Promotions

1. Introduction
2. Creating a New Promotion
   1. What Is It Called?
   2. What Is Included?
   3. How is it Redeemed?
3. Deleting a Promotion
4. Promotions and the API
   1. Get all Promotions
   2. Apply a Promotion to a Subscription
      1. Error Codes and Messages
5. Promotions and the Hosted Payment Pages

1. Introduction

You can use Promotions to increase demand and differentiate your product. You can use incentives like discounts to drive up sales of any given product. It's a tried and true marketing tactic, and it's now much easier to implement through Cheddar.

2. Create a New Promotion

Create a new promotion by visiting cheddargetter.com/admin/promotions/new in the admin dashboard. The details of a promotion are outlined below.

2.1 What Is It Called?

First step is to define the promotion. You'll want to be descriptive here, because this is what your customers will see if you decide to show them.

1. Name - Less than 30 characters here.
   
2. Description - Less than 255 characters here.
   
3. Limit by Pricing Plans
   
   • If you want this promotion to be available only on specific Pricing Plans, you can select this checkbox to display a list of available Pricing Plans. Select multiple plans by holding down Command key on Macs (Control on PCs), or shift to select a block of them.
4. Limit by Charge Types
   
   • You may choose to apply the promotion to only:
     • setup fees
     • flat recurring fees
     • tracked item overage fees
     • custom charges
   • ... or any combination.

2.2 What Is Included?

1. Incentive Type
   
   • As of our first release, the only available incentive type is a Percentage Discount. We will release a number of other possible incentives in the near future.
2. % Discount
   
   • Discounts are calculated as a percentage of each charge code on your customer's invoice. Each pricing plan and each tracked item will have their own associated credit based on the percentage discount you set here. The best way to explain this is by example:
     • 10% Discount
     • Gold Plan: $50
     • Gold Plan: -$5
     • Widget Usage: 200 uses x $1 each = $200
     • Widget Usage: 200 uses x -$0.10 = -$20
     • Total = $225
3. Duration
   
   • Multi-month
     • Multi-month discounts are applied to the first active invoices for the quantity of months you set in this field. So if you set a discount for 2 months, but set the first invoice date for sometime in the future, the discount will be applied to the first two invoices after the first invoice is processed.
     • For longer periods such as annual plans, a multi-month discount that is less than the total period of recursion will only be applied to the first invoice of that subscription if the first invoice occurs within the discount period.
     • For example, a multi-month discount for 6 months that is applied to an annual plan that bills immediately on signup would be processed as a discount on the entire year.
     • But a multi-month discount for 6 months that is applied to an annual plan that bills at the end of the term (after one year) would not be processed for that subscription.
     • The best way to avoid this situation is to simply create separate promotions for your different Pricing Plans, and clarify what is included in each.
   • One-month
     • One-month promotions will only be applied to the first invoice of the subscription.
     • One month's worth of the billing term will receive the promotion. In other words, if the pricing plan is monthly, the value of the the entire first invoice will be discounted. If the pricing plan is annual, 1/12th of the invoice will be discounted.
       
   • Forever
     • Forever promotions will be applied to every invoice for the entirety of the life of the subscription.

2.3 How Is It Redeemed?

1. Coupon Code - Less than 30 characters here.
   
2. Limited Redemptions
   
   • How many people do you want to be able to redeem this coupon? Once the limit of redemptions is hit, the coupon will be deactivated. If you want to, you can go in and add more available redemptions at that point.
3. Expiration Date
   
   • When is this coupon valid? Set the expiration date here. The coupon expires at exactly midnight of the timezone you are in (not your customer) at the end of the expiration date.

3. Deleting a Promotion

You can only delete a promotion if no customers have used it (currently or in the past). So if you are just testing, you'll need to delete the test customers first before deleting the promotion. This is the same behavior as Pricing Plans and Tracked Items, and is necessary for maintaining the integrity of active customer subscriptions.

4. Promotions and the API

4.1 Get all Promotions

Using the API, you can pull all promotions data via the promotions/get method. Within the response, you will find all data related to the promotions.

4.2 Apply a Promotion to a Subscription

Applying a promotion to a new customer signup or subscription edit is achieved by simply adding the couponCode to the subscription data in the new customer or edit customer and subscription or update subscription API methods.

4.2.1 Error Codes and Messages

When applying a promotion to a subscription, you may receive errors according to the coupon code config:

5. Promotions and the Hosted Payment Pages

Promotions are available to be redeemed via the Hosted Pages. To enable or disable them, login to your Cheddar product account and go to Configuration > Hosted Pages > Form Fields. Here you will find a checkbox for Promotion: Coupon Code.

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