We left off on Tuesday talking about deadlines and offers and I gave you four ways you can use deadlines to help spice up your offers.  To see that post, visit the blog.  Today, we’ll spend a couple more minutes on deadlines and offers.

For deadlines and offers, it’s great when you can incorporate “reason why” copy into them.  This means you actually have a reason why, and you explain it for both your deadline and your offer. 

For your offers, one of the best ‘reasons why” is an anniversary sale. In fact for one of our businesses, American Retail Supply, we’re having our 40th Anniversary sale right now.  Go take a look at the banner at the site to see how we did this.

I show you this not to get you to buy something there.  Frankly, the vast majority of my readers couldn’t use a single thing we sell, but to show you the power of reason why copy.  When you give a reason why, people will accept it at face value.  They’ll think to themselves, “Oh, that’s why I’m getting a discount,” instead of being cautious or skeptical.

You can also blame a “common enemy” as a reason for both a promotion and deadline.  In the past I’ve used my accountant as the “enemy.”  The story goes that I had a great idea for a promotion, but the “lousy bean-counting accountant” wouldn’t let me.  So when he went on vacation, I did it anyway!  Sure, it’s not a great reason, but it’s good enough, plus is gives me a great story to tell in my advertising, and everybody loves to read a story!

Finally, as we discussed with guarantees, it’s always good to have a name for your offer.  In the above examples we obviously named it the Anniversary sale, and “My accountants away” offer.  There’s a ton of others you can use.  Just a few are:

• Birthdays
• Holidays or events
• “Empty the Shelves” event for overstocked inventory
• “One Week Only” Sale

The list could go on. 

Speaking of having a reason for a sale or offer, check out the special below for our New Year sale where you can get 10% off any stock item by January 31.  See you next week.

Blog Readers Only Special

In honor of the New Year and the new decade we’ll celebrate all month by giving you 10% off any order from now until Jan. 31, 2010.

Go online and make your purchase and enter ‘2010’ in the promo code box at checkout, and I’ll automatically take 10% off.  Or give me a call at 888-250-1834 to place your order and mention 2010 and I’ll do the same.  Just be sure you do this before Jan 31, 2010!