8 Powerful Marketing Incentives To Generate More Sales

Everybody loves a screaming deal — including me, and including the audience you’re marketing to.

Just recently I received another 20% Off email promo code valid for 24 hours from one of my favorite online supplement stores, VitaCost. And they didn’t stop at one. They send a variety of time-limited promotions roughly 25 times a month. You might be thinking — that’s a lot of email from one company. And you’re right. So why do I love receiving them?

1. I love the quality and affordable products they sell.
2. Their promos incentivize me to buy products I love — and even products I might never have considered without the nudge.

Here’s a snapshot of the kinds of emails VitaCost sends in a given month:

Think for a moment about the type of loyal buyer VitaCost has turned me into. How many buyers like that do you have right now? Do you have a plan to attract, engage, and convert visitors into loyal, consistent customers?

If you don’t have many loyal customers yet — or you want more of them buying more often — incentives are one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. Here are 8 of them you can start using today.

What Are Sales Incentives?

Incentives are simply rewards you give your audience in exchange for taking action right now. That action could be a purchase, or it could be something like exchanging their name and email for something valuable — bringing them onto your email list where you can market to them consistently over time.

When used properly, incentives inspire explosive engagement and convert a one-time visitor into a frequent, loyal customer who buys more and more from you. The bottom line: incentivize your audience well enough, and your sales can skyrocket consistently over time.

1 — Time-Based Coupon Codes

Time-sensitive coupon codes work extremely well for two reasons.

First, they play on the fear of loss. The thinking goes: “If I don’t act now, I’ll miss this deal — and I don’t know when it comes around again.” That urgency drives immediate action.

Second, time-based coupon emails put your products and brand in front of your audience more often. Ever heard “out of sight, out of mind”? It’s true. People are far more likely to buy from you if you’re sending valuable promotions 8 or more times a month rather than once or twice. People rarely buy what they can’t see and aren’t reminded of.

2 — The Price Drops the More You Shop

This is a powerful rewards-based incentive that inspires your audience to spend more with you. The name says it all: the more they buy, the lower their price becomes — up to a point you define. You could offer this for a single product, your entire catalog, or anything in between.

To implement this you’ll typically need a developer or a dedicated plugin/app for your platform. Most major ecommerce platforms including Shopify and WooCommerce have tiered pricing apps available in their app stores.

3 — Gamification

We can learn a lot from children — specifically, why they love to play games. Games keep people engaged, entertained, and focused. In dropshipping, gamification can make buying from you genuinely fun. Three strategies worth considering:

• Points earning and redemption — customers earn points on purchases and redeem them for discounts, downloads, consultations, or any other reward you choose.
• Social competitions — leaderboards and challenges that pit members against each other for prizes or store credit.
• Branded games tied to your niche — for example, if you sell home décor, a “Design a Room” game where customers arrange furniture products earns them points redeemable for discounts — and subtly showcases your inventory.

Gamification is built around engagement. The more engaged your audience, the higher the likelihood they buy from you — especially when you keep the purchasing opportunity woven naturally into the experience. Done right, gamification can make buying from you feel almost addictive.

4 — Gift Cards

Gift cards are a popular and highly effective incentive. They come in many forms — here are a few worth considering, along with updated platform resources to get started:

• Redeemable gift cards customers can buy in advance in varying amounts ($10, $20, $50, etc.) and use at checkout.
• Digital gift certificates with a unique code customers enter in their account or at checkout.
• Scratch-and-reveal discount code plugin for WordPress — adds a fun, interactive twist to the gift card experience.
• Browse gift card plugins for WordPress — search results from the official WordPress plugin directory.
• Browse gift card apps in the Shopify App Store — includes top-rated options like Rise.ai, Gift Card Hero, and Gift Card Factory.

5 — Loyalty Programs

The longer a customer stays with you — and the more consistently they buy — the more they deserve to be rewarded. Loyalty is an extremely prized virtue, and a well-designed loyalty program tells your best customers that you genuinely value them.

A few approaches to consider when structuring your loyalty program:

• Tenure-based discounts — for example: 1st year = 10% off all orders; 2nd year = 15% off all orders plus a free gift bag valued at $50; and so on.
• Milestone rewards — send an Amazon gift card or branded reward once a customer reaches a certain purchase volume or anniversary date.
• VIP access perks — unlock additional benefits over time, such as early access to sales, exclusive products, or the ability to earn commissions through your affiliate program (see below).

6 — Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing means incentivizing other people to send you customers and paying them a commission when they do. It’s one of the most powerful passive income streams available — and one I benefit from personally to this day.

You can approach this two ways: offer your existing customers a way to get paid promoting your products, or promote third-party offers to your own audience using your affiliate links. Both have the potential to significantly boost and automate your income.

Here are the top platforms to explore for creating or joining affiliate programs:

• ClickBank — one of the largest digital product affiliate marketplaces
• CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction) — a major network connecting brands with publishers (watch this tutorial on how to get started with CJ)
• Awin (formerly ShareASale) — ShareASale has fully merged into Awin, one of the world’s largest affiliate networks
• More affiliate marketing resources at DropshipXL

7 — Contest Incentives

There are plenty of creative ways to run contests that motivate your audience to take action. Here are two that work particularly well:

• Live video product demos — go live on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, demo your products, and engage your audience in real time by asking questions and giving away discounts, points, or free products to active participants.
• Affiliate leaderboard competitions — challenge your affiliates to hit sales targets within a set timeframe and reward the top 10 with cash prizes or exclusive gifts. Publish a live leaderboard so affiliates can track where they rank and compete to move up. The key: make the rewards genuinely worth competing for.

8 — Sales & Holiday Specials

It’s part of human nature to need a reason to act. If you give your audience a reason to buy — any reason — it activates the buying impulse. That reason could be a product liquidation sale, a seasonal holiday, or something personal and unexpected: you just got married, your kid graduated kindergarten, your store just hit its 5th anniversary. All of them are valid reasons to offer a deal.

One important note on running sales: they can be overdone. Putting everything on permanent sale destroys perceived value. The key is to apply a clear time limit to your sales and promote specific products or categories — not everything at once, not forever. Email your list when a sale is live. Give it a deadline. Let urgency do the work.

Wrapping It Up

Now that you know the 8 powerful incentives you can use to drive consistent daily sales in your dropship ecommerce business, it’s time to pick one and implement it. You don’t need to deploy all eight at once — start with the one that feels most natural for your audience and test from there.