Benefits of Promotions
Encourage repeat business
90% of customers look for coupons when making online and offline purchases. Offering flat or percent-based discounts during holidays or seasonal changes can help attract business for new and returning customers alike.
Grow your CRM
Customer data is a key tool for retailers trying to grow their business. Require that customers provide their name, email address, and other important data in order to be eligible for any promotions. They’ll benefit from discounts, and you’ll gain valuable marketing data.
Keep inventory moving
Accidentally order too many shipments of an item? Having trouble selling winter clothes as the season wraps up? Encourage customers to purchase items that they normally would not spend money on with strategically timed sales. Promotions can be limited to a date range or can last indefinitely.
Always secure
Erply makes it easy to prevent discount fraud. Require that promotions must be approved by a manager. If needed, you can pull a report of which employees activated promotions and what items were discounted to get a birds-eye view of employee promotion usage.
Reportable results
All promotions are trackable in Erply, so you can see exactly how much money was discounted during purchases. Promotion tracking can be done across all retail locations, by specific store, within a specific time frame, and much more.
Creating a promotion
Example promotions:
Buy X, get Y free
Holiday sale
Weekly specials
Birthday deal
BOGO; buy one get one
It is recommended to use the new and improved promotions management module. In the back office, navigate to Retail Chain and select Promotions (New). Erply will display a list of all promotions.
Click Create New Promotion to to so. From here, Erply will open the promotion builder.
You can offer discounts on specific items or groups of items, block certain items from receiving promotional discounts, or offer free items when a certain amount of money has been spent.
| Overview Cell | Description |
| Promotion Name | Name of Promotion, this will show up when searching for the promotion and when it is applied. |
| Starting and Ending Dates/Time | Choose when the promotion is available. |
| Promotion Tier | Choose which promotion tier the promotion goes under. |
| Promotion Type | Promotion applies automatically. - Cashier will not have to do anything. If the promotion applies to the transaction, it will apply automatically. Cashier selects the promotion manually. - The promotion will not be activated until the cashier selects it. This can be found under the Promotions button on the POS. Promotion is applied when user presents a coupon with a serial number. - The promotion will not be applied unless the customer has the appropriate coupon. The cashier will then input the serial number on the coupon under the Coupons button. |
| Reason Code | Select the reason code of the promotion you have created. If you’d like to change the available reason codes, you can find them in Settings -> All settings -> Other settings -> Reason codes. From this menu, information regarding Reason codes can be altered. It is possible to use reason codes in other transactions than only stock removals, such as at the cash register when giving discounts, cash in/out entries, returns. If necessary, you can define restrictions on its use only for a specific purpose. This can be added in the reason code card, in What purpose can this reason code be used for. |
| Active | Choose whether or not the promotion is active, regardless of whether it would be according to the starting/ending time. |
| Choose Type Cell | Description |
| Discount On Specific Products | Discount only applies to specific items in the customer's cart. |
Special Price With Bulk Purchase | Specify products and the threshold quantity. If customer buys that quantity or more, a special price will apply to all these items. Set a maximum purchase limit if needed. |
Discount With Bulk Purchase | Specify products and the threshold quantity. If customer buys that quantity or more, a % or $ discount will apply to all these items. Set a maximum purchase limit if needed. |
Buy One Get One | Customer must buy a certain quantity of specific products. If they do, they can get some other item for free, or with a discount. |
Spend And Get | If customer's shopping cart total is above a set threshold, they can get a discount on specific products. |
Bundle Price | Specify which amount and which products the customer must buy, and assign a special total price to this bundle. For the promotion to apply, customer must buy this exact quantity. For more flexible bulk discounts, see "Discount with Bulk Purchase". |
Get Discount For Loyalty Points | Customer can exchange their loyalty points for a discount on specific products. |
| % Discount On Everything | Customer gets a % discount to whole shopping cart. |
Buy And Get % Off Everything | For this promotion to apply, customer must buy a certain amount of a product. A percentage discount will be applied to everything in the cart. |
Spend And Get % Off Everything | If customer's shopping cart total is above a set threshold, a percentage discount will be applied to the whole cart. |
| $ Off Customer's Purchase | Customer gets a sum discount. |
Buy And Get $ Off Your Purchase | For this promotion to apply, customer must buy a certain amount of a product. A $ discount will be subtracted from their shopping cart. |
Spend And Get $ Off Your Purchase | If customer's shopping cart total is above a set threshold, a $ discount will be subtracted from their shopping cart. |
Pay With Loyalty Points | In exchange for loyalty points, customer will get $ off their purchase. |
“Customer Must“ column - determine promotion requirements.
In this section, you can select how the promotion applies to your products.
It can apply to the amount spent, a quantity of a product bought, any product from a specific group or category, or a specific item(s) from a list.
This is also where you can determine if a promotion redeems a customer’s reward points.
“Customer Will“ column - determine promotion rewards.
In this section, you can determine what the promotion will offer the customer.
Common rewards include percent discounts, flat discounts, or BOGO deals.
Creating Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) Promotions
In the back office, navigate to the Retail chain module and select Promotions (New).
Erply will display a list of all promotions. Click the Create New Promotion button to get started.
On this screen, you can name your promotion, set it to apply to specific stores, and choose a start and end date.
Note: If you leave the “Ending date” blank, the promotion will run indefinitely.
Under Choose Type activate Buy One Get One.
Customer Must Section:
Define what actives a promotion.
Purchase at least the following quantity: Set to 1. This means that when 1 of the product is purchased, the promotion will activate.
Choose products that the BOGO promotion will apply to.
From these product group: choose product groups where the promotion will apply.
or from these product category: choose product categories where the promotion will apply.
or from these brands: choose brands to which the promotion will apply.
or from this list of products: choose specific products where the promotion will apply.
Customer Will Section:
Define the discount the promotion will award.
Get a percentage off: Set to 100%
Off of a specific number of items: 1
Select products to receive the 100% discount
from these product groups: any item from selected product groups will receive the discount.
or from these product categories: any item from selected product categories will receive the discount.
or from these brands: any item from selected brands will receive the discount.
or from this list of products: any specific product selected will receive the discount.
Creating 'Buy One Get One 20% off' Promotions
In the back office, navigate to the Retail chain module and select Promotions (New).
Erply will display a list of all promotions. Click the Create New Promotion button to get started.
Fill out the necessary information such as the promotion’s name, starting and ending date etc. By default, the promotion will automatically apply when applicable.
Note: If you leave the “Ending date” blank, the promotion will run indefinitely.
Follow the steps below to configure your buy one get one 20% off promotion.
The steps below indicate that the customer must make a purchase of at least $35.00 to apply for this promotion.
Under Choose Type activate Buy One Get One.
Customer Must Section
Define what actives a promotion.
Purchase at least the following quantity: Set to 1. This means that when 1 of the product is purchased, the promotion will activate.
Choose products that the BOGO promotion will apply to.
From these product group: choose product groups where the promotion will apply.
or from these product category: choose product categories where the promotion will apply.
or from these brands: choose brands to which the promotion will apply.
or from this list of products: choose specific products where the promotion will apply.(or any other product group you’d like the promotion to apply to)
Customer Will Section
Define the discount the promotion will award.
Get a percentage off: Set to 20%
Off of a specific number of items: 1
Select products to receive the discount.
from these product groups: any item from selected product groups will receive the discount.
or from these product categories: any item from selected product categories will receive the discount.
or from these brands: any item from selected brands will receive the discount.
or from this list of products: any specific product selected will receive the discount.
Other Settings Section
Promotion is only triggered by items with price at least: Set to $35.00.
Creating Loyal Customer Discounts As Promotion
Many businesses have a loyalty program where loyal customers get small discount on all purchases (e.g. 5% off everything). Occasionally, though, the store may run special promotion events (where certain products get a deeper discount) and it would be preferable if the standard 5% would not apply to promotional items.
To make this scenario work, the 5% discount also has to be a promotion — not a price list discount.
Indeed, in a price list it is also possible to discount a product group by a set percentage, and then apply the price list to a customer group. However, promotions always apply on top of the price list price, and there is no way for a promotion to "cancel" a price list discount. Therefore, in this situation, we cannot use price lists.
The solution consists of four steps:
- Define a promotion that gives 5% off everything.
- Associate the promotion with a customer group.
- Ensure that the 5% promotion always applies last.
Creating the Promotion
Under Choose Type activate Spend And Get % Off Everything
Customer Must Section
Define what actives a promotion
Spend at minimum: Set to 0.01. You cannot leave the field empty, and 1 cent is the smallest possible purchase, so this promotion will apply to all transactions.
Customer Will Section
Define the discount the promotion will award.
Get discount on all items: Set to 5%.
Other Settings
Tick the checkboxes for both Except already discounted items and Except items that have already received a promotion discount, or have triggered a promotion.
Associating the Promotion
Under Restrict, choose the customer group you'd like the promotion to apply to.
Ensuring It Applies Last
For this you need to create a new promotion tier, which you can do at Retail -> Promotions (new) -> Promotion Tiers -> Add Promotion Tier. Make sure this promotion tier is last in your list so every other promotion applies first.
Then go back to your promotion and in the Overview tab add your newly created tier.
Viewing Active Promotions at the POS
Click the light blue Promotions button at the POS to view all available promotions.
Active promotions will automatically apply to a customer’s order if all requirements are fulfilled.
Promotion Tiers
Promotions can now be grouped into "promotion tiers". Organizing promotions into tiers will affect the order in which promotions are applied.
The new order is as follows:
Promotions are applied by tier. (Promotions with no tier are applied first.)
Within each tier, promotions are applied by type.
Within each type, promotions are applied from oldest to newest.
Note: This algorithm has been implemented in API call "calculateShoppingCart", and therefore this new logic will take effect in all Erply point of sale applications that use API: Brazil POS, Berlin POS, and Touch POS.
Why promotion order might matter:
At most one item-level discount can apply to one item. (An "item-level discount" is, for example, "25% off this particular product or product group"). If two promotions offer competing discounts for the same items, only the first one will actually apply.
Some promotions may have restrictions such as, "Do not apply this discount to items that are already discounted". It might be useful to ensure that such a promotion is always the last one to apply.
Promotion Tiers can be created, configured, and reordered in Retail -> Promotions (New) -> Promotion Tiers.