Discounts

Discount types are a shared concept found in coupons and promotions that allow you to define what is discounted, how much it is discounted, and who the discount applies to.

When defining a discount rule, the first choice to make is what you want to discount. Discounts can be applied to the following:

• Order total: Discount applies to the order’s total
• Shipping: Discount applies to the shipping total
• Product or Category: Discount applies to a particular product or category
• Buy X get Y: Discount becomes eligible when specified items are purchased

Order total

This discount type applies to the customer’s order total and can be based on either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage. For example, a user could receive 10% off or a fixed amount of $10.00 off their entire order total.

When setting the Amount field:

• Choose $ for a fixed discount amount
• Choose % to specify a percentage-based discount

You can specify product categories that are not eligible for the discount by selecting Exclude categories and selecting categories through the search feature.

An order minimum can also be set to ensure the discount only applies to orders that meet a minimum order total. Select Require minimum order total and specify the amount.

Shipping

This discount type applies only to the cost of shipping for a customer’s order. The Amount can be specified as a flat discount amount ($) or a percentage (%). Additionally, you can select Apply to specific shipping method to apply the discount to one shipping method offered by your Swell store. A minimum order total can also be required for this discount type.

Product or Category

Utilize this Discount type to apply a discount to a particular product or category. When creating this discount, specify the discount Amount, select product or category, and make your selections from the search field.

Additional settings for this discount include:

• Exclude categories: This will exclude any product within the selected categories from being eligible for the discount.
• Require minimum order total: Set a minimum order total to be met before the order can receive the discount. For example, setting it to $10.00 would require the order total to be at least $10.00 before the customer could receive the discount.
• Require minimum product price: Set the minimum price of a product to be eligible for the discount. For example, if you set the minimum product price to $14.00, and a user tries to purchase a product priced at $10.00, they will not receive the discount.
• Require minimum product quantity: This sets the number of products a user must purchase to receive the discount. If you set this to a minimum of 4, and a customer purchases three products, they will not receive a discount.
• Up to maximum product quantity: Set the maximum quantity of products for which the discount can be redeemed. For example, say we set this to 4, and a customer purchased five of that product. The discount would only apply to four of the products during checkout—they would pay full price for the fifth product.

Buy X Get Y

The Buy X Get Y discount is a Coupon or Promotion that provides a discount for a product once the customer meets specific requirements with their purchase. For example, suppose a customer buys three products. In that case, they could get the fourth one discounted—or if the customer spent a certain amount, they could be eligible to receive a discount on a particular item.

When creating a Buy X Get Y discount, you will have two areas to specify the requirements for the discount to be met as well as the discount itself:

• In the Customer buys section, define either the Minimum purchase amount or quantity and specify the product or categories that need to be purchased in order for a customer to receive the discount.
• In the Customer gets section, set the discount the customer will receive once they meet the requirements for the discount (outlined in the Customer buys section). Here you define the Discount type, the Amount, the Up to quantity (if the discount is per item), and choose the products and categories eligible for the discount.

Keep in mind when working with multiple discounts is that all discounts that match an item will be applied. For example, if a coupon has both a Category prices discount and a Product price discount that match the same item in the customer’s cart both discounts will be added together to determine the final discount value.

Additionally, discount values are calculated independently. To continue the above example, if I have a $3 discount on the category and a 20% discount on the product, the final discount amount will be $7 for a $20 product ($3 is fixed, and $4 is 20% of the $20 price). The order of the discounts does not matter because they are always calculated against non-discounted values.

Usage limits give you greater control over your discounts. You have three options to limit your promotions and coupons:

• Limit the number of times this promo/coupon can be used
• Limit promo/coupon to one per customer (tracked by email)
• Limit promo/coupon to specific customer groups

These controls let you limit who can use a discount and how many times it can be used. You can also control the use of your discount by setting the start and (optionally) end dates for your discount—letting you safely prepare a promotion ahead of time, and end it exactly when you want. The expiration control is especially useful with coupons to avoid lingering coupons that continue to be used indefinitely.

While coupons and promotions support different types of discounts to your customers, they are both created in a relatively similar workflow under the Discount tab within the dashboard.

Creating a coupon

To create a coupon, navigate to Discounts > Coupons in the Swell dashboard and select New coupon in the top right of the window. By default, you will be creating a single coupon instance. From the coupon creation view, you will be prompted to complete the specifications for the coupon:

• Coupon code
• Description
• Discount type
• Usage limits
• Active dates

Bulk coupon creation

Swell provides the ability to create multiple coupons at once, preventing the need to manually create each individual coupon. This is achieved by selecting Multiple codes within the coupon creation view. In addition to the specifications listed above, you will need to specify the desired amount of coupons within the dedicated field.

Creating a promotion

To create a promotion, navigate to Discounts > Promotions in the Swell dashboard and select New promotion in the top right of the window. From there, you will be prompted to complete the specifications for the promotion (much like coupons):

• Promotion name
• Description
• Discount type
• Usage limits
• Active dates

When creating discounts for subscriptions, Swell provides the ability for you to control how the discount will be applied to your subscription. When creating a coupon or promotion for a subscription in the Discounts tab, you can specify the number of billing cycles for the discount to be applied.

For example, say you are running a promotion on your new monthly subscription for your literary magazine. You could give new customers a nice discount on their first year of the subscription (twelve billing cycles—once a month). You could also give the first 3 months free by applying a full discount for three billing cycles.