Global Reach, Local Touch: Maximizing ROI with Localization of Sales Promotions in 2024

As brands operate in diverse markets with different languages, cultures, and social norms, a one-size-fits-all approach to advertising may not be as effective. Therefore, deploying promotion localization to your marketing strategy is key to optimizing metrics such as ROI and AOV by leveraging localized consumer behavior and market dynamics.

In this blog post, you will learn what promotion localization is, why it is crucial for personalizing promotional experience, how to internationalize your promotions with Voucherify, and how to seamlessly utilize CMS platforms together with Voucherify’s newest Qualification API for successful promotion localization. 

What is promotion localization?

Promotion localization refers to the process of adapting promotional materials, campaigns, and messages to effectively resonate with the cultural, linguistic, and regional preferences of a specific target audience in a particular geographic location. In other words, it is about tailoring marketing and advertising efforts to suit the unique characteristics and preferences of a local market.

Promotion localization involves making adjustments to various elements of a promotional campaign, including:

• Language: Translating and adapting promotional content, slogans, and messages to the local language while ensuring they maintain their intended meaning and impact.
• Geographic relevance: Incorporating local landmarks, geographical references, and specific regional attributes that resonate with the target audience in that location.
• Timing: Considering local holidays, events, and cultural seasons that might impact the timing of the promotional campaign.
• Regulatory compliance: Ensuring that the promotional materials adhere to local laws, regulations, and advertising standards that may vary from one location to another.
• Currency: Converting prices and monetary values to the local currency to align with the economic context of the target location (for instance, growing inflation rates).
• Timezone: Taking into account the appropriate timezone for scheduling promotions to ensure they reach the audience living in various time zones at the optimal time.

Avoid promotional mishaps by localizing campaigns

Localizing your promotions is key to effective marketing and building long-lasting customer relations. Without it, your company may be exposed to scandals, just like KFC after organizing a Kristallnacht promotion for cheesy chicken in Germany. Likely, the anniversary of Kristallnacht was automatically imported into the KFC application from the calendar, and the system might have treated that date as a “holiday” and generated a message to the customers. 

This situation could have been avoided by adequately localizing KFC’s promotional campaigns in Germany, which would not only guarantee date relevance but also a thorough understanding of local sensitivities. Importantly, promotion localization not only drives up sales but also helps to avoid inadvertently triggering or offending certain cultural or historical events like Kristallnacht.

Why is promotion localization important for personalizing promotional experiences?

Promotion localization is important for personalizing the promotional experience as it allows businesses to create marketing campaigns that resonate with individual customers on a deeper and more personal level.

Here are more reasons why promotion localization contributes to a personalized promotional experience:

• Cultural relevance: People are more likely to engage with and respond positively to promotional content that reflects their cultural values, norms, and references. By localizing promotions, businesses show that they understand and respect the local culture, leading to a stronger emotional connection with customers.
• Language connection: Using the local language helps eliminate communication barriers and fosters a sense of familiarity. When customers see promotions in their native language, they are more likely to engage with the content and understand the offer clearly.
• Trust and credibility: Localized promotions demonstrate that a business is invested in the local market. This can build trust and credibility among customers, as they see the effort made to understand and cater to their specific needs.
• Improved ROI: When promotions are well-aligned with the local audience, they are more likely to generate higher engagement rates, conversion rates, and ROIs. 
• Increased AOV per transaction: Personalized promotions can entice customers to explore additional products or services they might not have considered otherwise. By highlighting items that complement their preferences or cultural norms, businesses can prompt customers to add more items to their carts.
• Customer-centric approach: Localization reflects a customer-centric approach, demonstrating that the business values its customers' unique needs and is committed to meeting them.

Promotion localization goes beyond superficial adaptations and resonates with customers' emotions, values, and aspirations. It enables businesses to craft promotions that feel like they were created specifically for each individual customer.

How to internationalize sales promotions?

Voucherify is an API-first Promotion Engine supporting global brands in promotion internationalization across markets, geographies, and brands.  

To support your location goals, you can divide sales campaigns into distinct projects with varying currencies, time zones, and other settings, allowing you to roll out diverse promotions for different geolocations.

The Rules Builder enables the precise tailoring of promotions to meet the specific preferences of each region. With Voucherify, you can create location-specific campaigns with redemption limits based on customers, products, and SKU geolocations to:

• Decide which products or SKUs will be discounted or excluded based on their current location.
• Limit redemptions to customers who share specific locations.
• Exclude particular areas from applying the discount.

How to run geofenced sales promotions with Voucherify?

Voucherify’s geofencing is made possible with geolocation metadata and geo-filtering search. Our technology lets you apply travel data in both referral and loyalty programs to customize them even further or generate geo-targeted promo coupon codes and offers. 

1. Geofence campaign with customer's location

This type of campaign allows you to support campaigns restricted to specific areas. When passing the customer's geolocation with a redemption/validation request, Voucherify verifies if a customer location meets campaign rules.

Campaign example: Burger King’s “The Whopper Detour”

To drive app usage and customer engagement, Burger King executed an innovative geofencing campaign known as The Whopper Detour. The campaign aimed to playfully challenge customers' loyalty and encourage them to use the Burger King mobile app for a unique experience.

Campaign details:

• Geofence setup: Burger King strategically created geofences around approximately 14,000 McDonald's restaurant locations across the United States. These geofences covered a radius of 600 feet around each McDonald's restaurant.
• User entry: Whenever a user with the Burger King mobile app entered the geofenced area around a McDonald's restaurant, their app would detect their location.
• Campaign activation: The app recognized the user's proximity to a McDonald's restaurant and triggered a special offer notification related to "The Whopper Detour."
• Content delivery: Users received a notification with a clever and attention-grabbing message that encouraged them to order a Whopper from Burger King through the app while being near a McDonald's. 
• Geolocation requirement: The offer was exclusively available to users who were within the 600ft. radius of a McDonald's location, leveraging geolocation technology to ensure the promotion's relevance and exclusivity.

Considering Burger King’s long-term competition with McDonald’s, this campaign has highlighted the competitive spirit of the campaign and the incentive to get a Whopper at a discounted price. Such results were enabled through geofencing customers’ and stores’ locations. 

2. Geofence campaigns with product/SKU location

Similar to customer objects, this campaign allows you to add geopoint metadata to products and SKUs to pass products' locations in API requests. As a result, products from customers' orders can be validated against product-specific rules specifying locations that qualify products for discounts.

Campaign example: Nike’s SNKRS “Stash” campaign

Nike utilized geofencing in its SNKRS app to create excitement and engagement for sneaker enthusiasts through a campaign called Stash.

Campaign details:

• Geofence setup: Nike defined specific geographical areas around select cities and neighborhoods where limited-edition sneakers ("drops") would be available for purchase through the SNKRS app.
• User entry: When users entered one of these geofenced areas, their app would trigger location-based notifications.
• Campaign activation: Upon entering a geofenced area, users would receive a push notification on their SNKRS app alerting them to a "stash" event nearby. The notification included clues about the location of hidden sneakers.
• Influence and conversion: Users who followed the clues to the correct location would "unlock" access to purchase the limited-edition sneakers available only at that specific location.

The Nike SNKRS "Stash" campaign effectively combined geofencing technology with product exclusivity (and gamification) to drive engagement and sales. It leveraged users' location data to enhance their app experience and create a more interactive and memorable way to access specific, limited-release products.

How Voucherify allows seamless geolocation targeting for sales promotions?

• Creative geofences: Build any kind of geofence to target versatile locations. Build geofences around your business, a specific city, or even geofence a competitor to capture their audience.
• Integration with third-party services: Businesses can integrate third-party geolocation services with Voucherify's API, enhancing the accuracy and richness of location data used in their campaigns.
• Highly-personalized campaigns: Geolocation data can be harnessed to personalize promotional campaigns according to users' physical locations. Businesses can create highly-customized offers that are specific to certain regions or cities, making the promotions more appealing and increasing the likelihood of engagement. 

A highly personalized marketing initiative can leverage diverse geolocation data, including weather conditions. For instance, your business, such as a food delivery service, has the opportunity to implement a tailored campaign during unfavorable weather scenarios like rain or snow. By utilizing Voucherify, you can seamlessly dispatch precise notifications via your app, accompanied by a unique discount code granting a percentage reduction on their orders. 

This strategy entices customers to relish their preferred dishes within the coziness of their homes, all while enjoying cost savings. Beyond offering convenience, this campaign also contributes to elevated customer involvement and loyalty, particularly during testing weather circumstances.

CMS platforms and Qualification API for effective promotion localization

Thanks to Voucherify’s integration with CMS platforms – Bloomreach and Contentful, geotargeting can be significantly enhanced by enabling the automatic downloading and deployment of region-specific promotional assets, such as images, banners, and content, for example, terms and conditions in a given language. This ensures that each promotional campaign is not only localized in terms of offers but also visually resonates with the targeted audience.

On top of that, Voucherify’s new Qualification API introduces smart discount recommendations by analyzing various factors like customer demographics, purchase history, and real-time market trends. This API dynamically suggests personalized promotional offers and content for different regions, allowing for a more tailored and effective geotargeting strategy. This intelligent approach optimizes both ROI and AOV, ensuring that the right offers are presented to the right customers in specific locations.

Learn more about the new Qualification API and its benefits here.

• ‍Campaign configuration – in Voucherify, you configure a geotargeted promotional campaign with specific discount codes and rules based on regions. ‍
• Asset mapping – within the campaign, for each region, you associate specific CMS assets that are tailored to resonate with the local audience and promote the campaign effectively. For example, in the campaign’s project metadata scheme, you put “terms_UK” linked to a specific CMS asset.
• ‍CMS integration – the integration with the CMS platform enables Voucherify to automatically retrieve the corresponding assets for each region from the CMS's repository. In this case, these would be terms and conditions for a given promotion with rules applicable to the UK localizations and written in English. ‍
• Smart content delivery – when a customer from the UK interacts with a geotargeted campaign, the Qualification API fetches the relevant assets from the CMS and presents them alongside the personalized discount, creating a cohesive and localized user experience.

Adapt your promotion experience around the world as McDonald’s does

The leading fast-food restaurant chain in the US – McDonald's – adjusts its promotional approach to match consumer preferences based on different cultures and languages in various countries where the food service is available. This cultural relevance not only captures customer attention but also nurtures loyalty by demonstrating an understanding of local value, which results in higher customer engagement. 

McDonald’s Japan introduced time-limited Hawaiian Burgers, popular in the country, into the menu for a seasonal promotion. The offer is available on their website and is language- and region-specific.

Besides introducing country-specific items, McDonald’s Japan also features regular promotions (such as the one for chicken nuggets) by displaying banners on their page that are specific in terms of design, language, and pricing (currency). 

McDonald’s Spain is promoting their mobile app by incentivizing customers to order via a mobile app with MyOrder feature – with every first order placed via the app, a customer gets a free McFlurry. 

Along with the promotion comes its description, as well as language-specific terms and conditions with information about the validity of the over and the list of participating restaurants in Spain. 

The successful implementation of localized promotions, akin to McDonald's diverse strategies in various countries, can be seamlessly facilitated through Voucherify integrated with CMS systems. This integration can empower your brand to effortlessly establish region-specific campaigns by offering the capability to access and download appropriate promotional assets – banners, terms and conditions, and many more – to answer the needs of your unique customer base.

Conclusion

Promotion localization is key to tailoring campaigns and driving ROI, boosting AOV, and nurturing lasting customer relationships. In the end, resonating with local preferences and cultural nuances of customers has become a strategic imperative of successful marketing campaigns.

As the business world leans towards hyper-personalization, coupling promotion localization with innovative technologies like CMS integrations and smart discount APIs becomes the compass guiding businesses toward sustainable growth and unwavering customer allegiance. 

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