How to set up discounts for marketing activities?

It’s the end of the year now, are all the marketing product managers going to start using their imaginations again?

Oh no, are the operations students going to use their imaginations again?

In the afternoon, our product girl said in the group with a sad face:

The girl was sitting in front of the computer, unable to write, oh, move the mouse.

Let’s take a closer look at the description and grab some keywords:

1. Product coupons
2. Order discount
3. You can choose any

Let’s feel the girl’s dilemma. She has to choose product discounts and order discounts? Two mixed together? You guys fight, and whoever wins will be the one to listen to you.

As we enter the peak period of promotions, major manufacturers are offering a flood of promotions. It not only confuses users, but also confuses designers. Let’s spend 5 minutes breaking down the issue of marketing discounts from the perspective of business processes.

What are the marketing offers?

Discounts, discounts for purchases above a certain amount, instant discounts, cross-store discounts, shopping allowances, cash red envelopes, coupons...

Flash sales, group purchases, and referral rebates are not included for the time being.

First, let’s take a look at a typical shopping process.

User Xiaobai is 25 years old and a new media editor. He wanted to bake a cake one day and needed to buy some baking supplies. She opened Taobao, searched for "cake mold", browsed around, and found that the free shipping store A had the 6-inch loose-bottom cake mold she liked for 30 yuan and fresh cream for 40 yuan. Xiaobai added them to the shopping cart.

I looked at the pigments and found that another store B also offered free shipping and sold XX pigments in 12 colors (original price 60 yuan) at a cheaper price. Because I could get a 10 yuan discount with a single product coupon and the store was offering a 10 yuan discount for purchases over 50 yuan, I added it to the shopping cart. Xiaobai also bought some low-gluten flour for 20 yuan in this store.

Xiaobai shopped for another 10 minutes and felt that he had bought everything he was missing, so he clicked on the shopping cart and checked the 4 items mentioned above: 6-inch loose-bottom cake mold for 30 yuan, fresh cream for 40 yuan, XX pigment in 12 colors for 50 yuan (original price 60 yuan), and low-gluten flour for 20 yuan. At this time, cross-store discount information was discovered, with a 20 yuan discount for every 100 yuan spent. The order amount now increased from 150 yuan to 110 yuan. Then click Submit Order to confirm the address.

After confirming the address, I submitted the payment. When paying, I hesitated for a moment because using Taobao to pay can give an instant discount of 10 yuan, and using XX bank card to pay can give a random discount of up to 20 yuan. Finally, Xiaobai decided to give up the random discount and pay 100 yuan directly with Alipay.

The following is a simple Demo:

1. Shopping cart process

Add to Cart - Select the product - View the discount (the trial discount includes single product discount, store discount, and cross-store order discount)

Note: The system will generate two orders here because they are from two different stores (I will not go into details about the orders for now).

2. Order confirmation process

Add address - View discounts (trial discounts include single product discounts, store discounts, and cross-store order discounts)

3. Order payment process

(1) Checkout payment process

View the discount (payment method discount), select the payment method - payment successful

(2) After payment is completed, view order details

View the details of the two orders - View the order details and discount information of store B (including single product discounts, store discounts, cross-store order discounts, and payment discounts)

Let’s simplify the shopping process for Xiaobai.

So now can you see that the entire discount is divided into several levels?

According to the shopping process, a typical marketing offer design includes four levels:

Single product level—— Single store level—— Order level—— Cashier payment method discount

Having written this far, you can see that there can be discounts at every level of the business process. Using this idea when designing, the girl’s question can be solved.

• First, you need to design a single product discount. Whether it is an instant discount, coupon, or discount, it is a form of discount in the abstract. According to the specified calculation method, the discount amount can be spread over each available product.
• Secondly, design order discounts. Similarly, here the discount for each product is calculated based on the allocation method;
• Finally, consider whether discounts on single products can be shared with order discounts. If sharing is not possible, after a user enjoys a certain discount, he or she will not be able to enjoy subsequent discounts.

In the shopping process of Xiaobai mentioned above, single product discounts, store discounts, and order discounts can be shared. So there are a lot of discounts!

Let's look at the problem of calculating the discount amount (at this point, we don't consider who pays for the marketing costs, and how much money the merchant can actually receive, which will be discussed later). After layers of discounts, the final amount is shown in the following table:

How to split the specific amount can be calculated based on actual circumstances. The above case is simply evenly distributed to each product. It is also possible to offer discounts based on the price ratio of the goods.

Expand some questions to brainstorm:

1) As a platform, if users are required to choose the discount method they want to use, and some discounts cannot be shared, how should we deal with it?

This can be handled according to the actual business. For example, if product A has already enjoyed an instant discount for a single product and cannot enjoy a store discount, then when the shopping cart discount is calculated and settled, the amount of the store discount cannot be allocated to A. If you choose to enjoy the store’s discount promotion, then product A cannot enjoy the individual product discount.

2) When can users choose discounts?

For example, if the business requires that the coupon for a single product can be used on an optional basis , then when browsing products, submitting a shopping cart, or in the shopping cart, you can filter on this single product (which can be done in the store) to see whether to use the discount for that single product. Everything can be modified before submitting the order.

3) After the order is submitted, can the order amount be modified?

There is a very important tip. After submitting the order, it is recommended not to modify the amount to be paid. The amount to be paid will include the price split out of all the discount amounts.

4) If the user's order is timed out, a coupon was used when placing the order. But the order has expired and has not been paid, what should I do with the coupon?

If the user does not pay for the order, resulting in timeout and expiration, the coupon can be considered to be returned to the user's account based on actual business needs. Or you can choose not to return it . According to the actual business situation, you can add an attribute when setting the coupon to determine whether the coupon will be returned to the user's account after a timeout.

There are still big differences between the creation, issuance and use of coupons, discounts and instant discounts. I will talk about it later~

5) How do I know if these activities can be shared?

When configuring these offers, be clear about whether they can be shared with a certain type/level of marketing activities. However, the normal way of thinking is to use whichever combination can produce the largest discount amount. After all... making users lazy is also a good habit, and most people are unlikely to do complex calculations.

6) Is cross-store the order level?

It’s hard to say, it depends on how your order layer is defined. Some platforms don’t even have the concept of stores. Then you select a few items and submit the order, and it becomes an order. The basic principle here is to combine payments for multiple orders , rather than looking at whether they are across stores.

This article hopes to provide some basic ideas for junior PMs working on the front lines of marketing when they face complex marketing needs. Marketing PMs need to understand marketing, code, and win over the demand side. There is a long way to go. Let's encourage each other~

Written by: Christopher

WeChat public account: Christo Tao