Creating promotional offers helps draw consumers' attention and drive them from intent to purchase. Well-structured promotions will also help set your business apart from competitors while driving incremental value in the form of added sales.
Because sticky.io is deeply integrated with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, subscription products can be targeted by the native Promotion engine at a granular level. Salesforce Commerce Cloud is ultimately the record of truth when it comes to product pricing.
In this article, we will walk through the process of building promotions directly within the SFCC Business Manager.
Without further ado, let's begin!
Helpful Salesforce Commerce Cloud Documentation
Promotions are a part of the native SFCC functionality. Since the creation of promotions happens directly within the native SFCC Business Manager, please refer primarily to their documentation for the most up-to-date information on promotions.
The articles below will be a great starting point, but the portions of this article that follows should supplement the knowledge that you gain from reviewing the SFCC documentation.
Additional information can also be found in the sticky.io Integration Documentation.
Promotions Explained
A maximum of three offers can be applied to a given product. These are denoted as stickyioOffer1, stickyioOffer2 and stickyioOffer3.
Targeting Subscription Products is flexible and can be complex, but the easiest way to think about the various product attributes available for targeting is this:
sticky.io extends the Product object with several system-object custom attributes, including:
stickyioOffer1, stickyioOffer2, stickyioOffer3, stickyioBillingModels1, stickyioBillingModels2, stickyioBillingModels3, stickyioOneTimePurchase
These attributes can be thought of as the options available to a consumer on the frontend.
Additionally, sticky.io creates “Shared Product Options” that are specifically created to allow for Promotion targeting based on what the consumer adds to their cart:
stickyioOfferOptions, stickyioBillingModelOptions, stickyioTermOptions
When setting up a promotion, keep in mind that just because an Offer or Billing Model is available to a consumer (Product custom attributes), does not mean that is what the consumer has actually selected, is allowed to select, or has added to their cart (Shared Product Options).
Shared Product Options are always present (even if they can’t be seen), so we make sure our promotion is only applicable if the visual/consumer-selectable layer is present as well.
Promotional pricing is applied and visible once a product is added to a cart.
As with all Salesforce Promotions, experimentation will be necessary to understand how one Promotion or qualifier influences another.
It is important to note that when targeting Prepaid Terms in the Promotion engine, one must know the TermID. TermID consists of the parent Offer ID + the Term Cycles. In an example where we are targeting a prepaid offer with an Offer ID of #2 and Prepaid terms of "3 cycles at 20% off", our Term ID would be 2-3.
How to Create A Promotion in SFCC
To begin, we'll start by logging into our Salesforce Commerce Cloud Business Manager and selecting the site of interest.
Next, we will open up the Merchant Tools dropdown. Within the Online Marketing section, we will select Promotions.
Here, you'll be able to see information about your created promotions.
Click New to start building a new promotion.
Next, we will define or edit the general information of the promotion.
The ID is a unique identifier, used for your internal reference to identify the promotion.
The Name, Callout Message and Promotion Details are consumer-facing fields. An example promotion callout with a Callout Message of "Subscribe and Save!" and a Promotion Details of "10% off any subscription purchase!" is pictured below.
An example prepaid offer is pictured below.
Next, define the Compatibility rules for your promotion. This controls how the promotion interacts with other promotions. Example Exclusivity rules can be set to ensure this promotion cannot be combined with other promotions.
Click Apply to preserve your selections.
Finally, we will set our Promotion Rules.
We'll begin by selecting Promotion Class. There are three available promotion classes to select from: Product, Order and Shipping.
For Product promotions, create discounts and specify Qualifying Products (the products which trigger the discount) and Discounted Products (the products to which the discount is applied).
For Order promotions, create discounts and optionally specify Excluded Products and Qualifying Products. Excluded products don't contribute to the merchandise condition and aren't discounted. If "Qualifying Products" is left empty, all non-excluded products in the order contribute towards the merchandise condition. Otherwise, the specified amount of qualifying products is required to trigger the discount.
For Shipping promotions, create discounts and specify Qualifying Products and Shipping Methods. For promotions based on a certain number of qualifying products, qualifying products are mandatory. For promotions based on a certain amount of qualifying products, qualifying products are optional. If left empty, all products in the shipment contribute towards the merchandise condition. One of the specified shipping methods must be selected in the storefront to trigger the discount.
For our example, we will select a Promotion Class of Product. We will set our promotion to be based around the idea of a discount triggered when the consumer purchases the specified amount of qualifying products, but other options are available for promotion configuration.
Set your Discount level(s). Multiple discount levels can be set for a single promotion. For our purposes, we will set a $50 off promotion on 1 order of our prepaid offer.
Finally, set your Qualifying Products. Here is one example of how you could configure your selected products for inclusion in the promotion.
As always, click Apply to preserve your changes.
Congratulations! You're now an expert on creating promotions within the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Business Manager.