Managing Promotions

Who among us hasn’t succumbed to promotions offered in online stores? Oftentimes, that free shipping or buy-one-get-one offer makes the difference between a customer finalizing their order or abandoning their cart. With promotions, deals like these can be quickly set up for the products and time frames that you want.

Promotions are price adjustments, permanent or temporary, applied at the cart level. If a customer puts enough of the right items in their cart or enters the right code, this can trigger deals and discounts in response. On an eCommerce website, one would only see these particular adjustments on the cart and/or at checkout. Promotions can be managed programmatically with the Shop API.

To get started with promotions in the Crystallize App, click the Special Prices button on the left-hand side of the screen. From here, you can either click the plus sign button (+) at the top of the screen and choose Promotion to start defining a new promotion.

Here’s what you’ll need to specify for a new promotion:

• Name. At the top of the screen, type in a name for the promotion.
• Identifier. A unique identifier that you’ll use to reference the promotion programmatically. It’s auto-generated based on the provided name, but you can change it.
• Mechanism. The type of promotion may be percentage (increments/decrements the original price by a specified percentage), relative (increments/decrements the price by a given amount), fixed (sets the price to a specified value), or X for Y (When X items are in the cart, charge what is normally paid for Y items. If items in the cart have different prices, then the cheapest one(s) will be discounted).
• Period (optional). The time period(s) during which the promotion is valid. If unspecified, the promotion will take effect immediately and is permanent until it is modified or deleted.
• Trigger (optional). The condition(s) that enable the promotion to be applied (e.g. if 3 of a certain product variant is placed in the cart). If no trigger is specified, the promotion will be applied to every cart. You can choose to add products, product variant SKUs, folders containing products, and/or coupons (one or more codes that can be entered at checkout). Once items are added, you can choose to include them (default) or exclude them from the trigger. Excluding is useful in cases where you want the trigger to apply to a majority of items in folder(s) or your catalogue, except for a certain subset of them.
• Target (optional). The product variant(s) that will receive the price adjustment. If no target is specified, the promotion will be applied to every product in the catalogue. In some cases, the target item(s) may be identical to the trigger item(s). Once items are added, you can choose to include them (default) or exclude them from the target. Excluding is useful in cases where you want to target a majority of items in folder(s) or your catalogue, except for a certain subset of them.

Once a promotion has been created, it will be listed on the left side of the Special Prices screen, with a colored indicator to denote its status (green = active, yellow=pending, red = ended, gray = unlimited i.e. active at all times). You can click on an existing promotion to view it. Clicking the action button (...) at the top of the screen allows you to either edit or delete the promotion.