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How Customers Qualify for Promotions for B2C Commerce
In B2C Commerce, there are three ways a customer can qualify for a promotion.
| Qualifier | Usage |
|---|---|
| Customer Groups | Members of assigned customer groups are eligible for any promotion contained within a specific campaign, unless you unassign customer groups as a qualifier when configuring a promotion. |
| Source Codes | Use source codes to control which promotions are available to a consumer at a given time. A consumer can provide a source code from a redirect link on an affiliate website or manually entering a value from a print catalog. B2C Commerce triggers the special pricing and promotion that is associated with the provided source code. Only one source code can be active at a time during a session. When you use source codes as part of your promotion strategy, you can control the number and grouping of promotions that a consumer can access at a time. |
| Coupons | Use single or multiuse coupons to activate specific promotions for consumers who receive the coupons, often as part of an email marketing campaign.
|
Within a campaign, you configure a schedule and qualifiers. All experiences inherit the configured qualifiers by default. This inheritance can be deactivated, but it can't be overridden. To expand the experience criteria, assign qualifiers that aren’t available within the containing campaign. For example, a campaign has source code groups A and B as qualifiers, and each assigned promotion inherits the A and B source code groups as qualifiers. If you use those source codes, also select other source codes. If you don't use those source codes, you can't use source codes as qualifiers.
For a promotion experience, the option selected by default is Use coupons as promotion qualifiers?. This setting indicates that the promotion inherits coupons from the parent campaign.
- If enabled, the promotion uses coupon qualifiers. You can't deselect coupons inherited from the campaign. You can only add coupons.
- If disabled, coupons aren’t used as qualifiers.
Qualifiers are implied OR statements. The customer must meet just one of the qualifiers to be eligible for the discount. For example, if you configure a source code and a customer group as qualifiers, the customer must have only the source code OR be part of the customer group to be eligible for the discount.
Coupon Codes and Source Codes
Coupons and source codes are similar, but satisfy different business requirements. While coupons support direct marketing efforts, source codes support affiliate marketing programs, and in some cases, print catalog programs. This table provides a comparison:
| Feature | Coupon Code | Source Code |
|---|---|---|
| Customer action | Customer enters the code into the cart. | Passed via URL at start of session. Supports links from search engines, affiliated websites, and emails. Customer enters code into a page (requires customization). Supports order from print catalogs with source codes. |
| Can be invisible to customer | No | Yes |
| Triggers one or more promotions | Yes | Yes |
| Customer can use multiple codes in a single transaction | Yes | No |
| Discount product, order, or shipping charges. Offer a bonus product. | Yes | Yes |
| Activate a price book | No | Yes |
| Redirect to a category, product, page, or URL | No | Yes |
| Processing behavior when the code is inactive | Yes | Yes |
| Customer redemption limits | Yes | No |
| Quantity redemption limits | Yes | No |
| Frequency redemption limits | Yes | No |
| Session redemption limits | No session limit | 1 per session |
| Analytics | Promotions triggered by a coupon. Use when the promotion is uniquely triggered by a single coupon and no other devices. | Sources and Conversions Promotions triggered by a source code. Use when the promotion is uniquely triggered by a single source code and no other devices. |
| Import and Export of data | XML, CSV | XML |
Example
In this multiple-qualifier example, a merchant creates a campaign called Campaign_2016 and assigns the customer group Registered Customers, the Google source codes, and the specified coupons to the campaign. The campaign contains multiple promotions:
- Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25.
- $10 off orders > $100. (This promotion has an added multi-use coupon qualifier of 2016_10OFFORDERS.)
- $5 off orders > $70. (This promotion has a Google source code.)
Assuming that the campaign and promotions are all active, the promotions apply as follows:
| Customer with these qualifiers | Are eligible for these promotions | aren’t eligible for these promotions |
|---|---|---|
| Registered customers | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $10 off orders > $100 |
$5 off orders > $70 |
| Registered customers providing coupon 2016_10OFFORDERS | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $10 off orders > $100 |
$5 off orders > $70 |
| Registered customers with Google Source Code | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $10 off orders > $100 $5 off orders > $70 |
|
| Unregistered customers without coupon or source code | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $10 off orders > $100 $5 off orders > $70 |
|
| Unregistered customers providing coupon 2016_10OFFORDERS | $10 off orders > $100 | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $5 off orders > $70 |
| Unregistered customers providing Google Source Code | $5 off orders > $70 | Free Ground Shipping for orders > $25 $10 off orders > $100 |
Multiple Promotion Qualifiers
Create promotions within a campaign that require multiple qualifying conditions to be met for a customer. Use this logical AND condition to create a promotion that requires a customer to qualify by a customer group and enter a specific coupon in the basket.
- Any: (default) the promotion is applicable if the customer satisfies at least one of the three qualifier requirements.
- All: the promotion is applicable if the customer satisfies all three of the qualifier requirements.
See Using Multiple Promotion Qualifiers.
- Customer Groups as Promotion Qualifiers for B2C Commerce
B2C Commerce includes a set of standard customer groups (everyone, registered customers, and unregistered customers). - Source Codes as Promotion Qualifiers for B2C Commerce
Use B2C Commerce to build rules that activate price books, implement storefront redirects, and enable promotions when a customer provides a valid source code. - Coupons as Promotion Qualifiers for B2C Commerce
To qualify users for B2C Commerce storefront promotions, you can use coupons. You can generate coupons by using B2C Commerce, sources external to B2C Commerce, custom-defined coupons. You can also import and export coupon codes to external email marketing systems. - B2C Commerce APIs for Coupons
Use the B2C Commerce API to add multiple coupon codes for the same coupon to a cart.
