Offers/promos that don't end

[S a m]

I know there are laws about running special offers in the sense that you can’t say a price has been reduced without first selling the product for a higher price.

What’s the deal on promotions?

Say, to boost conversions, we ran an implied time limited promotion that never really finished… such as “buy X in $month and get Y free”. However, come next month, its still a valid offer (where $month is the current month).

It’s not saying “offer ends on Z” nor is it claiming to be a lower price than previously, but are there any rules or legal things to watch out for when running such an offer?

Many Thanks,
Sam

[JustinP1]

As long as what you offer makes sense then you can of course repeat it as much as you want.

There is no reason why you can't offer the same thing month after month. In practical terms though if you do this too much unless people love it it may not do you many favours. All you will be doing is pandering to the same customers each time who may or may not rebuy.

The offshoot of that is that if the product is always BOGOF or similar it then devalues it for the rest of the time and when it is full price people just think you have increased the prices. The sofa or double-glazing trade do this a lot, basically inflate prices just to be able to discount them.

The only law around this area would be if you were misrepresenting what you were offering in some way. I would say from what you have said you are pretty safe.

[S a m]

Thanks Justin, appreciated.

[Simpo Two]

Or another way might be to add in some free stuff worth £x?

[JustinP1]

Simpo Two said:

Or another way might be to add in some free stuff worth £x?

Yeah, that costs less too.

What I have found is that giving away random stuff is weak, as unless the customer really wants the 'free stuff' all you are doing is shafting your bottom line. As with all of these things, the ability to check how successful the promotion is over 'standard' prices is essential to make sure you are not just proverbially 'urinating in the wind'.

If you can personalise the free stuff you are giving away, this is by far the most powerful thing. Plus also you can cherry pick what to offer from the customers previous purchases. It will take a bit more time but will be far, far more effective.

[S a m]

The offer is "Order during November and get Y months for the price of X, saving $z per user!"

It's one of our subscription based software products.

I think it works well, plus we get an on-going subscription anyway, we just wait a little longer for the next payment. I was just checking that we weren't running a risk of getting into trouble over keeping it running. People soon pick up on the fact the offer keeps running, but by then the chances are they have only known about it for a week or so, and will buy it before the offer runs out. It will change eventually, just for now its working well.

[JustinP1]

S a m said:

The offer is "Order during November and get Y months for the price of X, saving $z per user!"

It's one of our subscription based software products.

I think it works well, plus we get an on-going subscription anyway, we just wait a little longer for the next payment. I was just checking that we weren't running a risk of getting into trouble over keeping it running. People soon pick up on the fact the offer keeps running, but by then the chances are they have only known about it for a week or so, and will buy it before the offer runs out. It will change eventually, just for now its working well.

Legally thats fine, all you are doing is offering the same thing.

The idea I would maybe pursue is to catch people when they are making the buying decision. So, if they have just said yes to say 3 months for the price of two, if you ring them and offer them say 12 months for the price of 8 *for today only* you will get a pretty high conversion rate.

This is of course dependant on how you do it and the product, but the dynamics of it will generally work.