Already familiar with creating offers? Jump ahead to Step 6 - Creating Shipping Profiles.
Understanding Offer Types
Offers in their simplest form are a marriage of a product and a billing model. Enabling you to configure a single product to be purchasable in a myriad of different ways.
Before we begin, it's important to note that there are different Offer Types in sticky.io.
Standard Offers
The most common offer type in sticky.io. Simply combine what products can be sold with what billing models.
Supports Trials & Custom Recurring Subscriptions.
Prepaid Offers
Configure products to be purchasable months or years in advance and received on a recurring sequence. e.g. Prepay for a product 6 months in advance, and receive the product each month.
Supports Trials & Custom Recurring Subscriptions.
Seasonal Offers
Configure products to only be purchasable at certain times of the year. e.g. Kopi Luwak coffee beans can only be sold from January to March.
Supports Trials & Custom Recurring Subscriptions.
Now that we have a general understanding of offers and offer types, below is a quick video that will guide you through creating Standard Offers. Beneath the video is a glossary of everything discussed.
Navigating to Offers
To begin, let's navigate over to Products > Offers.
Following, Actions > Add. An additional overlay will appear prompting you to specify your Offer Type. In this guide, we're just discussing Standard Offers.
Creating Standard Offers
First things first, we have to name our offer. This is internal. However, a unique name will help you to identify the purpose of this offer, as you create more.
In our example, we're setting up a 7-day Trial that recurs monthly. Subsequently, our offer name will be "7 Day Coffee Trial".
Note: The name can always be changed at a later date. In addition, each offer you create will have a unique "Offer ID" similar to a Billing Model ID, or Product ID. These IDs are what you will use when calling our APIs.
Adding Your Billing Models
In the previous article we discussed, Step 4 - Building Your Billing Models. Now that we have our Billing Models created, we'll need to add them to our Offer.
Note: You can add as many billing models as you'd like to an offer. This doesn't mean a customer can sign up for that model, however. It's entirely up to you to display what options are visible to the customer on your product pages.
This is mentioned because having larger intervals that aren't marketed is a great retention tactic for customers who may not be able to pay for the product on a regular interval. Having a "45-Day Billing Model" as an example enables your customer support team to change the billing model and still retain the customer.
Adding Your Products
Next, let's add our Products to the Offer. You will notice that between these two components lays the "Trial" feature. Though we'll revisit this momentarily.
You can add the product by:
Search using the Product ID.
Search using the Product Name.
Choose from the Dropdown Menu.
Click Select All on the far right of the UI.
Note: Unless there are fundamental differences in how your products are being offered to your customers. You can add everything to a single offer. Even if one product can only be sold one way while another product is sold another, it can all co-exist in a single offer.
After all - you're leveraging our APIs to call the Products & Billing Model IDs and also what's displayed to the end consumer.
Inversely, you can also create unique offers for each product offering. However, there are no added benefits from doing this.
Configuring Trials
This is an optional step in your journey to creating an offer. If you offer trials, we have a wide assortment of options that should support your business needs.
Between Products & Billing Models, you will click the checkbox beside Trial.
Now that we've enabled Trial, let's dig into the different ways they can be configured.
Trial Duration
Billing Model Duration: If you offer a monthly billing model (outside of trials), the trial length will be a month.
Custom Duration: Most common - enables you to specify a specific duration in which the trial will be active whereby it'll then recur into the billing model you tell it to. e.g. 7 Day Trial to Monthly Recurring.
What To Charge
Product Price: Charge the customer for the full price of the product up-front.
Custom Price: Most common - irrespective of the product price, set a custom price that the customer will be charged up-front. e.g. Free, or Cost of Shipping.
When to Charge
At time of order: Most common - Charge the customer (at standard or custom pricing) up-front, immediately.
Delayed Billing: Delay when the customer pays. e.g. Configure a 30-day trial where 14-days into the trial we charge the customer. Then 16 days later the trial ends and the customer gets billed monthly.
Note: Irrespective of when you decide to bill the customer - if the order is successful, it will be sent to fulfillment to the customer's doorstep on Day 0.
If you opt to use "Delayed Billing", while the product will still ship on Day 0, when they're delay billed, no product will be shipped on the delayed date. This means it's just sent once, not twice.
Lastly, once you've finished configuring your Trial, you will need to specify what products are eligible to be received with the Trial. After enabling Trial, the product section will have a new checkbox to specify what's eligible and what isn't.
Products section before enabling Trial.
Products section after enabling Trial.
Just because we've enabled the trial checkbox within the UI, does not mean it will automatically enroll anyone who purchases this in a trial.
Segueing to our API Documentation, specifically the new_order API Call, you will need to pass the Trial Flag for the product that is set to be received with the trial.
This means that you can have a single product within an offer - and have it be received with a trial, without a trial or using any of the available billing models with-in the offer array.
Note: This distinction is made so that you don't create duplicate your product catalog to cater to things such as trials. With offers, you can take 1 product and sell it in many ways as mentioned above.
That's all for offers. Next, let's segue into creating Shipping Profiles. This is a prerequisite to building a Campaign. Step 6 - Creating Shipping Profiles.