Promotions Test

I recently ran a split test on an email list featuring two unique promotions. The first was free ground shipping on orders of $85 or more and the other was 15% off $85 or more. I chose $85 because I wanted to raise the bar by 10% over the current site AOV.

Each promotion was mailed to over 70,000 subscribers (total list is over 140K) and I waited to see which performed better. It was amazing to see how many orders were submitted for the free shipping promotion. In fact, the 15% discount email only generated 13 orders compared to the 89 orders for Free Shipping. I realize the studies show that more people are willing to pay full price and receive a shipping discount, but, I wanted to see if it held true for this subscriber base. The shipping cost on an $85 order is $7.50 and its clear that the better savings belonged to the 15% discount. According to this test, more people were willing to pay full price on products and receive free shipping because shipping costs are seen as an inconvenience. Be careful when you do a shipping promotion. You should clearly define the restrictions of free shipping because you don't want to send an order to Mexico (for example) for free.

Test promotions on your subscriber base and see what works for you. Always be willing to test because its the only way you'll learn what works and what doesn't work.