The focus of this post is how to use coupons on Amazon Seller Central. Coupons on Amazon give you the opportunity to offer customers a discount on your products. It’s possible to offer a coupon on just a single product in your Amazon catalog, or entire set of products. Coupons can be a simple yet powerful tool for promoting your products. This post will tell you what amazon coupons are, how to set up Amazon Coupons, and some best practices and common issues that go along with them.
What are Coupons on Amazon Seller Central
Offering an Amazon Seller Central Coupon for your product gives customers a greater incentive and urgency to purchase a product while it is on sale. It also takes advantage of automatic merchandising for your coupon and products throughout Amazon. According to Amazon, customers can discover coupons on Amazon.com in the following areas: coupons home page, search results, product detail pages, the offer listings page, and in their Amazon carts. Customers must simply “clip” the coupon by clicking on it on Amazon, and then the savings are applied when they check out. Amazon also offers a Video Explanation on the basics of digital coupons.
Offer Product Discount with Amazon Coupon
Amazon Coupons give you the power to choose the amount of the discount you will offer and the duration of it. For the discount, you can offer a flat dollar value off of the product, or a percentage. There are a few rules about the discount and duration. The coupons have to be at least 5% off of the product’s price to run. More specifically, the coupon has to be at least 5% off the lowest price in the last 30 days, which is important to consider if you have increased your product price recently. The maximum discount you can offer on a coupon is 80% off. Be aware that money off and percentage off coupons will be combined with any other discounts or promotions that you are running at that time such as a lightning deal, promotion, sale price, business price, or giveaway. You are able to choose a date range for your coupon, of between 1 to 90 days. A coupon will begin running 6 hours after it is created, at the earliest, as Amazon will run a number of validation rules on your coupons and review it before it is live. You can schedule a coupon in advance, but you cannot create a coupon more than 1 month in advance of it’s scheduled run date.
Improve Product Merchandising with Amazon Coupons
Coupons can drive purchases and provide additional merchandising, and for this they come at a small cost. Amazon Coupons will cost you a $0.60 redemption fee each time a customer redeems it. This redemption fee can be seen as the cost to gain that additional coupon merchandising and allow your product to show up in other places than usual on Amazon.com. When creating a coupon you will create a budget for it, which will be shared by the $0.60 redemption fee and the dollar equivalent of the discount you are offering. Your coupon will be deactivated when it reaches 80% utilization, but keep in mind coupons budgets are not hard limits.
How to Set Up Coupons on Amazon Seller Central
It is easy to set a coupon on Amazon. The steps to creating and launching a coupon on Amazon Seller Central are listed below:
Navigate to the Coupons Section of the Seller Central Dashboard
From the Amazon Seller Central home page, hover over “Advertising” and then click “Coupons”. Then, click on the “Create a new coupon” button on the upper right of the dashboard.
Decide which product or products you would like to discount
To add a product to your coupon, search for the SKU or ASIN in the search box on the left of the page and then select “Add to Coupon”. The products you add will move to the right of the screen. Once you have added all products you want, click “continue to next step” in the upper right corner.
Decide the quantity of discount you would like to offer
You can choose between Percentage Off and Money Off discounts. This could be a percentage off such as 10% off or cash amount off such as $5.00 off. You can select the discount type and then input the amount. Here you can also select if coupons are limited to one per customer, or if they can be used multiple times by the same customer.
Set a budget for your coupon
This is where you set the maximum amount of discount you will be willing to give out. Your budget will be shared among the following 2 costs: the discount you are offering and the $0.60 fee for each coupon redemption. Once you input your budget amount, click “continue to next step” in the upper right corner.
Title your coupon
This is what customers will see. For an effective coupon title, choose something that accurately describes what products are on the coupon. If it is just 1 product include the product title, if it is more than 1 product include the product type in the title.
Example: "Save 15% on hand sanitizers" or “Save 15% on the 8oz Aloe Hand Sanitizer”
Target your coupon (optional)
If you want you are able to limit your coupon to a specific target market such as Amazon Prime Customers, Amazon Student member, Amazon Family Member.
Schedule your coupon
You can input a start and end date for your coupon, the duration can be between 1 to 90 days. Once you input your schedule, click “continue to next step” in the upper right corner.
Submit for review and let run
On the final page you can review the details of your coupon and then “Submit Coupon”. Amazon will review the coupon and then if approved it will start to run on your scheduled date.
Best Practices for Coupons on Amazon for Sellers
When deciding if you are going to use a percentage off or dollar amount off coupon, it is important to consider what the customer will see. We recommend choosing the discount that shows the larger number. For example, say you have a $20 product and want to offer a discount of around $2 or 10%. In this case, you should choose a 10% off coupon, as that appears to be a larger number to customers. In an alternative example, say you have an $150 product and want to offer around 10% off or $15.00. In this case, we recommend you choose the dollar amount coupon of $15.00 as that appears to be a larger number to customers. Considering these examples, in general, dollar off coupons work better on larger priced items, while percentage off coupons are more effective for the lower priced items. Overall, because of the $0.60 cent redemption fee, coupons may be more financially effective on higher priced items.
We recommend leaving your coupon open to All Customers. Leaving the targeting option as “All Customers” will give your coupon the most additional visibility. When a coupon is targeted to a customer segment other than "All Customers," such as the prime or student members, the orange coupon badge will not appear in the search results, and you will not be taking advantage of all merchandising opportunities.
Coupons can be a smart tool to use when you are looking to help liquidate inventory. As Amazon continues to adjust their FBA rules in accordance to the changes we have seen throughout the pandemic, you may be facing higher storage fees on certain products. Using a coupon is a great way to push more product and sell through excess units before facing long-term storage fees.
Common Mistakes for Setting Up Coupons on Amazon Seller Central
Coupons are generally simple to create, however there are a few common mistakes to look out for. If you have created a coupon and it is not approved, or has been marked as “Failed” you should consider the following:
Make sure the ASIN is live and active. A coupon can’t run on an Inactive or Suppressed Listing.
Make sure the ASIN is in stock. If you have tried to run a coupon and get the message “Inventory Error” it is possible you don’t have enough inventory to accommodate the increased demand that may be generated by your coupon. You will need to send in more inventory to run a coupon in this case.
Check the listing’s star rating. Coupons require the products being discounted to have a minimum star rating of 2.5 if the product only has 1-4 reviews, and a minimum star rating of 3.0 if the product has 5 or more reviews.
Make sure the discount is at least 5% of the regular inputted price. More specifically, it has to be at least 5% off the lowest price in the last 30 days, if you have changed it recently. A coupon will not run if the discount is less than this.
Final Thoughts on How to Use Coupons on Amazon Seller Central
Coupons on Amazon Seller Central are a great tool when wanting to offer a discount to customers and drive product traffic on Amazon. They are simple to create and add value to a product listing. Follow the steps above to ensure you are getting the most out of your coupon. We encourage you to reach out to Goat Consulting with any additional questions on coupons through the contact form below.