Unsuccessful Promotions: Consumers Are Wiser Than You Think…

With the constant evolution of the interactive marketing industry and the ever-present need for newer, more creative ideas for online promotions, more time is spent in the concepting than strategic planning. In doing strategic planning, the marketer is able to envision the campaign from multiple angles-- including the consumer, often catching glitches before they become a problem.

Without proper strategy in place, prior to promotion's execution, a company's return on the campaign can drop dramatically. One example of this occurred when advertisers decided to offer incentives in the form of discounts to online shoppers who abandoned their shopping cart. It only took a short matter of time until consumers would purposely abandon their carts to obtain the discount—this obviously resulted in a profit loss for the businesses providing the discount program.

These results also alter the thinking of marketers who utilize coupon-based incentives to dormant consumers, this according to a clickz.com article, “tells a consumer to ‘lay low’ until they receive their coupons.” Bottom line-- consumers are smart and the incentive you utilize for an online promotion must be clearly thought out to obtain the right results and increase your return on investment.