Hurry up!
Limited time only!
70% off sales only for the next 24 hours!
Sounds familiar?
These are limited-time offers for a marketing campaign that businesses use to convert more users or increase product sales.
Limited-time sales create a sense of urgency and encourage your customers, subscribers, and members to act quickly to take advantage of the deal before it ends.
By applying limited-time offers on your WordPress site, you can attract new customers, drive sales, or promote specific products or services.
Table of contents:
What are limited time sales? Examples
A limited-time offer is a promotion or discount that you make available for a specified period to increase sales and conversions.
Limited-time discounts are often used to attract customers, drive sales, and create excitement around products or services.
Beside increasing sales, limited time offers are also used to retain customers and reduce checkout abandonments.
Here are commonly used limited time offers examples:
Early bird special: An early bird deal is often offered for a newly launched product or service. This special offer allows customers to purchase the product at a reduced price, but they must do so earlier than they normally would.
For example, you can offer a 50% discount to the first 100 customers who sign up within the first week of launch for your new software product. This offer creates urgency and encourages early adoption of the product.
Seasonal discounts: A seasonal discount is a price reduction you offer on products or services during specific times of the year, such as holidays or changing seasons. By reducing prices or product or service for a limited time, you can boost sales and attract new customers. Offering seasonal discounts is also a great way to clear out old inventory and increase customer loyalty.
For instance, you can offer “Buy One, Get One Free” promotion for your course materials on your WordPress site for a New Year eve only. This limited-time offer encourages your customers to purchase during the promotion period to take advantage of the deal before the discount ends.
Flash sales: Flash sales are limited-time promotions where you offer products or services at a significant discount for a short, limited period. Typically, you make these sales last for a few hours to a few days and often offer it to create a sense of urgency and encourage impulse buying.
Flash sales are commonly used by retailers to generate excitement, clear out excess inventory, and attract customers to their stores or websites.
Holiday promotion: A holiday promotion is a marketing campaign or offer that you can run during specific holidays, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Valentine’s Day, to attract customers and drive more sales. Holiday promotions often include discounts, special offers, or bundled deals that match to the holiday theme.
For example, let’s say you have a travel agency. As a holiday promotion, you can offer a special holiday package with discounted rates for bookings made during the month of December. This limited-time offer capitalizes on the holiday season and encourages your customers to book their travel plans early to save money.
Why and how limited time offers work?
Limited time offers create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to make a purchase or take advantage of the offer before it expires.
FOMO (fear of missing out), exclusivity, or scarcity is widely used in marketing campaigns to create a sense of urgency among customers. These psychological standpoints create a feeling of unease or concern that you might be missing out on something exciting, interesting, or rewarding that others are experiencing.
FOMO comes into play because people are afraid of missing out on a good deal. When they see that a product is only available at a discounted price for a limited time, they may be more encouraged to make a purchase to avoid missing out on the savings. This fear of missing out can drive customers to act impulsively and make a purchase they might not have otherwise made.
According to studies, nearly 7 in 10 (69%) of millennials experience FOMO, the most of any age group.
If a product is available in limited quantities, it increases urgency and triggers the fear of missing out on purchasing an item. Or, if a prospect knows a deal won’t last long or there are only a few items left, they’ll be sure to take action before it’s too late.
In that sense, limited-time offers create a sense of urgency by indicating that the deal is only available for a short period. This urgency encourages customers to act quickly to take advantage of the offer before it expires.
How to offer limited time offers on WordPress?
Let’s say you’re selling products on your WordPress site without WooCommerce. You may want to increase signups to your online courses, gain new customers for your software product, or grow your community members by offering limited time offers on your WordPress site.
To offer limited-time sales on WordPress, there are 3 required steps you need to take:
- First, you need to integrate a payment processor like Stripe to handle transactions securely on your WordPress site.
- Second, you need to generate Stripe discount coupons or codes for your limited-time offer.
- Lately, you need to install an on-site popup widget or plugin like OptinMonster, Nextsale, or WPForms to promote your offer and capture customer interest.
Let’s review each step.
Learn more about payment methods supported by Stripe.
Step #1: Integrate Stripe payment processor to WordPress
Stripe is one of the top-notch choices for businesses handling online transactions and allows you to generate coupons and offer discounts as part of your limited-time offers
To configure Stripe for your WordPress site, the easiest way is to use a Stripe plugin like WP Full Pay.
Connecting Stripe to WordPress with WP Full Pay will allow you to create products for one-off or recurring payments in the Stripe dashboard, create payment forms, and embed them easily on your WordPress posts or pages. Why do we need this? We need to integrate the Stripe payment processor for accepting payments with coupon codes applied.
With WP Full Pay, you can create a limited-time offer for accessing your private content at a discounted price, or running a marketing campaign for your newly launched software.
Connecting Stripe to WordPress requires the following steps:
- Create a Stripe account.
- Install WP Full Pay.
- Switch to test mode on the Stripe dashboard and WP Full Pay.
- Configure Stripe API Keys.
- Make a test transaction.
- Switch back to live mode.
You might also like to read: how to create installment and BNPL payment plans on WordPress.
Step #2: Generate Stripe discount coupons for your limited time offers
Stripe allows you to create coupons with various settings such as percentage or fixed amount discounts, expiration dates, and redemption limits.
Then, your customers can apply these coupon codes at checkout to avail of the discount.
To create a Stripe coupon codes, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Stripe Dashboard and open the ‘Products’ page.
- Click on ‘Coupons’.
- Next, hit the +New button in the top right corner.
- In the Create a coupon dialog, enter the coupon’s parameters.
- Determine whether the coupon should discount a subscription by a fixed amount or by a percentage.
- Apply the coupon to specific products in the “Apply to specific product” field, set the duration of the discount in the “Duration” field, and limit the number of redemptions in the “Redemption limits” field.
- Once you’ve set up all the coupon details, click Create coupon. And that’s it, you’ve created your first Stripe coupon!
Creating Stripe coupons
Next, to add a coupon code to your WordPress checkout using the WP Full Pay plugin, follow these steps:
- Navigate to WP Full Pay on your WordPress admin.
- Create a new payment form or add the coupon code to the existing form.
- After creating a new form or editing the settings of an existing form, go to the Form fields section.
- Enable the ‘Show coupon code’ field.
Enabling a coupon code on WordPress
By following these steps, you can create a limited-time offer by creating a Stripe coupon code and applying it to your checkout process using WP Full Pay.
You can download WP Full Pay plugin, create the forms and test Stripe transactions FOR FREE on your WordPress site.
Step #3: Promote your offer and capture customer interest
Once you have connected Stripe to your WordPress site and set up a coupon code for a limited-time offer, the next step is to run a campaign to inform your customers about it.
To do this, consider adding an on-site popup to announce the limited-time sale.
The easiest way to inform your customers about the limited discount offer is by installing a plugin that offers on-site widgets like top bars or pop-ups.
These plugins not only help announce the campaign but also allow you to capture customer emails for further marketing campaigns.
Some popular plugins that allow you to create popups and top bars, announce the campaign, and capture leads include OptinMonster, Nextsale, Elementor Popups, Popup Maker, and HubSpot WordPress Plugin, WPForms.
To announce your limited-time offer on your WordPress site:
- Install a plugin.
- Create a popup form for the announcement.
- Add the coupon code to the popup fields.
By following these steps, you can effectively promote your limited-time offer and capture customer interest, potentially increasing sales and engagement on your WordPress site.