The Psychology of Discount Incentives

  • 10 December 2022
  • 1 reply
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Userlevel 4
Badge +7

We all at some point have run discount promotion in campaigns or abandoned cart flows etc. And indeed these do work well as long as you have sufficient margin to play with..

 

There is an understood theory that the fear of loss is more of an incentive than the attraction of a gain. I dont recall where I read it .. may have been Freakonomics or some other that studies have shown that if a greater performace takes place if sales staff are given their maximum bonus at the beginning of each month and at the end of the month if they hit target they get to keep or if they underperform its taken away.. Bear with me..

 

Could this be applied to discount codes..

 

Option A give each customer a code eg 20$ with an invitation to use within 48 hours or the gift expires ( could have min 200 $ spend so no more than 10% discount )

 

Option B give each customer a 10% off code again with an expiry..

 

My prediction ( as I am about to test ) is that Option A will win the A/B

 

Has anyone tried this alternative discount option..

 

Sean


1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +61

Hi @SeanMcC,

Thank you for sharing this interesting idea with us.

I like the way you’ve applied Prospect theory to explore new ways of thinking about discount codes in Klaviyo. One other thought to consider - keeping the discounts exactly the same but only changing the messaging between emails to minimize any other “noise” in the experiment (one email with a note that the coupon will expire, the other with no note at all).

Looking forward to hearing other’s thoughts on this as well!

 

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