While all three can offer a price reduction, the respective advantages are:
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Offers: are always associated with a given Marketing Campaign and allow you to view ROI with a single report.
-
Discounts: offer sales staff flexibility on the fly – discounts do not have to be set up in advance.
-
Sales promotions: are applied equally across all sales of a given item
|
|
Discounts |
Sales Promotion |
Offers |
|
Set up in advance |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Price change is automatically applied |
No - required a change on the pricing screen |
Yes |
No - requires a change on the pricing screen |
|
Prices tracked to a sales promotion |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Prices tracked to a marketing promotion (what brought the customer in) |
No |
No |
Yes - as long as the offer is checked off in the grid |
|
What reports are used to measure ROI? |
Sales Discounts |
Promotion Analysis Report |
Lots of options. |
|
How can it be limited? |
By salesperson through the user of discount permissions |
By store in the setup, otherwise, it is applied equally |
By not opting into the offers that are presented no the customer profile screen. |
Can I use Offers in Combinations with Sales Promotions or Discounts?
It is possible to use an Offer in conjunction with a Sales Promotion or Discount if a quicker cash wrap process is desired – but viewing reports become more complex. Since this guide is mostly concerned with the standard marketing process which would use Offers fully, this is an abbreviated workflow if you wish to investigate this method further:
-
Create the Offer and Campaign as indicated in this guide.
-
Create Discount reasons with the same name as the Offer.
Use these reports to get information:
-
Sales Discounts: Answers how much was discounted in total and was the total discount higher than the cost to convert the customer from a lead.
-
Cost per Inquiry: Answers how many times a campaign schedule has run, number of sales, amount of total sales, and conversion rates from inquiry to sale.
-
Sales by Ad Code: Answers how many orders by Ad Code (still tracked in the Customer Profile ‘Interest Tab’) and with the assumption that Interest categories on the Profile page are comparable to Sales Discount reasons.