Creating Promotions

Getting Started

Go to the promotions page by navigating to the Promotions module on the left side, then select “Couponing Promotions.” Here, you can create new promotions or manage existing ones. To get started, click on +New.

This screen allows you to create promotions based on a wide variety of parameters. To create your promotion, you will need to set up the triggers and benefits appropriately for the promotion you wish to have. Details on each of the triggers are described below.

General Info Section

In the general information box, you can set the name and type of discount.

Type of Discounts:

• Bonus points for Cashier
  Allows cashiers to accrue bonus points on sales they make

• Bonus points for Customers
  Allows customers to accrue bonus points on sales they pay for.

• Coupon with Discount
  Will print out a coupon for use the next time in-store

• Immediate Discount
  Gives an immediate discount or benefit on the current receipt.

• Stamps for Customer (Punch/Stamp cards)
  Similar to bonus points, these stamps or punches will accrue and be used later for a benefit.

Validity Section

Here, you can set the dates and times for your promotion.

• Date
  Use this to restrict your promotion to a certain date range. The start date is included. The end date will not be included in the promotion.

• Weekdays
  What days of the week do you want your coupon to be good for? If you only run a happy hour M-F, this will allow you to set that up.

• Calendar Days
  This allows you to determine what days of the month you want your promotion to run. So, if you only want it to run every third day or every other day, you can check those days.

• Time of Day
  Use this to restrict your promotion to certain times of day. Note that time is in military/24-hour format.

• Org. Unit
  Use this if you want to restrict the promotion to certain Org Units.

• Customer Information
  If you would like to add info text with this promotion, you can add it here.

Also, please try our Promotion Wizard.

Trigger Section

Here, you can set what causes your promotion to happen.

• Total Receipt Amount
  You can trigger a promotion to occur based on the total exact amount or greater.

• Total Product Quantity
  You can trigger a promotion based on the total number of products on a receipt.

• Item Amount With Tag
  You can trigger a promotion based on the total of items with a specific tag. If you are trying to set it in increments, use >=.

• Item Quantity
  You can trigger a promotion based on the total number of a specific product on a receipt. If you are trying to set it in increments, use >=.

• Item Quantity with Tag
  Use this if you want to restrict the promotion to certain Org Units.

• Customer
  You can trigger a promotion by assigning a specific customer.

• Customer Group
  You can trigger a promotion by assigning a customer group to a receipt. This is a great way to trigger employee discounts.

• External Coupon Number
  In the Trigger box, you can enter something alphanumeric in the field “external coupon number.” Since the triggers can be combined, you can easily attach further conditions to them, such as a minimum amount for a certain product group.

Configuring External Coupon Promotions

Couponing promotions can be triggered using External Coupon Codes. This requires a few small steps:

Go to Promotions -> Couponing Promotions, and click +New.

Set the Type to “Immediate Discount,“ and under Trigger, click the check mark for External Coupon Number. Fill that in with the UPC from the Coupon.

*NOTE: If the coupon has a number field that changes between coupons, only fill in the numbers that will not change. The other numbers will be addressed in the next step.

Go to Settings -> Number Ranges,  click “+ Add Number Range,” and scroll until you find Redeem External Coupon.

A blank field will appear with an asterisk. The asterisk is a wildcard symbol, allowing coupons to be numbered. For example, if you wanted to do a special printing of 100 Coupons, the coupon number might resemble (1-100)######,

The number signs represent the numbers on the coupon that do not change. After the asterisk, just enter the numbers that do not change from the coupon and click Save.

At the POS, Retrieve Master Data and restart.

Benefit Section

In this box, you can dictate what benefit this promotion/coupon has and how it affects the parameters you put into the trigger box. You can determine what benefit your promotion will have on the customer and you can choose whether your promotion has:

• No Benefit
  The promotion does nothing. This is another way to turn off your promotion instead of deleting it.

• Reduce Product Quantity
  This how you would do a buy one get one or a buy 2 get 1 free promotion.
  
  BOGO example:
  
  Trigger: Candybar= 2
  Benefit: Reduce Product Quantity Candy Bar by 1.

• Discounts
  You can choose what kind of discount you’d like customers to receive. The first box is for a number either a percentage or dollar amount. The second box allows you to choose whether it’s the dollar amount or percentage. The third box determines whether or not you are setting a fixed price or if it’s a discount. The final box is broken down further here:

• On total receipt
  This would set the total price of the discountable items on the receipt if selected in conjunction with “Fixed Price.” Items marked as not discountable would still count towards the total.

Every other selection below will trigger a fifth box that allows you to pick which products get a discount either by Commodity Group, Tag, or individual product.

• Distributed on all
  This will distribute the discount evenly across products within the defined parameter of the fifth box.

• On every
  This will give the discount for every item within the defined parameter of the fifth box.

• On the cheapest
  This will give the discount on only the cheapest item within the defined parameter.

• On the most expensive
  This will give the discount on only the most expensive item in the defined parameter.

• Maximum Repeat Count
  This sets the maximum amount of times this benefit and trigger can apply for discounts that can be applied multiple times or for restricting the number of times they can fire.

• Advanced
  Look forward to a host of new changes coming soon. These will be available within the next few development cycles. For now, these should not be used.

For a quick explanation of how to create a receipt-based coupon, please see this video:

Discount Management

At the top right of the benefit box, there is a field to set the discount level of the promotion.

First, you will want to navigate to Discount Management under the modules on the left below “Couponing Promotions” and set up a couple of different levels.

Level 5 “Item Discount” and Level 10 “Receipt Discount” come standard and cannot be removed.

*Note that at the top, you can set how a total receipt discount will be calculated based on all products on a receipt or only products that are set to ‘discountable.’

The order you set for the levels is the order in which the discounts will be applied.

In the example below, we have two promotions. Promotion ‘test1’ gives a discount of 10% and is set to level 11. Promotion ‘test1.5’ gives a discount of 1% and is set to level 12. The discount set to level 11 (test1) will fire first, and then the discount set to level 12 (test1.5) will be calculated based on the price created by the promotion set to the lower level (test1).

*Note: If you have two promotions that are set to the same level, they will both apply simultaneously. If you click the exclusive star, only the promotion with the exclusive star will apply.

Examples: Buy two products, get the third for free. You could set up the promotion to recognize when three of the same items have been rung up. To set this up, for example, we used “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” in the name. We then set up the trigger box, leaving everything as is, and added the item quantity with a value of 3. The product we chose was Super Burger. In the benefit box, we selected Discount on one product, the aforementioned Super Burger. Notice how it is set to give a 100% discount. When you hit the total button on the point of sale, it will apply a 100% discount to the third product. This will make the third instance of the Super Burger free of charge.

Another way to set up a Buy 2 Get 1 free promotion can be seen in the image below. In this example, tags are used to allow for the possibility of mixing and matching. Just add that tag to the products you want the promotion to apply to.

You could also apply a discount to a specific group of customers. This is great if you want to set up “clubs” for specific groups. You can set the trigger for the promotion to activate when that customer group is assigned to the current receipt it would apply a discount or a different promotion.

In this example, we have our “Military” group.  The trigger here is activated only when that customer group is added to the transaction. The benefit box shows that a discount of 10% is added to the entire receipt. Anytime this group is added to the receipt, they will receive a 10% discount on their entire purchase.

Also, because the benefit does not have to match the trigger, you can do mix and match promotions as well.

Example: You can apply a discount so that if a customer buys a certain amount of a product with the same tag, a discount will be applied. Here, we have it set up where they can get any three (3) drinks for 20% off. The trigger box is set up to recognize when 3 items with the drink tag are rung up. They will take 20% off all drinks on that receipt for every 3 items rung up.

To setup a “Happy Hour” promotion, for all items in the Commodity Group “BEER”, you can use the Validity section to setup the “Time of Day.” Then in the Benefit box, you can set it to make all beers $2.99 for example. Alternatively, if you did not want it to apply to all items in that Commodity Group, you could do it by tag (as seen in an example above), and tag the select beers you want this promotion to apply to.