Top 08 Urgency in Marketing Practices To Hack Your Shopify Sales

Consumer preferences are constantly changing and becoming more complex than ever, and making it easier to lose a potential customer over seconds. The changes require not only to compete with similar businesses but also to apply innovative and trending solutions to your marketing strategies. Thus, Shopify store owners need to keep track of consumer behavior and involve marketing strategies accordingly.

Backed by human psychology, urgency in marketing facilitates to convert visitors into customers in online stores.

In this post, we are discussing 08 practices to skyrocket conversion rates by applying urgency in your marketing strategy. 

• 01. What is Urgency In Marketing?
• 02. Why Use Scarcity and Urgency In Marketing For Your Shopify Store
• 03. What Can Make Scarcity and Urgency In Marketing
• 3.1. Scarcity & Stock Quantity
• 3.2. Deadlines & Countdown Timer
• 3.3. Social Proof & Consumer Behavior
• 04. How to Practice FOMO and Urgency in Marketing?
• 4.1. Email Marketing
• 4.2. SMS Marketing
• 4.3. Social Media
• 4.4. On-page Notifications and Popups
• 4.5. Product Descriptions
• 4.6. Social Proof
• 4.7. Exclusivity
• 4.8. Chatbot

I. What is Urgency In Marketing 

Simply, displaying urgency towards a certain thing creates FOMO - this, in case, increases consumer engagement and boosts conversion rates in eCommerce. 

FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.” Though marketers use FOMO for broader marketing and sales concepts, in case of urgency and scarcity in marketing, it represents the simple idea. When consumers sense the fear of missing out on a certain product, they are more likely to buy it. 

Read more: Powerful FOMO Marketing Tips and Techniques to Boost Sales For Your Shopify Store

Let’s go more in-depth with findings. 

II. Why Use Scarcity and Urgency In Marketing For Your Shopify Store

So, yes, if you want your website visitors to feel the FOMO, you need to create scarcity and urgency. According to statistics by TrustPulse, FOMO can boost your conversions by 40-200%

How?

Worchel, Lee, and Adewole researched in 1975 about how people’s perception changes toward a product when there is a scarcity.

The results were stunning. They found out that scarcity affect people’s perception of value: the fewer items left, the more value the items carry. 

This study applies to the current period as well. Because of the development of social media usage, users share their belongings, and this reaches to thousands and even millions of people. As a result, people feel like they are in competition with others. When consumers feel that they compete with their peers, they are more likely to purchase a specific product or service even if they don’t need it. According to a study by Credit Karma, 40% of millennials purchase items just to keep up with their friends. FOMO is like magic; it makes people spend money on certain things out of necessity.  

How can you let consumers feel FOMO by scarcity and urgency?

III. What Can Make Scarcity and Urgency In Marketing

Consider the following ways to create urgency:

• Scarcity & Stock quantity
• Deadlines & Countdown timer
• Social Proof & Consumer behavior

01. Scarcity & Stock quantity

If your products have a limited stock quantity, let your customers know. By doing so, your site visitors will be motivated for instant purchases.

Take the 1975 study mentioned above as an example; Worchel, Lee, and Adewole wanted to know how people’s perception of value changes when there’s scarcity. They used two identical glass jars; one had 2, and another had 10 cookies. The researchers found out that if something is left only a few in quantity, it creates more value for people. The participants valued the jar that was nearly empty. 

02. Deadlines & Countdown Timer

Whenever you set a deadline for specific discounts, or any kind of offers, consumers want to take immediate action before it ends. Think of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. A lot of people wait until these days to make purchases, and stores sell like crazy: it reminds us of Apocalypsis. Because consumers know that the offers and discounts are limited to only 3-5 days, they rush in to make purchases.

Adding Countdown timer can be much more effortless once you have the right landing page design to accommodate the urgency factor - remember, you can not just add a countdown timer anywhere - it must blend in, design-wise, with the rest of the page. 

03. Social Proof & Consumer Behavior

Showing real-time behavior of other consumers is another way to create urgency. You can display how many people are watching a specific product. In case of limited service or stock quantity, this will create urgency for your site visitors to make purchases.

We've been there before; when we want to trust others’ behavior in the situations we have no idea how to act. When people are unable to determine the right behavior in the given situation, they rely on knowledge of people surrounding them. This is called social proof, first coined by Robert Cialdini, it is one type of conformity in social psychology. 

Think of the times when we can’t decide which meal to pick up in cafeterias. We tend to trust others’ knowledge; we observe what meals other people choose. In case of scarcity, when we see that many people are buying a certain product, we are more likely to buy them too.

Read More: What You Can Learn From These Best Real-Life Social Proof Examples

IV. How to Practice FOMO and Urgency in Marketing? 

01. Email Marketing

According to Campaign Monitor, in 2020 the average email open rate was 17.80% for all industries. That's a good number. You can send emails to let your customers know about stock quantity or offer deadlines. 

Experian research shows that emails that consist of urgent words engage customers more. Plus, it drives 16% more transactions to your site. By improving the subject lines and using the proper urgency message, you can motivate and invite the receivers to purchase. If you reach out to your customers with relevant emails, you see the positive results. 

Example of sending special offer with expiration date

02. SMS Marketing 

People see their phones as a part of themselves, and their usage is constantly increasing. According to a Deloitte 2018 Global Mobile Consumer Survey, an average American checks their phone 52 times a day, up from 47 times in 2017. 

Thus, send messages to your customers to inform them about scarcity in your product or offer.

In comparison with phone calls and emails, the response rate for SMS is 209% higher. Bulk SMS sending is cost-effective, and you can deliver your message within seconds. Plus, the open rate for SMS messages is 98%.

Send a message that includes a special offer and discount rate expiration rate to your customers with bulk SMS: 

Nextsale SMS Marketing Automation

03. Social media 

Your site audience is probably different from your brand social media account. Thus, whatever is on your site needs to be on social media as well. 

By sharing your limited offers on social media, you can make more sales.  

You can also create contests to increase your sales, audience, and customers and invite them to engage with your brand more. With contests that expire on a specific date or have a certain deadline, you encourage the audience to be in touch with your brand. 

For instance, Sodastream created a competition; it both includes the limited number of prizes and the deadline. 

Source: black & yellow 

04. On page notifications and popups

Widely used on online stores, popups and notifications make it so easy to create and display scarcity and make urgency. 

Promo popups display discounts on either on-scroll or exit-intent triggers. They ideally include timer countdown and create FOMO. For instance, you can offer a discount that expires on a specific date by capturing phone numbers and email addresses. 

Adding on-page notifications and pop-up is simple enough, you just need the right app. 

Nextsale is an excellent toolkit for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and other custom websites to create scarcity and urgency with on-site popups. With the right targeting and messages, Nextsale’s popups boost conversion rates. 

Nextsale’s on-page notifications allow online merchants to capture email addresses and phone numbers, deliver intended messages, and increase conversions. 

05. Product descriptions

A product description is an ideal place to use to create urgency in marketing.  

Highlight the numbers in vivid color to catch eyes, or use related plugins and apps to automate it in the product descriptions. There are cool apps for Shopify stores like STOCK LEVEL inventory quantity, Sold Stock: Inventory Counter, and plugins for WooCommerce merchants like Woocommerce Show Stock. 

Other than notifications and pop ups, in the product description, you can show the real-time behavior of consumers. 

Below you see how Booking.com includes social proof and urgency in the description. It highlights that there is high demand for the current room, and it includes information about people’s purchasing behavior on the product page. The company wisely says how many people are currently watching and how many times it’s booked:

06. Social proof

Your customers need to have trust in your company, and for this, you need to demonstrate social proof.

To display social proof, use testimonials, product reviews, recent sales, live user count, etc. According to Merkle and Levo, “comments, customer ratings, and reviews influence purchase decisions for 84% of millennial women, and 62% report trying a brand based on recommendations from an influencer.”

Social proof notifications by Nextsale

You can use Nexstale to display real-time behavior of consumers - social proof by activity and sales notifications. Activity and sales notifications show live user count, recent sales, as well as total orders on respective product pages. Showing social proof to your site visitors helps them overcome their skepticism about your company and actually encourage them to make purchases without hesitation.

Take a look at Nextsale’s article on how to use social proof in marketing to create brand trust and hike conversion rates.

+2 bonus tips

Using the following tips will double your sales and make urgency marketing more effective.

07. Exclusivity

Customers like to feel special. 

When you offer a special discount to your customers in the email that indicates exclusivity, it prompts them for immediate purchase.

47% of consumers say receiving an exclusive offer would make them feel excited, rewarded (54%), special (36%), honored (34%), recognized (33%), proud (27%), chosen (24%), smart (21%), deserving (18%), justified (11%) and superior (10%) (Kelton).

While using the practices above, let your customers feel special. Starting emails with their names or creating special coupons indicating their name, will let them feel cared for and unique.

You can also send products and discounts that are limited in stock and number to your loyal customers to show exclusiveness.

Take Saks Fifth Avenue’s exclusivity emails. They have indicated that the email is VIP only. Plus, they didn’t forget to add the deadline for the discount:

Source: Sendlane

You can also separate your customers into the “bought once” and “royal” ones. Then create your messages accordingly. It may seem time-consuming, but you will be amazed by the results.

08. Chatbot 

Always be available for any help and support. According to Goinflow, there is an increase in conversion rates of about 3.84% and a 6% overall increase in revenues if consumers are supported during the checkout process. 

Including chatbot on your store allows your visitors to contact and get their questions answered instantly. Unlike the land-based stores, you can’t follow a visitor and ask if they need help. A visitor needs to see the persona is there in case of asking help. 

Or, you can use popular messaging platform such as WhatsApp Chatbot by BotsNext on your Shopify store to help your visitors instantly:

WhatsApp chatbot by BotsNext 

Wrap Up

Thanks to the technological development in eCommerce, online merchants can easily increase conversion rates by creating urgency and scarcity with certain plugins and apps. 

Designed for online merchants, Nextsale is a cool app to create engaging on-page popups and notifications to hike up sales.

Create urgency in marketing with Nextsale engaging on-site messages, let your visitors feel FOMO, and see conversion rates go up without effort! 

Author Bio

Narmina Balabayli is a content manager and Content SEO Specialist of Nextsale. She’s been writing articles on eCommerce for 3 years.

Narmina’s passion and a deep interest in search engine optimization keep her in continual learning about “all things Internet.”