Summary

• Promotional strategy is key to brand positioning, with the end goal being to introduce your product to customers and convince them to buy it. 
• In the digital age, businesses can leverage more platforms than ever to help drive their promotional strategy, from TikTok to email. 
• Getting your promotional strategy right will result in better margins, reduced excess inventory, lower markdowns and increased market share.
• Retailers can enhance their strategy through actions such as analyzing past performance, forecasting demand by calendaring in key promotional periods and aligning stock and visual merchandising with promotional materials.
• MANGO’s growth has been supported by its focus on using data to determine the right products for each market as well as guide its pricing policies and discounting decisions.
• EDITED’s retail analytics software can help devise and execute the ultimate promotional strategy season after season with tools such as visual merchandising tracking, discounting analysis and market analytics, which house over 12 years of data and 4bn SKUs.

What Is Promotional Strategy and Why Is It Important?

Promotional strategy lies at the heart of discounting decisions, product launches and retail campaigns, making it integral to driving demand for your product. It is key to brand positioning and tapping into your target market, with the end goal being to introduce your product to customers and convince them to buy it. In the digital age, businesses can leverage more platforms than ever to help drive their promotional strategy, from TikTok to email. 

What Are the Benefits of Data-Backed Promotional Planning?

In short, nailing your promotional strategy will result in increased revenue. It will also:

• Combat excess inventory
• Help hit sales targets
• Increase market share
• Increase margins
• Help avoid high markdowns

How Retailers Can Enhance Their Strategy

There are many ways that brands can improve their promotional planning. This includes:

• Analyzing past performance
• Benchmarking against competitors
• Digitizing the merchandise planning process
• Taking on a customer-centric approach 
• Forecasting demand by calendaring in key promotional periods
• Identifying opportunities within your assortment
• Aligning visual merchandising and stock levels with promotional materials

Case Study: How does MANGO, a global Spanish retail powerhouse, tailor its  assortment and pricing to every local market?

MANGO partnered with EDITED in 2017 to keep track of all of the different brands and retailers in its markets around the globe. The brand’s growth has been supported by its focus on using data to determine the right products for each market as well as guide itspricing policies. Using the EDITED data trove covering more than four billion products, MANGO could easily analyze what its international competitors are stocking and how products are being priced and discounted. The brand can also pinpoint what trends are selling where, shedding light on local customer buying patterns, as well as gaining visibility on discounting activity across the markets where MANGO operates.

“EDITED provides us with very useful tools that help us in monitoring what our competitors are doing in terms of markdown strategy,” said Sergio Domenech, Pricing Markup Analytics at MANGO. “In terms of pricing we use EDITED data retroactively to see in detail what communications our competitors have used in specific promotions.”

Three Ways EDITED Can Help

Our assortment planning tools and pricing intelligence software is primed to drive winning, data-backed promotional strategies.

1. Perfecting your seasonal promotions

Gain key insights into customer expectations across key promotional periods and understand what to promote and when with EDITED’s Retail Reports and Visual Merchandising tool. 

2. Competitor analysis made easy

Our archive of email communications, homepages and category landing pages allows you to benchmark against your competitors, identify opportunities and hindsight your own strategy.

3. Nailing your discounting strategy

EDITED’s Connected Commerce Cloud gives you all the tools you need to discount effectively to drive desired commercial outcomes across seasons and promotional events. Our Market Analytics platform houses over 12 years of retail data, tracking over four billion  global SKUs and counting, meaning you can review market happenings faster and easier than ever before.

EDITED’s suite of planning tools gives your team unrivaled visibility: past, present, and future. You’ll instantly gain a 360-degree view of your own business and competitive marketplace. Learn which actions had the most significant impact on profits and understand why. Grow your market share by easily identifying under-penetrated and under-served categories across every market relevant to your brand. Determine the forecasted impact of actions taken on price, merchandising or inventory before they happen. No matter the objective, we have a solution. Leverage the data you need to create the perfect assortment. Get started here today.