How do I use the Promotion Manager?

The Shift4Shop Promotion manager is a powerful tool that lets you set special discounts and enticements for your customers and help drive traffic and sales to your store.

Promotions can range anywhere from simple free shipping on qualified purchases to more advanced marketing campaigns like first-time customer coupons.

For a more complete tutorial on working with the Promotion Manager, please view our guide on setting up example promotions available here.

To Add a Promotion

1. Go to Marketing >Promotion Manager
2. Click on the button labeled "+Add Promotion"

The page will now present you with the following options/fields to populate:

• Promotion Name
  This will be the promotion's display name.
• Promotion Description
  This will be the short description of your promotion

• Start Date
  Use this to set the Promotion's Start Date
• End Date
  Use this section to specify when the promotion will end. (If you plan to have the promotion last indefinitely, you can have its end date be several decades from now.)
• Promotion Type
  How the promotion will be activated. Your choices are:
  • Automatic Promo
    The promotion will apply automatically when applicable to the customer's cart.
  • Coupon Promotion
    The promotion will only apply when the customer inputs a coupon code in the shopping cart. The text box next to Coupon Promotion is where the code will be configured by you. You will also see a button intended to let you copy the URL for the coupon if you would like to email someone the link and automatically apply the promotion.
• Discount
  The amount of discount the promotion will apply to the customer's cart. This can be specified as either a dollar amount, or a percentage.(This can be used to create percentage based coupons as needed)

When these fields are populated, click "+Save" to save the promotion.

Additional Settings

Now that you've saved the promotion, you will have the following additional settings to set up before finally enabling the promotion.

• Total Number of Uses
  Use this feature to specify how many times the promotion can be used in your store. This is useful if you want to have a promotion that only applies to a limited total number of uses. (i.e. "First 10 customers get 50% off!") By default, this setting will be 999 total uses
• Uses per Customer
  Use this text box to specify how many times the promotion can be used by each customer. By default, this setting will be listed with 1 use per customer.

Next to these two new settings, you will have the following additional settings to configure on the promotion. These are split into 2 distinct sections and are located to the right of the page. Click on the + sign to expand each.

Promotion Offers

Along with the discount amount set up from earlier, you'll also have the following additional settings to configure.

• Applies per item
  Use this checkbox, if you'd like the discount to apply to each individual product in the order. Unchecking the box will instead apply the discount to the entire order. Typically, this setting would be used for discounts of a dollar amount rather than percentage
• Free Shipping
  This checkbox will apply free shipping to the order in addition to the discount amounts provided by the promotion.
• Exclude Products from these Manufacturers
  Use this area of the promotion manager to search for and add specific manufacturers whose products will not apply for the promotion
• Include Products in these Categories
  In this section you'll be selecting which product categories the promotion's discount will apply to. In other words, the products in the categories listed here will have the discounted prices applied to them.
• Discount Applies to this Product
  Similar to the above setting, but this will let you apply the actual discount to only one product. This can be used if you'd like to create a promotion where a discount is used to entice your customers into purchasing a particular item rather than applying the discount across an entire category.
• Fixed Price Product
  This option will allow you to offer a product as the promotion offer. However, in this updated version, you will have some additional control of how the product is offered. In this new version, you can still make the product free of charge, but you will also be able to set it so that the product is made available at a fixed price. For example, an electronics store can offer a DVD at a special sale price when a customer purchases a particular DVD player.
  

  Note
  When a fixed price product is added to the order, the store simply adds it to the shopper's cart at the fixed price.

  For this reason, when adding a fixed price product to the promotion, the store will let you choose any item from your catalog as long as it does not have options that need to be selected. Furthermore, it will add only ONE of the item to the cart.

• Bonus Reward Points
  This feature (available to Version 6 stores) will allow you to award customer loyalty/reward points when using the promotion.

Promotion Rules

Promotion Rules is where you will specify the parameters that need to be met on the customer's cart before the Promotion becomes applicable to the order.

Along with the coupon code requirements specifed before, you will also see these additional settings:

• Promotion Applies
  This setting lets you control whether the promotion applies to all customers or returning customers. If set to "All" then it will allow for all customers to receive the discount. If set to "Returning Customers" then only customers who have placed an order previously will receive the discount. If set to "Customer First Order" it will only apply to customers who have not placed an order previously.
• Customer Group
  Use this to specify if the promotion will apply to a particular customer group. This is useful if you need to limit the promotion to only a specific set of customers. By default, this setting will be set to "None" which will apply to non-registered customers (or registered customers assigned to no customer group) shopping your store. However, you can also set it to "All" for all of your customer groups, or "Select Specific" which will allow you to make the promotion aplicable to specific customer group(s).
• Country and State
  This area can be used to limit which countries (and states of the country) the promotion will apply to. This can be useful in case you want to offer a "free shipping" type promotion, but limit it only to domestic customers. Or perhaps only to a specific state in your domestic country.
• Order Quantity
  This is used to set the minimum and maximum amount of products that need to be in the customer's cart before the promotion is activated. For example, if you want to offer a 10% discount on any orders of 5 or more, you would specify 5 as the minimum.
• Order Amount ($)
  This setting is used to specify the minimum and maximum amount of money that needs to be spent by the customer, before the promotion is activated. For example, if you want to offer a 10% on any orders over $100, you would specify 100 as the minimum amount.
• Reward Points:
  Only For stores on the Plus plan and higher (including the Free End-to-End eCommerce Plan). If using the reward points module, this setting can be used to specify the minimum and maximum amount of reward points the customer must have in order to qualify for the promotion.
  Although the points the customer has accrued are being used to qualify the user for the promotion, the customer will still retain their points when they complete the order. Furthermore, they will even accrue new points with their order.
• Non-Stackable:
  This checkbox will control whether the promotion can be used in combination with other promotions in your store.
  Placing a checkmark in this box will specify the promotion as non-stackable - e.g. cannot be combined with any other promotion.
• Override Non-Stackable Promos:
  Marking this checkbox will allow the individual promotion to override any other promotion's Non-Stackable setting if both promotions are combined in the cart. In other words, if the promotion you're creating is set to override non-stackable, and another promotion in your store (which is set to be non-stackable by itself) are used in conjunction, the store will stack both.
• Excluded Items
  If your store has any products that are on sale, or have special quantity discounts applied to them, you can exclude them from promotions with this setting. You can control if you want one or both of these excluded.
• Applies if any of these Products or Products from these Categories
  This setting works in conjunction with the "Include Products in these Categories" and "Applies if these Products are in the cart" settings. "Are in the Cart" means an eligible specified product or product from an eligible category is currently in the shopping cart. "Previously Purchased" allows for you to restrict a promotion only to customers who have previously purchased a specified product or a product from an eligible category. The field allows for you to specify if they need to have purchased it within a previous number of days. If left to 0, then there will be not limit.
  

  Note
  If this particular setting is set to "None" then the next two sections will not be visible.

• Applies if Products from these Categories are in the basket
  Use this portion of the Promotion Manager to specify which products need to be selected and added to the cart before the promotion will apply. This can be used if you want to mark products from a specific category as being the "promotion trigger" products.
• Applies if these Products are in the Basket
  Similar to the category requirements listed above, but with the advantage of specifying only certain products. This setting will let you specify up to 4 individual products instead of a whole category.