Amazon Digital Offers Vendor Funded Coupons Quick Start Guide Last Revised: 02/12/2014
Table of Contents Overview of Amazon Digital Offers... 2 Program Basics... 3 Detail Page in the Price Block... 3 Detail Page in the Hero Quick Promo (HQP) slot... 4 Amazon Coupon Page... 4 Search Results... 5 Amazon Gold Box (www.amazon.com/coupons)... 5 Email... 5 Cart... 6 Amazon Fresh (www.fresh.amazon.com)... 7 Quidsi (www.soap.com/savingscenter)... 8 Offer Management... 9 Fees & Billing... 9 Creating Offers... 9 Amazon and Amazon Fresh... 9 Quidsi... 15 Viewing Offer Information... 16 Coupon Landing Page (CLP)... 18 Reporting... 19 Viewing Offer Metrics... 19 Viewing Invoices... 20 Ending Offers... 21 Ending All Offers for a Promotion... 21 Ending a Single Offer... 21 Troubleshooting... 22 Correcting Offer Spreadsheet Errors... 22 Using the Resource Center... 22 Filing a Contact Us... 22 Appendix... 23 Offer Statuses... 23 Amazon.com Confidential 1
Overview of Amazon Digital Offers Welcome to Digital Offers on Amazon.com. Vendor Funded Promotions or Coupons are one of several promotion types available to Vendors who sell on amazon.com. Digital Offers are a powerful promotion system that allows you to create and manage your promotions directly on the Amazon.com website. Digital Offers include advanced integration with Amazon s order pipeline and back-end systems using Vendor Central, allowing you to: Create promotions which are directly offered to customers on Amazon.com. Merchandise your offers automatically on Amazon.com Coupons pages, product detail pages, search results and other locations. Merchandise offers through your own merchandising channels including email, Facebook and your own website. Leverage paid merchandising and media programs to extend the reach and targeting of your offers. Set budget guidelines per promotion (budget includes face value of offer, redemption fee and clip fee). Share budgets between Amazon Marketplaces (Amazon and Fresh) and between coupons in a promotion. Limit offers to one per customer account. Automate offer redemption at point of sale. Clicking an offer automatically redeems it directly onto a customer s account and offers your offer savings directly to the customer at checkout. View offer-redemption metrics to track your offer s performance and assess offer adoption. Automate billing to reduce your paper handling and processing costs associated with coupon-clearing houses. Utilize advanced filtering to only broadcast offers to customer who have purchased/viewed target Amazon Standard Item Numbers (ASINs). (notes: These advanced filters should only be used with paid merchandising and/or media) Amazon.com Confidential 2
Quick Start Guide Program Basics Offers are automatically merchandised and displayed in a variety of places: Detail Page in the Price Block Pre clip Post clip Amazon.com Confidential 3
Detail Page in the Hero Quick Promo (HQP) slot After a clip, the HQP changes Amazon Coupon Page (www.amazon.com/coupons) Amazon.com Confidential 4
Search Results Amazon Gold Box (www.amazon.com/coupons) Email Amazon.com Confidential 5
Cart Pre clip Post Clip Amazon.com Confidential 6
Amazon Fresh (www.fresh.amazon.com) Amazon.com Confidential 7
Quidsi (www.soap.com/savingscenter) Amazon.com Confidential 8
Offer Management Vendor Central is the primary point of contact for all Offers related activities. Through Vendor Central you are able to create offers, view reports, and a variety of other tasks. Fees & Billing The standard cost and fees for Amazon Digital Offers include the offer face value, clip fees and redemption fees. When you create an Offer we generate a Contra-Cogs Agreement and will automatically deduct face value and fees from invoice. We can bill national clearing houses and/or internal budget entities if need be. Standard Fees: $0.17 per unique clip, $0.08 per redemption 2013 Holiday Fees: $0.21 per unique clip, $0.08 per redemption- effective for all coupons uploaded between October 1 st and December 30 th Creating Offers Amazon and Amazon Fresh Offer creation through Vendor Central provides vendors with the ability to upload many offers at once through an Excel spreadsheet. When preparing to upload offers through Vendor Central, please be aware that there is a 28 day lead time. The lead time is in place to allow Amazon time to prepare for the increased demand and to adjust inventory levels accordingly 1. Highlight over the Merchandising link at the top of the Vendor Central page Amazon.com Confidential 9
2. Click Promotions in the drop down a. This is the Offers homepage 3. Click the Create new promotion button at the top right 4. Select Vendor Powered Coupons from the Promotion spreadsheet template drop-down list 5. Click the Download selected promotion template button 6. When prompted, open the spreadsheet 7. Enter in the high level name that represents all of the offers submitted in (Cell C2) Amazon.com Confidential 10
8. Starting on Row 8, enter data into the spreadsheet to define your offers, only enter data into field with a grey tint. Each row represents an individual offer. a. Coupon Name - Name that will be shown in your Promotions dashboard. This is for your reference when viewing information about an offer in Vendor Central. Remember to choose something that will help you remember the details of the promotion, e.g. $5 off green tea rather than coupon5. (Column A) b. Website Display Name This text will appear on every instance of your offer and is used to merchandise your offer across Amazon where offers are shown. Examples are the widgets on www.amazon.com/coupons and the coupons widget on www.amazon.com/goldbox. The website display name field cannot be left blank and must have between 1 250 characters. It is truncated after the 40 th character. Include details of the items in your offer and not necessarily the offer itself. For example, say Joe s Coffee Premium Blends and not Save $5.00 on Joes Coffee Premium Blends. Save messaging will be automatically merchandised prominently. If we cannot fit all of your messaging in the space allotted in the widget, then the messaging will appear when the customer hovers over the text. c. Vendor Invoice Code - Used if you require an invoice code per offer for internal billing purposes. This is an optional field. (Column C) Amazon.com Confidential 11
d. SKUs or ASINs - This identifier is combined with vendor info in our systems to locate an ASIN (a.k.a. an item). Group like ASINs or families of ASINs under one offer to allow the consumer to browse off available ASINs. If you list multiple SKUs/ASINs, separate them with a comma. If this field has multiple SKUs/ASINs, the consumer will receive the offer value off only one unit of one of the SKUs/ASINs listed. To allow the consumer to receive the offer value once for multiple ASINs, enter a new row for each SKU/ASIN. (Column D) e. Shared Budget - Share a single budget across all coupons in a spreadsheet. This is the total amount of discount for all offers combined including both face value and fees. When the sum of all offers/promotions reaches this amount, we automatically terminate them with a small grace period to accommodate customers who have clipped the offer but haven't used it to order yet. If you use this feature, please leave the Budget column empty. (Cell B4) f. Budget - The total amount of discount given for this offer (or row) including both face value and fees. When the offer/promotion on this row reaches this amount, we automatically terminate it with a small grace period to accommodate customers who have clipped the offer but haven't used it to order yet. Leave this column empty if you plan to use the Shared Budget feature. (Column E) g. Start Date - The offer's start date. Offers start at midnight PT of the start date. (Column F) h. End Date - The end date for the offer. Offers expire at 11:59pm PT on the end date. (Column G) i. Fixed Discount - The dollar amount discount. When this field has a value, the Percent Discount must be empty. (Column H) j. Percent Discount - The percent off discount. For example, a 5% discount will take 5% off of the item's price at checkout. When this field has a value, the Fixed Discount field must be empty. (Column I) k. *Target Purchased ASINs - A comma delimited list of ASINs that are used for targeting this offer to customers who have purchased one or more of the ASINs in this list. The offer will only show up for customers who have previously purchased an ASIN in the list. (Column J) *(The use of this filter without additional earned or paid merchandising and/or display advertising may result in unsatisfactory performance) l. *Target Viewed ASINs - A comma delimited list of ASINs that are used for targeting this offer to customers who have viewed one or more of the ASINs in this list. The offer will only be visible for customers who have previously viewed an ASIN in the list. (Column K) *(The use of this filter without additional earned or paid merchandising and/or display advertising may result in unsatisfactory performance) m. Once Per Customer Account Flag - Set this to 'true' to mark the offer as valid for only one unit per customer, or 'false' to allow the same customer to use this offer more than once. The offer is still limited to only one unit per order, but the customer may place multiple orders. (Column L) n. Coupon Distribution - By default (leaving the field blank), coupons will be redeemable on Amazon and Amazon Fresh. Additionally, you have the ability to specify the following values for this field: (Amazon; Fresh; Quidsi; or Amazon, Fresh). For Quidsi coupons, please see the instructions in the Quidsi coupons section below. (Column M) o. Subscribe and Save Set this to 'true' to create Subscribe and Save coupons. When set to 'true', all coupons in the spreadsheet will be Subscribe and Save coupons. Subscribe and Save Coupons are only redeemable when a customer signs up for a subscription. Subscribe and Save coupons are only valid for Subscribe and Save enabled ASINs. (Cell D4) 9. Save the spreadsheet on your computer 10. Return back to Vendor Central 11. Click the Browse button and find the saved spreadsheet Amazon.com Confidential 12
12. Click the Upload promotion spreadsheet button 13. An orange progress bar is displayed while the upload is being processed. 14. Once the upload has completed, the Coupons homepage will be displayed again with the newly uploaded promotion now visible and Sign Agreement in the Actions column for the new promotion a. Note: Immediately after uploading, a screen indicating that the upload is processing may appear. Amazon.com Confidential 13
15. At the same time, an e-mail will be sent that indicates the status of the promotion a. Title: Amazon.com Coupon Upload Processing Complete - Signature Required i. The offer setup completed without errors and is ready to be signed b. Title: Amazon.com Coupon Spreadsheet Upload Processing Error i. An error was found in the spreadsheet and needs to be resolved. For more information on common errors and how to solve them, find the Troubleshooting section below. 16. Click the Sign Agreement link in the Actions column 17. Review the terms 18. Click the check box at the bottom of the page next to I agree with the terms and condition. 19. Click the Submit button. Amazon.com Confidential 14
20. The promotion is now active and the status on the Offers homepage indicates that the promotion is now active. Quidsi The steps for offer creation for Quidsi coupons are identical to that of Amazon and Amazon Fresh coupons; however, the fields of the upload spreadsheet have some differences. a. Coupon Name - Same as Amazon b. Website Display Name - Same as Amazon c. Vendor Invoice Code - Same as Amazon d. SKUs or ASINs Use only UPCs as the product identifier. Same functionality as Amazon e. Budget - Same as Amazon; however, offers are not automatically terminated when they hit budget. Quidsi is alerted at different stages of budget usage and reaches out to vendors to determine whether or not to terminate the coupon. f. Start Date Same as Amazon g. End Date - Same as Amazon h. Fixed Discount - Same as Amazon i. Percent Discount - Same as Amazon j. Target Purchased ASINs - Not supported on Quidsi k. Target Viewed ASINs - Not supported on Quidsi l. Once Per Customer Account Flag - Same as Amazon m. Coupon Distribution - Enter Quidsi as the marketplace. Do not include any other marketplace. n. Shared Budget - Not supported on Quidsi o. Subscribe and Save - Not supported on Quidsi Amazon.com Confidential 15
Viewing Offer Information 1. Navigate to the Offers home page. 2. Click on the link in the Name column to the corresponding offer to view 3. Each offer uploaded for the promotion is listed with the following: a. Name Offer name from upload spreadsheet b. Status The most common statuses are (see Appendix for a full list): i. Active Currently running or will run in the future ii. Cancelled The offers were ended manually iii. Complete The offer has run its course and has ended naturally iv. Distribution Only Quidsi Coupon v. Download Error Spreadsheet Report There is an error in the spreadsheet that requires fixing (see Troubleshooting below for more information on common errors) vi. Expired The offer was never activated and the end date has since passed vii. Pending Signature The offers have been setup and require the terms and conditions to be signed before the offers become active c. Start date Offer s start date d. End Date Offer s end date e. Discount Discount off the qualifying products f. Budget Allocated budget for the offer Amazon.com Confidential 16
4. Click on the offer Name link to see additional details about the offer 5. The fields upload in the spreadsheet are present with the inclusion of new rows: a. Status Indicates the status of the offer (see Appendix for a list) b. Coupon Landing Page URL that can be used to direct traffic to the offer. If an offer has multiple offers all the offers are shown on the landing page. If the offer only has one ASIN, just that ASIN is shown. In both cases, the offer is auto-clipped when the customer arrives on this URL if the customer is signed into their Amazon.com account. Amazon.com Confidential 17
Coupon Landing Page (CLP) The Coupon Landing Page (CLP) is a URL that can be used to link to an Offer from off site. The value of this URL is two-fold. First, the URL provides a way to send consumers from a site external to Amazon.com (i.e. Facebook, email, display ad, etc.) to one page that lists all of the various products available on an offer. Second, when a customer arrives at the URL the offer is automatically clipped if a consumer is logged into their Amazon.com account. If a consumer is not logged in, after logging in he will be taken back to the CLP and the offer will be automatically clipped. CLPs come in two variations, if an offer only has one product on it the customer see the one of the two screens whether or not he is logged into Amazon.com. Signed In Not Signed In If the offer has multiple products on it, one hero offer will be visible at the top of the CLP with the additional products available to view below on a page with pagination. Signed In Not Signed In Amazon.com Confidential 18
Reporting Viewing Offer Metrics You can view offer performance metrics on in-flight and completed offer initiatives. 1. Navigate to the Offers home page 2. Click the View Metrics link to the right of the promotion name 3. Each offer uploaded for the promotion is listed with the following: a. Offer Name - Name from the offer spreadsheet b. Offer Start - The offer's start date. c. Offer End The offer s end date d. Offers Clipped Number of times customers have clipped the offer e. Discounted Orders Number of orders placed using a clipped offer f. Total Discount Total discount of the orders placed with the offers g. Budget Spent Total budget spent so far (note: This is just an estimate. It does not reflect click or redemption fees) h. Budget Remaining Approximate Total budget remaining Note: a. Each column can be sorted on by clicking on the downward/upward facing arrows b. Metrics for Quidsi Coupons are not available through Vendor Central. Please contact your business partner at Quidsi to retrieve data Amazon.com Confidential 19
Viewing Invoices You can view Summary and Transaction invoices for your promotions. 1. Navigate to the Offers home page 2. Click the View Invoices link to the right of the promotion name a. For each month that the offer was active a Summary Invoice Type will be available. A Transactions invoice will only appear if there were shipment during the period of time listed. Amazon.com Confidential 20
Ending Offers Ending All Offers for a Promotion You can end all offers for the promotion. 1. Navigate to the Offers home page 2. Click the End all coupons link in the last column Actions for the promotion that you want to terminate. 3. When the Confirmation box appears, select the I confirm check box 4. Click the Confirm button Ending a Single Offer You can end a specific offer while allowing other offers to remain active for the promotion. 1. Navigate to the Offers home page 2. Click on the link under the Name column for the Promotion that houses the offer that is to be canceled 3. Click on the link under the Name column for the Offer that is to be canceled 4. Click on the End this Coupon button at the top right of the page 5. When the Confirmation box appears, select the I confirm check box 6. Click the Confirm button Note: To cancel Quidsi coupons, please contact your business partner at Quidsi Amazon.com Confidential 21
Troubleshooting Correcting Offer Spreadsheet Errors If data in your offer spreadsheet cannot be processed, the Status column on the Offers home page will say Download Error Spreadsheet Report and an e-mail will also be sent indicating that an error occurred in the upload. The upload can be resubmitted by following this process. 1. Navigate to the Offers home page. 2. Find the submission with the error by looking for rows with the value Download Error Spreadsheet Report in the Status column. 3. Click the Download error spreadsheet link in the Action column at the far right. 4. Review and correct the errors reported in the spreadsheet. a. Common errors include: i. Start dates less than 28 dates from the current day ii. Entering in both a Fixed Discount and Percent Discount iii. Entering in data in rows 6 and 7, which should only be used for viewing sample data iv. Entering in both Budget(s) and Shared Budget v. Not starting on row 8 vi. Using a character other than an a comma to list the ASINs/SKUs in column D 5. Cell C3 is not empty. Cell C3 should only be populated by the Offer system.navigate to the Offers home page. 6. Click the Create new promotion button. 7. Click the Browse button. 8. Find the corrected spreadsheet. 9. Click the Upload promotion spreadsheet button. 10. Watch the progress bar. 11. Check the status of the upload. a. If an issue still exists with your upload, please file a Contact Us. The instructions are below. Using the Resource Center 1. Click on the Resource Center link at the top right of the page. 2. Scroll down to the Selling your Products section. 3. Documentation for Offers as well as other programs is available. 4. Download the Digital Offer Services Vendor Funded Promotions 101 file to learn more about the program and how to maximize its capabilities Filing a Contact Us For any questions in regards to Offers please use the Contact Us feature in Vendor Central. 1. Click on the Contact Us link found at the bottom of every Vendor Central page. 2. Select in Promotions and Merchandising (CoOp, Vine, SPA, etc.) in the Issue drop down. 3. Select either Coupons General Question or Coupons Setup Issue in the Subissue drop down. 4. Enter in an applicable description in the Subject field. 5. Enter in the question and/or comment into the Question or Comment field. 6. Add any applicable extra e-mails address in the CC List field. 7. Click the Submit button. Amazon.com Confidential 22
Appendix Offer Statuses Once an offer is uploaded and throughout its life, it may have different status based on various situations. The following is a complete list of any statuses you may see. 1. Active Offer is currently running or will run in the future. 2. Activation Failed - There was a systems error while processing the agreement after it had been signed. Please contact Amazon through Contact Us if this error is not resolved within 48 hours. 3. Activation in progress The offer has been set up but not yet activate. Please contact Amazon through Contact Us if this error is not resolved within 48 hours. 4. Cancelled The offers were ended manually by the vendor. 5. Cancellation in progress A cancellation request has been received and is currently being worked on. 6. Complete The offer has run its course and has ended naturally. 7. Distribution Only The offers are for Quidsi only. 8. Download Error Spreadsheet Report There is an error in the spreadsheet that requires changes to be made before the offer can go live. 9. Expired The offer was never activated and the end date has since passed. 10. Pending Signature The offers have been setup and require the terms and conditions to be signed before the offers become active. Amazon.com Confidential 23