This case study was made anonymously with a global F500 global manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional products, present in more than 100 countries. Our client has recently launched four DTC brands, selling via their proprietary e-commerce platforms. We will refer to them as “the client” further in this case study. They needed a promotion engine that would fit their existing technology stack to enable them to run sales promotions on these four websites.
Key challenges
- Launching new DTC brands and building their e-commerce platforms from scratch.
- A need for a promotion engine that can power sales promotions.
- A need for a promotion engine that can be integrated easily with Segment, used as the main CDP.
"We know from experience that when you build this type of thing in-house, there's a lot of edge cases, a lot of permutations that you have to consider. Frankly, we didn't want to have to deal with it (building a promotion engine), both from a security and functionalities perspective.”
The client needed a solution that would cover their basic needs for promotion management without colossal cost and technology infrastructure overhead, but that would scale with them as they grow and offer additional functionalities if needed. One such functionality was quick integration with their existing technology stack, especially Segment, their primary Customer Data Platform (CDP).
This is why the client decided to use Voucherify, which offers pay-as-you-grow plans, covers basic promotion management needs, provides options to expand the sales promotions scope in the future, and has out-of-the-box integration with Segment.
“Setting up promotions with Voucherify was relatively easy. The longest piece of the integration was testing, making sure that the promotional logic we set up in Voucherify is properly applied in e-commerce.”
The initial integration with Voucherify was exceptionally fast for the client – it took only a couple of days. Synchronizing the data with Voucherify, thanks to Segment, was easy. The most time-consuming part of building their integration was testing which has prolonged the time-to-market to several weeks. Further integrations with other client’s brands took even less time. One of them took less than a week to complete.
The client uses four different types of campaigns. The first type are product-specific campaigns that offer percentage or dollar-off discounts on the product price. Then, site-wide promotions for special occasions like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The third type covers acquisition-focused campaigns and, finally, retention-focused campaigns.
Product campaigns work great when the client wants to sell more of a specific product, whether it’s due to seasonality, inventory status, or an ongoing partnership. For example, one of their brands launched a partnership-based campaign with a third party brand that sells complementary products. They have offered a shared product bundle sold at a discounted price.
Site-wide campaigns usually include a percentage or dollar amount off the whole order or a BOGO promotion. Such promotions are launched on significant, internationally- or nationally recognized dates like national holidays. They drive a massive percentage of the client’s revenue and have a considerable impact on their marketing budget.
Then there are acquisition-focused campaigns which consist of many types, such as:
- Welcome offers.
- Newsletter subscription incentives.
- Unique promo codes distributed via paid media (PPC, social media).
- Tiered offers, like spend $50 get 5% off, spend $100 get 10% off, spend $200 get 20% off.
The client distributes offers via multiple channels:
- PPC.
- Social media ads.
- Site-wide banners.
- Affiliate marketing with influencers and partners.
- Email (especially for retention-focused campaigns).
- SMS.
The promotions are distributed either using Voucherify directly (with the provided integrations) or indirectly using other channels and importing unique code batches generated in Voucherify.
The client applies various campaign limitations to optimize promotional ROI. Their merchandising team calculates the promotion basis, unit economics and what the marketing and sales can implement as a promotion, and what offers are off-limits. They know their margins well and know precisely how big a discount can be offered per individual product.
Here are the types of limitations (validation rules) the client uses in Voucherify campaigns:
- Excluding certain products from site-wide promotions.
- Applying certain promotions to specific customer segments.
- Minimum order value to qualify for a specific promotion.
One interesting use case from the client is giving a single promo code to a customer, but with certain conditions attached. Customers can use the code more than once but only in predefined scenarios. For example, the client can allow customers who have placed at least one order above $100 to use a promo code on two consecutive orders but only if the first one is again above $100.
“Tying all these validation rules together is big for us because it requires a lot of “dancing and handholding” between various data points and systems on the backend, pulling in a lot of data pieces. Thanks to Voucherify, we can launch personalized promotions at scale.”
The client is planning to scale with Voucherify both vertically and horizontally, using it for other brands and other types of acquisition and retention campaigns.
