Marketing promotions or discounts

Use the Offers and Programs options to create marketing promotions or discounts. You can then track the performance of the promotions and discounts in your store. See Managing tracking programs for more information.

An offer is a promotion or discount used to entice shoppers to purchase from your store. Most offers provide a discount on the price of a product or shipping costs. You can create an offer that promotes certain products or encourages shoppers to purchase additional products.

Many things influence how an offer appears and behaves in your store. The settings you choose for your offer determines:

• The type of discount or promotion the offer uses
• How long the offer is available
• How shoppers redeem an offer
• What locales the offer supports
• How many times an individual shopper or all shoppers can redeem an offer
• Where the offer appears in your store

Point of Promotions

Use a point of promotion (POP) to display an offer in your store. The offer type you choose determines which POP you can use with an offer (or whether you need a POP). The POP determines when and where the offer appears in your store.

A set of rules for POPs determine their behavior when a shopper encounters the offer (site flow, cart behavior, and so on).

A POP is a banner image, home page image, pop-up window, interstitial page, and so on. Most offers use a POP that gives a discount or special pricing. In those cases, the POP only shows advertising and marketing content in select areas of your store.

Your site has several standard POPs that are associated with the standard set of offer types. The Site Design team can add new POPs for any store. You can also use a POP to display content without a product offer.

The site's offer type configuration defines the relationship between offers and POPs.

Specific use POPs

Some POPs work with a specific type of offer. The offer must use the POP, or the offer won’t work correctly.

See Configuring the offer type to learn more about which POP you can use with specific offer types.

A set of rules for POPs determine their behavior when a shopper encounters an offer that uses a POP (site flow, cart behavior, and so on).

Shipping offers

A shipping offer provides a discount on shipping costs for orders that meet certain criteria. You can create a shipping offer for:

• Specific products
• Orders that meet certain criteria such as total order value, shipping destination, or chosen shipping method

When you create a shipping offer, you can restrict the offer to orders that include specific products or orders that meet or exceed a total value limit. You can create a shipping discount for specific products or all products in an order. You can also create a shipping discount that triggers when a shopper uses a specific shipping method or sends the products to a specific destination. (The system uses the shipping address to determine if the order is eligible for the shipping discount.) Some shipping discount offer types allow you to restrict the offer by both destination and shipping method.

You can use shipping offers to discount shipping costs by a percentage or specific amount of the cost. You can limit the total number of uses for the offer and, in some cases, limit the number of the times an individual shopper can redeem the offer. If desired, you can restrict the offer to one or more locales.

Adding a shipping discount to a Discount offer

You can add a shipping discount to the discount offer type. This is the only offer type that allows you to add a shipping discount in addition to the discount already provided by the offer.

When you create a discount offer, the Shipping Discount pane under the Defining how the offer behaves step in the Create Offer wizard appears. Use the Shipping Discount pane to select whether or not you want to add a shipping discount to the discount offer. Setting up the shipping discount is very similar to creating a regular shipping discount. See Shipping offers for more information on shipping discount offers.

If you chose to add a shipping discount to the discount offer, the Discount Information pane under the Associating products and pricing with the offer step in the Create Offer wizard allows you to specify the discount type.

How to create mystery discounts

A mystery discount offer randomly selects a discount for the shopper. Typically, shoppers do not know what discount they will get until they add a product to their shopping cart. Generally, a mystery discount offers a really good discount to a few shoppers and a typical discount to most shoppers.

There are many different ways you can use a mystery discount at your store. How to create mystery discounts outlines how you can create a mystery discount offer. We suggest you use these guidelines and a little imagination to create a mystery discount for your products and shoppers.

1. Create an offer for each discount or promotion you want to offer in your store.

   Example: When you want to randomly provide three percentage discounts (10%, 25%, and 40% ) to your shoppers, you can create a separate offer for each discount percentage. When you wanted to provide random shipping discounts, you can create shipping offers for each discount you wanted to provide.

   When creating an offer for the mystery discount, follow these guidelines:

   • Create the offer using any offer type that you can use with the site test trigger.

   • Create offers for specific products, categories, or all products in your store. The products or categories you create the offer for is determined by how you will use or promote the mystery discount.

     Example: You could create offers for you best-selling or most popular products and provide a mystery discount as one of those offers, or create an offer for all products in your store and just provide a discount on the order.

   • Select the Site Test trigger type. You will use a Site Optimizer test to randomly provide shoppers with the offer.
   • Use usage controls with the offers to limit how many times each offer can be redeemed.
   • Add a statement to the Offer Description in Cart that tells your shoppers what discount they are getting and why.

2. Create a Site Optimizer test for the offers you created.

   When creating a site optimizer test:

   • Add the offers you created for the mystery discount to the Site Optimizer test and assign an appropriate percentage split for each one.

   • The split determines how many shoppers will receive each discount.

     Example: If you are offering three percentage discounts (10%, 25%, and 40%), you could assign the 10% discount offer a 50% split, the 25% discount offer a 40% split, and the 40% discount offer a 10% split. This means that 5 out of 10 shoppers will get a 10% discount, 4 out 10 shoppers will get a 25% discount, and 1 out of 10 shoppers will get a 40% discount.

3. Optional. Create custom pages as landing pages for the offers.

   • The landing pages can tell the shopper what discount they will get or what products are included in the promotion.
   • If you create custom pages for your mystery offer, you must also create links to those custom pages and distribute those links to your shoppers.
   • If you create a custom page, do not forget to include a link on the landing page so the shopper can access your store.
4. Use the preview feature to test the offers, custom pages (if used), and Site Optimizer test. Make sure the offers behave and appear as you want them to. You will not know which offer you will get until you enter the coupon code in the shopping cart.
5. Deploy the offers, custom pages (if used), and the Site Optimizer test in your store.
6. Publicize the offer to your shoppers in your store, in social media, or through email. If you are using custom pages, distribute links to the custom pages to your shoppers.

Custom bundle offers

The custom bundle offer allows shoppers to choose products from groups you created within the offer. Depending on the offer setup, shoppers may have to select a specified number of products from a group, some groups may be required, and there may be a minimum or maximum limit on the products they can select. Once the shopper completes the requirements for the offer, they can check out and complete their purchase.

Difference between custom bundle and shopper-defined bundle

The difference between a custom bundle offer and a shopper-defined bundle is that in a custom bundle, you create groups of products from which shoppers can select. In a shopper-defined bundle, there is only one group of products and the restrictions and discount options are more limited and apply to all products that are part of the offer. Custom bundles allow you to create different purchasing restrictions and set different discounts for different groups of products in your bundle.

Custom bundle product groups

When you create a custom bundle, you create groups of products from which a shopper purchase a product. The products can be standalone products or components that a shopper selects to create a larger product.

Custom bundles must contain at least two groups, one of which is a "mandatory" group. The shopper must select one or more products from the mandatory group. You define the minimum and maximum product quantities the shopper must select from the group. Think of products in a mandatory group as parent products in other bundle offers.

After you create the mandatory group (by default the first group you create must be the mandatory group), you can then create additional groups, and designate them as mandatory or optional. You can also define the minimum number of products a shopper must select and the maximum number of products a shopper can select from each group.

See Custom Bundle Options for information on restrictions.

Custom bundles and discounts

A custom bundle does not necessarily have to provide a discount. If you want a discount, you can set one for each product in a group, use the same discount for all products in the group, or discount the entire bundle.

Custom bundle POP

The Custom Bundle offer type uses a specific point of promotion (POP) called "CustomBundle_Eligibility_Promotion."You must associate this POP with the Custom Bundle offer type in the offer type settings and then select it when you create the offer for it to appear in your store.

Use the custom bundle POP to display the custom bundle groups and products in a special window. Shoppers can access the special custom bundle window by clicking a link on a Product Detail page or shopping cart. Links to the special window can also appear on the home page or category list page if the Site Design team added them to those pages.

Custom bundles and offer arbitration

When you deploy a custom bundle in your store, that offer will always "win" offer arbitration. If the shopper adds one of the products in the "mandatory" group to their cart, it will trigger the offer, and the system will present with the custom bundle to the shopper.

How to create custom bundle offers

Creating a custom bundle is very similar to creating other types of offers, and many of the settings you can set for other offer types are the same for custom bundles. Because the process to create a custom bundle is very similar to other offers, this topic focuses on creating the groups for a custom bundle and entering the Display Content for the custom bundle.

1. When creating a group for your custom bundle in the Product and Pricing step, provide the following information:

   • Complete the information under the Primary Group.
   • If applicable, select the currency for the offer under Pricing Information.
   • Select the method used to determine eligibility under Product Eligibility.
   • Select a Discount option and Discount Type, if applicable, under Products or Categories.
   • Click Add to add products or categories under Products or Categories.
   • Search for the products or categories, move them to the Selected Product or Selected Category field, and then click Add. The selected products or categories appear under Products or Categories.
   • Click Save
2. Optional. Click Add Group and repeat step 1. Repeat this step for each additional group.
3. Click Next. The Display Content step appears.
4. Complete the fields in the Configuring the offer's content step and repeat for each supported locale.
5. Click Next. The Review step appears.
6. Complete the fields on the Review step. See Reviewing the offer for more information on the panes and fields.

7. Click Finish. A message appears asking you if you want to deploy the offer now.

   Note: Once you complete the Create Offer wizard and save an offer, you cannot change the type.

8. Click OK to create and deploy the offer or click Cancel to just create the offer. You can deploy them when you want it to appear on your site. Shoppers will not see the offer on your site until you deploy the offer.

Coupon code offers

A coupon code provides discounts on products or shipping costs when a shopper enters a coupon code during checkout.

This topic explains the settings for coupon code offers, including how to add or manage coupon codes after creating an offer. We recommend you use this topic in conjunction with the Creating offers when you create a coupon code offer.

How to create a coupon code offer

1. When following the steps in How to create an offer, choose the following options:

   • Select Coupon Code under Trigger in the Type step. Note that you can only use the coupon code with specific offer types.
   • Select an option from the Type list under Coupon Codes in the Behavior step. See Type for more information.
   • If you want to limit the number of times a single coupon can be used, select the Limit Individual Coupon Usage checkbox.

   • Select PointOfSale_CouponEntryField from the Points of Promotion list under Offer Display.

     Note: If you do not set up the offer with this POP, the field where shoppers enter the code will not appear. If the coupon code POP is not available as an option when you create the offer that means that POP is not associated with that offer type. See Configuring offer types for more information.

   • Scroll down to the bottom of the Review step and click Yes for Add Coupon Codes Next, click Finish, and then click No. The Offer Details page appears. When you click Finish, the system will prompt you to deploy the offer.

     Best Practices: Do not deploy the offer until after you set up coupon codes. If you choose not to add coupon codes now, you can add them later. See How to add coupon codes to the offer for instructions.

How to add coupon codes to the offer

1. From the Offer Details page, scroll down to Behavior and click Add. The Add Coupon Codes Next dialog appears.

2. Follow the instructions for the coupon generation method you chose earlier:

   • Enter Coupon Codes:

     • Enter the coupon codes that shoppers can use to redeem the offer in the Code field and click Save.

     See Guidelines for creating your own coupon codes for more information.

   • Generate Coupon Codes:

     • Enter the number of codes you want the system to generate for the offer in the Quantity field. The system will generate codes using an algorithm developed by Digital River and will be nine characters in length.

       You can generate up to two million codes at any one time.

       Best Practices: Generate codes multiple times if you need more than two million codes for your offer.

   • Range:

     1. Enter the prefix that you want to appear at the beginning of each code in the Prefix field. Prefixes can be letters or numbers or a combination of both with no spaces or special symbols.
     2. Enter the first number for the range in the Start field. Your range of coupon codes will begin with this number.

     3. Enter the last number for the range in the End field. Your range of coupon codes will end with this number.

        Example: Here is how a range of codes would look if you specified a Prefix of FreeShip, a Start of 10, and an End of 15: FreeShip10, FreeShip11, FreeShip12, FreeShip13, FreeShip14, FreeShip15

   • Import Coupon Codes:

     1. Click Choose File.

     2. Locate the .txt file that contains the coupon code you want to import and click Open.

        The contents of the .txt file would look like this:

        code123,code456,code789,code42,freeshipping!,springsale,25%off,emailpromo1

        Note: Import files are limited to one million codes. The system has problems importing files that contain more than a million codes. We recommend you do multiple imports if you need more than one million coupon codes for your offer.

     3. Click Save. A message appears when the import completes.

   See Coupon Codes for more information.

3. Click Done.

Guidelines for creating your own coupon codes

• Codes must be less than or greater than nine characters (nine characters are reserved for system generated codes), but no more than 64 characters in length.

  Best Practices: Shoppers need to enter the code to redeem the offer, so keep your codes as short as possible.

• Use commas to separate individual coupon codes, but do not use commas in the coupon codes themselves. A comma in a coupon code acts like a line break.

  Example: If you enter "123,456", the system interprets it as two codes ("123" and "456"). Similarly, if a shopper enters "123,456" in the coupon code field, the system interprets it as two different codes ("123" and "456").

• Do not use spaces to separate individual coupon codes, or within the codes themselves.

  Best Practices: Do not use spaces in coupon codes. It may lead to errors when the shopper copy and pastes the coupon code during checkout, or affect how the coupon code appears in an email or social media post.

• You can include special characters (such as ! or & or %) in coupon codes. You can use any standard symbol (on an English/United States keyboard) in your coupon codes, with the exception of commas as mentioned above.

How to view coupon code usage

If an offer uses coupon codes, you can view the total number of codes for the offer, and the number of codes used when you edit an offer. You can also download a list of all coupon codes for the offer.

1. Select Marketing, select Offers and Programs and then click Manage Offers. The Offers page appears.
2. Locate the offer that uses the coupon code you want to view and click the Name in the Offers list to view the offer. The Offer Details page appears.
3. Look at the coupon code usage information under in the Coupon Codes area of the Behavior pane.

Tiered discounts

You can create tiered discounts based on how many products a shopper purchases. You can create tiers for:

• An individual product based on the quantity purchased
• Products with variations
• Products within a category
• The purchase amount—You can only create tiers based on the purchase amount for order-level discount offers.

A tiered discount can be either a percentage off or an amount off the price. How you set up tiers will differ slightly based on the selected discount level for the offer.

If you create tiers for individual product offers, you can only set up tiers based on the number of products purchased. If you create tiers for all products in an offer, you can set up tiers based on either the number of products purchased or the purchase amount.

How to create or edit tiers for individual products in a bundle offer

1. Under Products in the Products and Pricing step or Edit Offer Product and Pricing page, select Tiered Discount as the Discount Type. See Associating products and pricing with the offer for more information.

2. Select an option from the Discount list and complete the From, To, and Value fields.

3. Use the Add Tier and Remove Tier buttons to manage the tiers.
4. Click Save.

Private Store offers

When you create an offer, you can make that offer available to your Private Store shoppers. When you create a Private Store offer, you can choose to:

• Restrict the offer to Private Store shoppers only
• Make the offer available to both your public and Private Store shoppers
• Associate the offer with more than one Private Store (depending on the offer type you selected)

If you create a Discount offer type, you can add as many Private Stores to the offer as needed. All other offer types that support Private Stores only allow you to associate one Private Store with the offer. You cannot associate a Private Store to the Shopper-Defined Bundle and Buy M, Get N offer types.

You can make an exclusive offer for a Private Store by selecting Purchase Plan Shoppers as the Available For option in the Offer Controls pane under the Defining how the offer behaves step in the Create Offer wizard and select the specific Private Store.