
4. Keep your customer representatives updated at all time
Customer representatives in your contact centre will be the first protocol to answer any enquiries and solve any problems. Therefore, your marketing department should make an additional effort to brief the team about the service / product provided. Information should include characteristics and benefits of your offer as the contact centre will support clients before, during and after sales. Additionally, your warehouse and courier should update the contact centre team with any delivery issues or service limitations to provide accurate information to your clients.
When to launch a deal-of-the-day campaign?
You may be thinking about launching a promotional campaign now for multiple reasons:
- You have too much stock
- Your product is fast approaching out of date
- End of season (e.g. Christmas, Easter…)
- Your business is just slow at the moment
- You have an aggressive marketing strategy
Generally speaking, it is always good to launch a deal-of-the-day campaign. You should ensure that you have the right team and available resources. We can support your in-house customer support team to manage overflow interactions or fully manage your contact centre requirements. Just ask for a quotation!
