Ecommerce trends show that Q4 is the most wonderful time of the year for e-commerce. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday season are awesome times to host a sale on your reselling marketplaces.
Hosting a sale can be a great way to clear inventory, generate revenue, and take advantage of major holidays.
Here is how to host a successful sale on Poshmark, eBay, Shopify, Depop, Etsy, and More!
You might also be interested in the article 10 Great Marketplaces Every Reseller Should Consider.
General Tips: How to Host a Sale or Promotion on Reselling Marketplaces
The first tip to hosting a sale anywhere is making sure that you can afford the sale; that is, making sure that your anticipated sale price leaves room for profit in consideration of your cost of goods (COG). Be mindful of your numbers and be careful not to offer such an amazing deal that it leaves you “in the red.”
Little secret: It’s okay to raise your prices in anticipation of a sale to make buyers feel as though they’re saving even more. Every department store does this….. (We see you, Macys).
The next tip is to be mindful of your time because time is money. Elaborate sales can be time consuming and tedious. Be organized, you don’t want to make more work for yourself when you’re already giving items away for low prices!
Finally, keep it simple. Super-confusing offers that only apply to select items or under particular circumstances are not as successful as sales with clear terms.
With that, here is how to host a sale, offer a discount, and create coupons to make more sales online:
How to Run a Sale on Poshmark
Poshmark is poppin’ during the holiday season. Here is how to host a sale on Poshmark:
Note that there is no official “sale” tool or feature on Poshmark. Though, there are many Poshmark tools and features that you can use to strategically host a sale.
First, you will decide which type of sale to have in your Poshmark Closet:
Common types of sales include free shipping on bundles, a percent off your entire closet, a BOGO (Buy One Get One, Either Free or Half Off), or a discount that applies to select items that you have noted. I recommend choosing a simple sale. When you get too confusing, sales are not as successful.
Whichever type of sale you choose, here are the ways to promote it and inform potential buyers.
Create a Closet Sale Sign on Poshmark
You can create a closet sale sign by creating a listing, the way you would for any other item. You’ll use graphic images to promote your sales, and explain it in the description. You will want to select the “brand” for this listing as one that will expand your reach; perhaps select one that is similar to the types of items you sell.
For pretty and professional sale advertisements, check out how I use Canva to make sale signs for my marketplaces and social media in this video.
Make Bulk Offers to Likers (OTL)
Making bulk offers to likers is probably the simplest way to offer a discount to the people who have already expressed interest in your items. You can make individual offers on each item, or use Poshmark’s Bulk Actions (or a Poshmark Bot) to make bulk offers. The bigger the offer, the more chance of sales.
Use the My Shoppers Tool on Poshmark
The My Shoppers tool is a relatively new Poshmark feature that enables sellers to interact with buyers in bulk. With the feature, you can do things like add likes to bundles, add bundle comments, and message former buyers.
Thus, you can send a message to a mass number of users who have interacted with your closet to promote a sale or deal!
Take Advantage of Poshmark Promotional Days
Poshmark already has some promotional days, such as Closet Clear Out Days (CCO) where sellers can drop prices by 10% and likers are notified with the option to purchase with reduced shipping (shipping discount is paid for by Poshmark).
If you’re thinking of hosting a Poshmark sale, “piggy-backing” on a Poshmark promotion will provide greater reach!
Any combination of #1-#4 above can be used to run a sale on Poshmark. For more information, Check out this video about How To Host a Successful Sale on Poshmark.
How to Host a Sale on Mercari
Frankly, you can’t. There is no sale or promotional feature on Mercari. There also aren’t too many tools on Mercari to use as work-arounds.
That said, there are a few things you can do that might increase your chances of sale.
Creating a Mercari Store Sale Sign
Use a graphic to advertise a promotion, see above (in the Poshmark section).
Promote Your Listings on Mercari
To promote your listings, go to your profile and tap Selling and select “Promote.” You’ll be prompted to select whether you want to promote your listing to everyone or just send an Offer to Likers.
Promoting your listings requires that you drop the price, and boosts them in the Mercari search feed results and notifies all likers about the price decrease.
Making Offers to Likers (OTL) on Mercari requires that you make an offer of at least 10% off, and sends this special offer to all likers.
Check out this chart to see how to promote your mercari listings to make more sales.
Quick Guide to Promotion & OTL on Mercari. Image courtesy of the Mercari Help Center.
Message Potential Buyers
You might consider what I call “Buyer Outreach.” This includes browsing your Mercari inbox, and reaching out to the buyers who have ghosted you after initial inquiry, to say something like:
“Hey! Are you still interested in this item? I’m running a 50% off sale today. Feel free to make the offer and I’ll accept.”
Note that this method is a little spammy, use sparingly.
While there is no official way to run a sale, discount, or promotion on your entire Mercari shop, the steps above are the best ways to run an unofficial sale.
How to Have a Sale on eBay
eBay provides sellers with so many tools including promotions, offers to watchers, bulk price adjustments, coupons, and official tools for discounting store items with a sale event. Note that some of these features require that you have an eBay store.
Tools to Make More Sales on eBay
First, you can send offers to watchers from your eBay seller hub. You can also promote your items in various ways, through paid promotional tools (and you only pay the promotion fee when your item sells as a direct result of the promotion). You can also create promotional coupons, with your own terms and conditions, in the eBay promotion manager.
In addition to these basic eBay selling features, you can have an official eBay Sale Event:
How to Run An eBay Store Sale
You can create sales in your eBay promotion manager dashboard. Here, eBay allows you to customize your sale details, eligible items, and markdown price. eBay also allows you to promote your sale via ads and event set up mailing lists.
There are so many advanced tools and opportunities for sales on eBay. Learn more about creating and managing an eBay sale here.
eBay can seem intimidatingly complex, but those complexities are opportunities with advanced tools to make more money. For a full guide to eBay, check out the blog How to Get Started Selling on eBay.
How to Run a Sale on Depop
Depop also does not have an official sale option, but it does have a discount feature. When you use the Depop discount tool, you can apply a discount to your entire shop (or select items) with just a few clicks.
Note: For likers to be notified, you need to discount your items by at least 30%.
When you use Depop discounts, your items are tagged with yellow sale stickers. Click here to see how to use the Depop discount feature in the Depop app.
In addition to the Depop discount feature, you can try the “shop sign,” and “buyer outreach” ideas explained above on Depop, too.
How to Host a Sale on Facebook Marketplace
FBMP has many tools for resellers in lieu of an official sale feature including: offers, renewal, price drop, FBMP Ad Promotions, and Facebook boosted listings.
While none of these are a simple sale option, collectively, you can promote your listings strategically to effectuate a sale.
Before you host a sale, check if any of your marketplace listings are eligible for renewal. If they are, you’ll see a button that says “renew” below each on your listings screen. This feature essentially refreshes your listings to broaden your reach. Similarly, your older listings might be eligible for price drop, where you can reduce the price to notify likers and viewers. These tools only apply to the eligible listings, which will be indicated in your marketplace manager.
Next, you can send offers on Facebook (with a comment advertising your sale) from your marketplace manager. You can also choose to boost your listings and personally select your desired audience, listings, duration, and details of your promotional ad (this is a paid promo, but it’s worth it). Facebook Marketplace Ads work similarly, and you can personalize the sale type and language to reflect your sale!
How to Run a Sale on Grailed
There is no official sale option or mass discount feature on Grailed. But, Grailed does provide a few promotional features that you can use strategically to host a sale event on Grailed including: offers to likers, bumps, and price drops.
How to Make More Sales on Grailed
On Grailed, you can bump your items after 7 days; when you look at your listings screen, the “bump” button will appear under each eligible listing. Bumping your items will refresh them in your shop and the searchfeed. After one month, you’ll have to price drop by at least 10% to give your listing a boost in the search feed.
You can also make offers to likers on Grailed. You can make offers to likers by selecting the item, and creating an offer price (at least ten percent below the current price). In fact, you can make OTL on Grailed four times within a month, so long as you reduce your offer by ten percent each time. Sending mass offers with a steep discount is the best way to host a sale on Grailed.
How to Run a Sale in Your Shopify Store
Shopify is a unique selling marketplace; it is less of a peer-to-peer marketplace and more of a tool to power your very own ecommerce website. Shopify provides so many tools and resources for sellers, including running a sale and creating a discount code.
On Shopify you can create discount codes, set up automatic discounts, or set sale prices for individual products.
You can host a sale on Shopify easily by manually adjusting your prices, and opting into keeping the original price present, to demonstrate the sale. This is called the compare price sale; learn more here. You can also apply an automatic discount to your entire store.
Even better, is the ability to create a discount code in your Shopify store.
You can create a discount code easily, and establish rules for when and how it can be used. Examples include: a discount code for a dollar amount, a percentage discount, or a buy something and get something discount (Like BOGO style), or a shipping promotion discount.
Visit the discount page to create your code and its terms. Remember that because Shopify is your own website, there is not necessarily a built-in audience. You will have to do your own marketing to drive traffic to your store. Shopify provides all of the tools and resources you need to make sales happen.
For a full guide to how to sell on Shopify, check out the article What You Need to Know to Start Selling on Shopify.
How to Host a Sale on Kidizen
On Kidizen, there is a shop discount feature that works as a tool to run a sale in your Kidizen shop.
You can set up a shop discount to automatically offer discounted shipping. This effectively creates a sale that applies to bundles. The best part is,it creates a banner at the top of your store! Check it out:
This is how you establish a shop discount, and how it appears on your shop page. Image courtesy of the Kidizen Help Center.
There you have it! This is how you host a sale on the reselling marketplaces!
Be sure to take advantage of major holidays, ecommerce trends, and days where consumer shopping is prominent such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
Did you know that with Vendoo you can crosspost your inventory to all of the marketplaces above? You can also delist/relist for daily sales, manage your inventory, and even more! Try Vendoo today with the no-risk free trial! Happy selling!
Have you hosted a sale? Tell us how it went!
