Knowledgebase

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

Note
When a promotion is applicable to your customer's shopping cart, the name and short description will appear on the cart along with the promotion's offering. (e.g. the discount amount or promotion specifics)

  • 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.

Note
Upon saving the promotion, the Promotion Manager interface will display additional settings for the promotion. When first creating the promotion however, the interface will advise you that the promotion is not yet enabled (along with a link to enable the promotion). It is recommended to specify your additional settings before enabling the promotion.

Also note that an improperly configured promotion that has been enabled could trigger and cause errors. Therefore it is important to consider each setting carefully when creating a 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.

Note
The uses per customer function will use the order's email address to confirm the number of uses.

Be sure to have the "Email is required" setting turned on in the store's General Settings section.

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:

  • Discount 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 any customer 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.
  • 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.

Note
If you choose to configure only specific items for a promotion with the above setting, it is recommended to make the products featured items on your store to allow your customers to easily select them and qualify for the promotion.


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