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The Promotions Growth

Framework

Build your promotions strategy and unlock growth

at any scale

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 “Having a promotions strategy is a no-nonsense way to
build and grow at any scale.” - Christoph Gerber, CEO &
Founder, Talon.One

Introducing a ‘promotions-first’ mindset can make sure you are looking for value
at every level of the funnel — and ensure you are maximizing acquisition,
engagement and retention.

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Promotions for
every occasion
Choosing the right promotions
depends on your business’s growth
and objectives — but businesses of
any size still need promotions.

57% Percentage of organizations that say implementing

key digital technologies is critical to their digital
business. - Forrester / Accenture

46%
46% The percentage that coupon users spent at checkout,
on average, over regular shoppers. - Deal Nerd

Percentage of consumers that say they’re only likely to

79% use a promotion if it’s tailored to previous interactions.
- Marketo

The promotions growth framework 3

The promotions
growth framework
Our framework helps marketers
develop and evolve a strategy for
growing their customer base using
promotions.

● The framework is intended to scale as you grow, so it can be applied at any stage
during a company’s lifecycle — and to many different business and financing
models. The different layers and elements of the stack become more relevant at
different stages of the business.

● Over the course of the rest of this guide, we will give tips on applying the framework
to support your growth.

The promotions growth framework 4

Finding your
growth phase
To know how to plan, you should
know where you are in terms of
growth.

Consider the kinds of questions you ask yourself day to day — an easy way to work out your
pain points is to write down the questions that are always on your mind.

Longer term, there’s a benefit to figuring out what kind of issues you’re having — they’re a
good indicator of the kind of problems you are likely to run into.

The startup phase

● Can we secure enough customers to become viable?
● Can our services compete with our competitors’?
● How can we expand our sales base?
● Do my team have the capacity or expertise to take on more projects?

The growth phase

● Should we start hiring specialists?
● How do I maintain multi-year client relationships?
● How should I be reinvesting profits into my business?

The maturity phase

● How do I free up my team from routine work to focus on growth goals?
● Have I lost touch with my core business?
● How do I keep customer sentiment high?

The promotions growth framework 5

Implementing the
5 pillars
Before picking specific promotional
techniques, work out what your main
campaign objective is.
Customer acquisition
Customer acquisition is a huge cost center
for everyone, but especially so for smaller,
growing businesses. Here’s an idea of how to
apply the framework at different levels.
The startup phase
By offering discounts on first purchases, you
can make an enticing offer to potential
customers. In the very initial stages of
business, it’s possible to use a simple code
generator but by using a promotions engine,
you can increase urgency and therefore
conversion rate.
The promotions growth framework
Casper, the mattress company offers a
time-limited coupon to new users, with a
countdown clock embedded in the top
banner making the offer’s transient nature
clear (see image below).
This offer pushes the new user towards
conversion and by introducing urgency, the
coupon incentivizes the customer down the
funnel more quickly. This is a simple tactic
that companies of all sizes can adopt to
increase their customer conversion rate and
sales revenue.
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 Growth phase: Boosting growth with
affiliate referrals

In the growth phase, marketers are focused on expanding their customer base at scale.
Creating programs with incentives for people to become advocates for your brand is a
‘win-win’ situation and helps drive new business. For a minimal cost you can get a big sales
boost, meaning better return on investment (ROI). That’s why 81% of brands use affiliate
marketing. Here’s how Lazada used affiliate schemes to become SEA’s #1 ecommerce app.

“Affiliate marketing is a high-value, low-risk strategy proven to drive

sales and awareness for brands and revenue for publishers,” - Adam Weiss,
Senior Vice President of Rakuten Affiliate Network.

How the Lazada affiliate program works

The promotions growth framework 7

 The maturity phase: Ensuring
continued relevance with retargeting
offers

Dynamic retargeting
Mature companies in developed markets This works best for ecommerce companies
usually have broken out of their niche, and — and works best if it’s more specific. Rather
ensuring continued relevance while holding than offering a coupon for running shoes,
off challengers becomes the focus. imagine if you offered a coupon for pink
Nike running shoes with arch support.
With good brand recognition, customers are
likely to check your site first, to check out
what is available. But some customers won’t
immediately convert, and will return to
Google or other sites to continue
comparison shopping. This is a great time to
approach them with retargeting ads
containing discount codes or coupons.

The goal? Making your products and pricing

so irresistible to customers that they stop
shopping around and start making
purchases.

An advanced technique is to create

individual dynamic coupons or offers
targeted based on the user’s behavior.

The promotions growth framework 8

Expanding your
offering
After examining how the pillars work
vertically, here’s how to keep the
framework in mind horizontally

Sales incentives
Devising the relevance of sales promotions
is dependent on a few factors:

● Business sector
● Product selection
● Brand image

For example, a luxury brand with high list In the growth phase, bundling items is a
prices is more likely to be negatively affected very smart tactic to increase revenue per
by frequent promotions, as it reduces the user, as devising attractive bundles can
perceived value of their offering. increase the average order value.

At the startup phase, blanket discounts are In the maturity phase, abandoned cart
sufficient, with a 70% discount on offers and webhooks are a good way to
out-of-season items a successful tactic for ensure personalized discounts or
many companies. retargeting.

The promotions growth framework 9

Engagement & retention Customer success
Customer retention can be a key Customer success-oriented promotions help
differentiator, and is usually one of the first businesses keep their customers happy by
KPIs that marketers focus on improving in educating customers on how to use the
startups. product, or by smoothing over poor
experiences.

Acquiring new
Businesses at any size can benefit from
customers costs five implementing similar techniques as part of

times more than their promotions strategy. Offering discounts

to try a new feature can help adoption.
retaining existing ones.
Customer success operations and
Promotions for engagement and retention
promotional techniques can also be
focus on building a more human
triggered by customer service agents or
relationship with customers. This primarily
events. These events include:
happens through:

● Customer feedback or complaints

● Personalized offers
● Inventory/stock levels
● Personalized rewards
● Service disruptions
● Personalized messages and
communications
Any business can set up customer
success-oriented promotions, but they’re
Personalization allows businesses to connect
best suited to businesses with high traffic
with customers in a way that fosters a long
and longer customer lifecycles.
term relationship.

Customer engagement and retention Use customer success

techniques aren’t just applicable to more promotions to protect
mature businesses. Businesses at any
growth stage can benefit from increased
your brand and manage
brand image and better relationships with customer expectations.
customers.

The promotions growth framework 10

Reporting & optimization
Promotional techniques can be set up to aid New sales channels can open up important
reporting and optimization too. This helps new lines of revenue. This is why they’re an
businesses maximize the return on important consideration for any business
investment of their promotional campaigns. running promotional campaigns.

It’s important to be able to attribute a Third party integrations

specific promotional campaign to sales and
Third party integrations bring added
revenue because it allows you to evaluate
functionality to business software stacks.
the value it brings to your business. Likewise,
Composable commerce systems comprise
being able to A/B test promotion or layout
separate platforms for different aspects of
variations allows you to optimize your
functionality. Where Talon.One provides
promotions towards specific goals. This is
promotions, other platforms provide
something that every business can benefit
notifications, payments, store frontend, etc.
from, but some may not have the time or
resources to prioritise. It tends to be a
With third party integrations, businesses can
feature of more advanced promotional
make their promotional campaigns much
campaigns run by more mature businesses.
more impactful.

Channels Picking and prioritizing the right third party

The mix of channels used by any given
business is largely dependent on their own
business model and sales strategy. Some
businesses sell online only, while others stick
to their roots in in-store retail.
integrations requires reflection on your own
business objectives and current capabilities.
Without this you risk wasting time and
money on unnecessary software.

The promotions growth framework 11

Industry examples
Businesses should use multiple
promotional techniques to build their
optimal campaign.

Startup ecommerce marketplace Established luxury brand

Objectives:
● Build hype and anticipation around
the launch of the new site
● Attract new customers across a broad
range of segments
Objectives:
● Prioritize excellent customer service
● Make customers feel valued and show
them that they are appreciated as
individuals

Strategy: Strategy:
● Pre-launch initiatives to encourage ● VIP deals and rewards that are
pre-orders and immediate sales from individually tailored to each
day one customer’s preferences
● Bundle deals to introduce customers ● Promotions that sync around other
to products from a variety of events going on in the customers’
departments lives

The promotions growth framework 12

Developing your
promotions in tiers
Build your promotions in tiers to get
maximum efficiency at your stage of
business/promotions growth.

For effective promotional campaigns, you Tier 1 promotional campaigns are a good
need to consider the size of your business. starting point for smaller businesses and
those that have never run their own digital
Tier 1 (the startup phase): Simple promotional campaigns. This is because:
promotional campaigns aimed at one main
business objective (customer acquisition, ● They are easier to set up and maintain
sales, customer engagement/retention etc.). ● They allow businesses to test
promotion variations
Tier 2 (the growth phase): Promotional ● They offer a direct solution for specific
campaigns that also incorporate features business objectives
aimed at secondary objectives (customer
success, reporting & optimization, etc.). Tier 2 promotional campaigns are more
applicable to businesses that have prior
Tier 3 (the maturity phase): Promotional experience with digital promotions, a larger
campaigns that meet tier 2 criteria, and customer base, or more resources to
make use of additional channels and/or third dedicate to customer success/campaign
party integrations. monitoring.

Tier 3 promotional campaigns require

experience setting up more complex
campaign rules, plus ready-to-use
integrations and alternate channels. This
requires higher campaign budgets and a
more complex promotional strategy to be
successful.

The promotions growth framework 13

Talon.One’s
solution
The Promotion Engine allows you to
tailor loyalty programs as much, or as
little as you need to.

Setting up flexible and personalized

campaigns across channels is quick and
simple using Talon.One’s Campaign
Manager. Our headless, API-first platform
can be integrated alongside a huge variety
of business software to create a custom
solution for any business.
With the Promotion Engine you can adapt
the inputs and outcomes of your campaigns
to meet your current business goals, and
adjust them accordingly using the wide
variety of customization options.
Many promotion services are restrictive in
their customizability and the number of
integration options they offer.
At Talon.One we understand how important
these options are when it comes to creating
promotional campaigns that provide value
to your business.
We don’t limit the functionality of our
software, because we understand that the
ability to personalize is key to building and
running successful promotional campaigns,
whether you’ve opted for referrals, coupons,
loyalty programs or all of the above.

Book a demo online today and discover how to

build your loyalty program with Talon.One.

The promotions growth framework 14

 The World’s Most Powerful Promotion Engine
Create and deploy creative and targeted campaigns using
any of your customer and live session data.

MAKE YOUR PROMOTIONS POSSIBLE

promotions@talon.one

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