Everyone in the world loves getting a discount. With SFCC Business Manager, you can create various discounts that drive sales and make all shoppers happy.
In SFCC Business Manager, you configure discounts as promotions and group multiple promotions into campaigns. For example, create a campaign to push new spring apparel, such as traditional dresses, lightweight dresses, and sportswear. Here are some of the promotions you can offer to shoppers.
Free shipping or extra discounts or gifts to shoppers who spend more than a certain amount on selected apparel.
Buy one, get one free for all traditional dresses via an emailed coupon.
Buy one pair of party wear dresses and get 50% off on the next pair.
Buy three sportswear and get 20% off the entire order.
You can configure how the shopper qualifies for various types of discounts. A coupon is a qualifier, for example- an emailed coupon got the shopper those beautiful clothes!
So, campaigns contain promotions, and these are triggered by qualifiers. Let’s take a look at how campaigns and promotions are works.
A campaign is a collection of scheduled experiences that our shoppers can have in our storefront. We can create three types of experiences within a campaign. This are following are campaigns:
Promotion: Promotions are discounts. We talk more about them within a minute.
Slot configuration: Slots are specific places in a storefront that displays content and perform some action. For example, a banner shows an End of Season one group wearing different types of fashions and text that says, “50%-80% off on all categories.” When the shopper clicks the banner, the search results show a list of all categories like men, women, and children.
Sorting rule: Sorting rules let you or your shoppers reorder the search results in a certain way, by lowest price first, for example.
You can schedule campaigns with specific start and end dates like season sales or run them continually. Enable or disable campaigns with one setting. You can give promotions on an independent schedule within the campaign period or the same schedule as the campaign. For example, you can schedule a series of promotions that kick off one after the other during our campaign.
You control promotions by assigning qualifiers and ranks. Qualifiers determine who shopper gets a discount, while rank controls precedence when multiple promotions apply at the same time.
In SFCC, we can create a promotion to define the rules that govern our discount.
Here is the rule of promotions.
Promotion Classes
There are three promotion classes product, order, and shipping.
- Product: discounted individual products
- Order: We can apply a discount on the entire order.
- Shipping: discounted shipping costs.
In the above image, the circle contains a box truck (3), a shopping bag (2), and a dress (1), which represent the product, order, and shipping promotion types, respectively.
Discount Types
Product promotions are a bit complex, offering a matrix of discount type choices. Following are the product promotion discount types in Business Manager.
| Discount Type | Example |
| Without qualifying products | Buy a brand A Product, get 10% off on that product |
| With a number of qualifying products | Spend US$100 on Casual dresses, and get US$10 off |
| With a number of qualifying products | Buy 3 blue-Jeans Pants, get a free belt |
| With a combination of qualifying products | Buy a set of dresses like pants and a shirt, and get US$10 off |
| Buy X/Get Y | Buy a Shirt, get ties at 20% off |
| Buy X and Y/Get Z | Buy a dress and a Cosmetics, and get a free necklace |
| Buy X for Total | Buy three types of Kurtis for US$100 |
When you set up order promotion rules on a product, you specify an amount the shopper must spend or the number of products or a combination of products the shopper must buy a product to qualify for a discount. You can configure order promotion. By applying order promotion rules for an amount off, percent off, bonus products, or choice of bonus products (list or rule) discounts.
You can apply base shipping promotion rules on the order or on individual products or product combinations within the order. You can give qualifying shoppers free or discounted shipping costs or various types of coupons based on gifts.
Discounts
Available discounts vary by discount type on a product. Here’s a list of discounts you can give on a product or combination of products.
- Percent off
- Amount off
- Fixed-price
- Price from a certain price book
- Percent-off product options
- Bonus products
- Choice of bonus products
- Fixed price shipping
- Free shipping
You can give various types of discounts to shoppers like a buy-one-get-one discount, buy two sets and get a free brand product or buy three-get-two discount, where if they buy one pair of dresses they get a second pair or set of dresses of the same style for free.
You create qualifiers to control which customers get a discount on various types of products. In SFCC, qualifiers are coupons, customer groups, and source codes. Here are qualifiers you can apply.
| Coupons | In an SFCC a Coupon defines the holder to a discount. In SFCC, you configure coupons for a single user or multiple users. In SFCC we can create a multi-use coupon that’s good “while supplies last” after that you cannot use discount coupons on a product. In SFCC we can also create system-generated coupons that create coupon codes for you to shop for various products. |
| Customer Groups | In SFCC you can create discounts. Which are available to all customers who belong to a particular customer group. SFCC includes pre-defined groups and SFCC comes standard with three predefined customer groups which are: Everyone, Registered customers, and Unregistered customers. In Business Manager, we can create new groups to meet our own requirements, such as a group based on visit data or as a list of customers, addresses, or order values. |
| Source Codes | In SFCC you can use a source code to direct customers to a specialized landing page that is our website’s unique page, featured product detail page, category list, or other URL. You can provide a source code to shoppers in our print catalog shoppers manually enter the code in our storefront. Or you can provide the source code via a redirect link on an affiliate website. |
In SFCC we have other ways to control Promotions
You don’t want to give products away by applying multiple discounts when shoppers qualify for multiple discounts. With SFCC, we can control which discounts apply to a product, in what order, and how many times on a product. we can exclude certain products from discounts or offer volume discounts.
Tiered Discounts
In SFCC you can tier discounts so that the discount amount increases as the shopper buys more products or sets of products or spends more money on shopping.
For example:
| Quantity | Unit Price |
| 1 | US$10 |
| 3 or 4 | US$9 |
| 5 or more | US$8 |
Rank and Exclusivity
If a shopper qualifies for multiple discounts or gift cards, you can use attributes. In SFCC we have two attributes: Rank and exclusivity attributes, which are to limit which discounts apply to which product. Setting rank and exclusivity attributes prevents stacking or the excessive application of multiple discounts. A rank is a number you can assign the smaller the number, the higher the rank. Generally, discounts with a higher rank apply before lower-ranked discounts.
In SFCC you can set the exclusivity of discounts to NO, CLASS, or GLOBAL. For NO: setting exclusivity to NO allows for combining discounts, For CLASS: CLASS disallows combining discounts in the same class, and For Global: GLOBAL prevents all combining. If the shopper qualifies for a global exclusive promotion, for example, no other promotions apply to a product.
If we say there’s a 15% product promotion for everyone, and a special 20% product promotion for registered customers. Registered customers should only get a 20% discount. Right? Maybe so. But we want multiple promotions applied to our order. A shopper gets a 10% discount on a winter collection, free shipping because the order’s over a set amount, and a free one product to go with the coat in the same order.
You can define both the qualifying products—which products a shopper must buy and in what quantity to be eligible for a discount on a product—and the discounted products—which products are eligible for the discount or gift cards.
What Happens When?
If a shopper qualifies for multiple promotions in a cart, SFCC applies them in a well-defined order to prevent double-dipping or unpredictable results. Suppose, product promotions are applied before order promotions because order promotions depend on the resulting total after the product discounts.
Following this is the order that SFCC applies discounts:
- Class: First we want to apply for a class. The promotion types in the sequence of product, order, and shipping must be followed.
- Exclusivity Type: Check Exclusivity class whether promotions are mutually exclusive, in general, or relative to a promotion’s class.
- Rank: In SFCC which promotions take precedence (with 10 = highest and 100 = lowest).
- Discount Type and Value: We want to apply discounts. Discounts in order like Fixed Price, Total Fixed Price, and Free.
- Maximum Application: We limit the times a discount can apply in order. (Only certain discounts have this capability.
In this blog, we covered the building blocks of merchandising with B2C Commerce: products and catalogs, search and navigation, and finally campaigns and promotions. The next time you shop online, smile. You know how everything fits together!
