What Promotions did you use in 2012?

I came across this graph in the March issue of Direct Commerce magazine and just had to share it with you!

It’s shows what promotions were being put on the front cover of Mail Order catalogues in 2011 and 2012 – month by month. How does it stack up to what you were doing?

Whilst every business wants to be a bit different and promotions are a way to do it – there’s no point in bring different if it means you’re missing out on some great marketing! Mail Order businesses do a great deal of testing, so we can pretty comfortably take it that these trends reflect what customers are responding well to:

• Sales and Discounts (blue line) are the most popular – peaking at the “normal” seasonal sale times (June and Dec/Jan), but are much less popular in late 2012 than 2011.
• Free Delivery (red line) is growing, but still only on about 20% of catalogues
• Free Gifts (green line) are dying out, and are far less popular in the second half of the year

What should you now be testing? Or building into your marketing plan?