topic Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager? in Selling

Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 30 May 2015 02:14:35 GMT

It appeared yesterday in Manage My Store, had a bunch of T&Cs to accept, but there seems to be a relatively diverse range of options for offering discounts, eg $ or % discounts for a certain spend, or number of items in order, and while no customer-exclusive coupon code generator type thing (which I would have loved), you can create a semi-exclusive offer, via a link that activates the promo (eg if you have a website, or send out an email to select people, the offer is activated for them if they click on the unique link).

The T&Cs mentioned immediate payment is required for items to be eligible which puts a bit of a spanner in the works for me if that remains - theoretically, immediate payment should be fine on my items.... If eBay, the cart and the app worked like it should. But alas, since they often don't, I can see it increasing the number of times people checkout multiple items individually, and that already happens almost daily (promos might help increase people using the cart, but).

Anyway, thus far I've just had a quick squiz at the kind of promos you can create, just thought I'd put it out there plus see if anyone has any other experience with it, hints, tips, found glitches, etc. 🙂

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

motherbear2003 — Sat, 30 May 2015 02:36:07 GMT

The immediate payment has now been dropped 🙂 I have one of my categories in it as a trial for two weeks, buy 3 get one free. So far it seems to have resulted in an increase of traffic however no sales as yet; I only added it Thursday night so it could be a little early.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 30 May 2015 02:43:03 GMT

@motherbear2003 wrote:
The immediate payment has now been dropped 🙂

Oh sweet, thanks 😄 I'll have to take another look and see what kind of deal I can come up with to offer so I can give it a go.

Hopefully you'll see some positive results soon 🙂

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

thecatspjs — Sat, 30 May 2015 03:19:59 GMT

bout time .....

Just put it on for my buy 3 get 1 free offer

Fairly straight forward as far as I could see

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 30 May 2015 04:23:22 GMT

Did you find it took a little while for the banners promoting the offer to appear on listings? I've set up an offer just on the craft supply category, but no info appearing on the item pages as yet, and the T&Cs had that disclaimer about eBay deciding on if/how they get displayed.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

thecatspjs — Sat, 30 May 2015 04:51:56 GMT

appeared pretty much straight away DG

gosh you could sure as heck create some confusing promotions to keep track off.

love the voucher you can offer to individual buyers too - just the right thing for generating some sales from regulars

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

thecatspjs — Sat, 30 May 2015 04:55:38 GMT

Just for your general info - the cart appears to be working quite smoothly on some mobiles apps - I was able to check out and pay for multiple items from different sellers no probs at all via phone - bout time, hope my smooth cart via mobile app experience is the same for others.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

clarry100 — Sat, 30 May 2015 05:23:50 GMT

Thanks DG.

I wasn't even aware that these existed. Cool!

Might have to figure it all out too and try something out.

I do like the idea of the secret offer, where you can send a special URL to selected buyers.

This way you could give some of your returning customers a special offer.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 30 May 2015 05:26:02 GMT

@thecatspjs wrote:
Just for your general info - the cart appears to be working quite smoothly on some mobiles apps - I was able to check out and pay for multiple items from different sellers no probs at all via phone - bout time, hope my smooth cart via mobile app experience is the same for others.

Nice, hopefully they'll all be working well before too long.

I managed to get my promo to work, eventually.

I don't know if it was something I did wrong or not, but my first attempt I just selected an eBay category to apply the promo to, because 99% of my craft supplies are in a single category. Nothing happened in-store, and if I clicked to view the offer from my store management page it said there were 0 items, and the offer page had a sold out banner across the image I uploaded.

At first I thought I mustn't have added enough refinements, so I edited it to add price and condition refinements, so that all items meeting those specs would be included, but same result.

So, I edited it again and switched from selecting items by eBay category to my own store categories and voila, promo now appearing across all the same items that were in the selected eBay category (price and condition refinements were removed, so they seem to just narrow results rather than are necessary to create a promo).

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

clarry100 — Sat, 30 May 2015 05:43:25 GMT

Sheesh!

Given the volume of sales (or lack thereof) going on at present you could run a 100% discount on here and still not lose.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

motherbear2003 — Sat, 30 May 2015 06:20:39 GMT

Seeing as how you have nothing listed I can't check out your craft supplies:(:(

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 30 May 2015 06:35:22 GMT

Don't worry, you're not missing out on much 😄 That is, I applied a very conservative 5% discount for $30+ (low item prices, low margins, and I already offer low flat rate postage, so it's more of a little cherry on top than an attempt to get people to buy the sundae. ).

I can send you the link if you're into jewellery making, though ^_^

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

janetabroad — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 01:17:52 GMT

I just posted a question about this in the answer centre...

I made some offers on Sunday, buy one, get one free etc. When I browsed my listings on a pc, all good, I see the offers. On the mobile app - no mention at all. Other than including something in the description, I can't see how app users know there is an offer?

I'm worried now because I just removed all my other incentives for multiple purchases from all the listings (i.e. combined postage deals) because I had added free postage. Now I'm not sure I've done the right thing... 😞 . Not that I sold that many bulk purchases of books, but it does happen 🙂

I'm mainly just trying to clear all my bulky stock to focus on other things.

Cheers

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 10:29:33 GMT

Unfortunately I can't take a look as I don't have a mobile device or access to the app version of eBay. It may (hopefully) be app-specific rather than across all mobile versions, as some of them are not very cart / multiple purchase friendly 😞 , and the banners mention using the cart to access the promo deals.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 09:33:18 GMT

Just thought I'd mention a couple of things I've noticed in the last couple of days.

Obviously, there's a range of different promos that may each have their own unique issues, so this just relates to the one I chose, which was a percentage discount after a minimum spend.

If you send a buyer an offer via the 'reply with offer' function, the discount won't apply, even if the purchase otherwise meets the promo conditions (fair enough, I s'pose, no further discounts etc).

I also had another sale that was well over the minimum spend, and no discount was applied - I'm not 100% sure why. One of the listings was newly created just for the buyer, so I thought it might be something to do with that (like how you can't put items on sale until they have been listed for 7 days), though I would think promos work differently, with ones available like buy 1 get 1 free etc, as that would be a good way to introduce a new product. Obviously I honoured the advertised discount and refunded the extra paid, but kind of annoying I had to (FVF difference was negligible, but would have been nicer not to be charged for it).

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

jensmanchester-australia — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 11:02:25 GMT

Items don't need to be listed for 7 days for promotions manager however new items listed after a promotion has started will not be included in a promotion which is already running.

I also had another sale that was well over the minimum spend, and no discount was applied - I'm not 100% sure why

My understanding is if they don't use the cart feature the discount is not applied.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 01:06:23 GMT

@jensmanchester-australia wrote:

Items don't need to be listed for 7 days for promotions manager however new items listed after a promotion has started will not be included in a promotion which is already running.

I also had another sale that was well over the minimum spend, and no discount was applied - I'm not 100% sure why

My understanding is if they don't use the cart feature the discount is not applied.

Aaah ok, thanks 🙂 makes sense, as not everyone wants to apply promotions to new products (I just assumed it would as I applied it fairly broadly to a bunch of my store categories - probably asking too much to hope for that to be optional, i.e. apply to new listings or not, as some people will be running store-wide promotions intended to be for all items and it could be quite a pain to update the promos each time new listings are added).

Also a pity if it only works by using the cart (i.e. adding items to it prior to purchase / payment), as that has the potential to create problems and misunderstandings, despite eBay mentioning it on the listing pages. The buyer I sent the offer to was the same buyer who purchased the other order over my minimum spend, and they mentioned they weren't able to add additional items to the initial purchase so paid for that separately, then bought the rest. I'm presuming they wanted the first confirmed purchase to be included in the cart and only go through once, but that wasn't possible. I think they use a mobile though, so I'm not sure if it's just to do with the app or not.

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

jfmgray — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 03:08:07 GMT

With Promotions Manager, does anyone know if it is possible to send a promotion to my store followers without having to list their IDs individually (ie you get an option to invite store followers??)

Thanks

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

digital*ghost — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:27:51 GMT

@jfmgray wrote:
With Promotions Manager, does anyone know if it is possible to send a promotion to my store followers without having to list their IDs individually (ie you get an option to invite store followers??)

Thanks

I'm mostly assuming, but I would think the answer is no - primary reason being there is a difference between a follower and a subscriber. Followers basically have quick access to your store, see new listings on the home page and the like. Subscribers have actually confirmed they want to receive email marketing, and while subscribers are likely to be followers, followers aren't necessarily subscribers.

The easiest thing would be to create a promo and generate a customised store email for subscribers (that way, you won't tick anyone off by what it technically spamming people who haven't signed up for it), and maybe make an announcement somewhere that email subscribers get exclusive offers? (which you can do via the codeless voucher promo).

Re: Anyone Played with Promotions Manager?

jfmgray — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 23:16:30 GMT

Makes sense - thanks