Special offers may speed things up

I wrote last week that retail sales were soft across all categories: food, grog, flat panel TVs, mobiles and clothes. This is the case even with significant TV and print advertising campaigns launching. Well, things may be about to change.

As the new week dawned, many retailers looked at their daily sales from the weekend and preceding week, fed the information into the marketing machine and adjusted their marketing communication strategies to adopt some short-term tactics.

Some realised that although the big and strategic decision to book media was right, they were still waiting to see results. Until these results began to filter through, a few guerrilla tactics were needed to get things moving, to entice us shoppers into stores that we haven’t visited for several weeks now. The most innovative of them all have begun reaching for email marketing, social media and viral means to create footfall.

In the space of one day, staff within my business sitting at their desks in offices in Sydney and Melbourne received offers via email from six different retailers all offering short-term, high discount offers.

How short-term and how deep a discount?

Well, you will get 20% off in Kikki.k’s ‘secret sale’ and 25% off everything at Witchery and Nine West. That’s a deep discount, in a time bound offer, that is compelling enough to create footfall. Oh, and no small print either.

Over at Just Jeans, there is 40% off ALL stock for one week only and again very little small print. Again, this is a deep discount, in a time bound offer that is compelling enough to create footfall.

Sadly the 30% off ALL stock from Dan Murphys was a hoax, but boy did it create awareness!

Most compelling of all however, is that these offers arrived in my inbox, unsolicited, but very much welcomed as they came from people I know well and work with.

They took the time to “let me into” a special offer which had arrived in their own email inbox, during working hours from another friend or colleague. They came from trusted sources and are very good deals that have now gone viral. You can guarantee they are being shared on Facebook.

Can I suggest that these social media driven tactics with deep discounts will go a long way to clear the log jam created by a combination of an interest rate hike and bad weather down the east coast. Both of these factors have slowed retail sales considerably for the past two weeks.

Christmas just got a little closer.

In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.