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How To Set Up A Keycode Amp Offer

How to set up a Keycode/Offer

If you want to offer customers a discounted price on a particular item, maybe for a limited time, then keycodes/offers/price levels are the way to do it.

Once it's set up a customer can go to our web site (or send us a manual order) put a particular item in their cart, enter a keycode during the checkout process and that item will be priced at whatever amount we've specified, overriding our standard price.

To do this you must do these four things:

1. Set up a price level to use for the discount.
2. Set the price for the desired item in that price level.
3. Create an offer that drives that price level.
4. Create a keycode that drives that offer.

Now, I don't do this in the order that was specified above, but you could. There are probably other ways to get to these options in Assist than what I'm describing below.

You have to have certain administrative priveleges in Assist to set up new price levels, etc.

Here's our example...

On August 12, 2004 we had occasion to email 600 customers because we didn't say in our catalog that Eastern Hemisphere required the 2004 version of WorldBook and would not work with older versions. We wanted to make them aware of that fact and give them free shipping if they decided to come to our site and purchase the 2004 version (RR50 or RR50M). We used a keycode to drive that free shipping if they bought those products before 9/30/2004.

Setting up the Offer and Price Level

1. In Assist go into the Direct Response menu.
2. Choose 2: File Maintenance Menu.
3. Choose 1: Maintain Offers.
4. Type in the offer codeI generally make the offer code and the keycode the same code. You don't have to. For this example I chose to use "8675" for no particular reason at all.
5. Type in a descriptionI typed in "2004 WORLD BOOK FREE SHIPPING"
6. Type in the begin dateI typed in today's date.
7. Type in the end dateI typed in 09 30 04
8. Type in the grace days if any.The system can allow this offer to work X number of days beyond the expiration date. For this offer we decided not to offer any grace days and make 09/30/2004 an absolute cut-off date. So I left it blank.
9. Enter the price codeIf you've already set up the price code elsewhere or you're going to use one that already exists, then you can type it in here. I didn't have one already set up yet, so I typed in a ? for the system to show me my choices.The list of choices did not have one that I wanted to use, so I had to create a new price level. I figured we would be offering free shipping on a lot of different offers so I wanted to create a price level for $5 off items. This will be able to be used on more offers later:
   1. Type SHIFT-F1 to bring up the Price Code Reference File.
   2. Enter 5OF in the Select Price Code Field.
   3. Enter "$5 DISCOUNT" in Price Code Description Field.
   4. Enter US in Currency Code Allowed 1 Field.
   5. Enter 999 in Validation Level Field.
   6. Enter N in Zero Price Code Flag Field.
   7. Enter R in Rounding Code Field.
   8. Enter .01 in Rounding Factor Field.
   9. Enter STD in Parent Price Code Field.
   10. Enter N in Allow Price Amounts Field.
   11. Press Enter
   12. Press F12
   13. Press F12I select the new price level just created as it was now showing up in the list.
10. Press F5 to update this offer.That takes you to a page definition screen that we rarely use.
11. Press F3 to exit.You're taken back to the Direct Response menu. The offer and price level are now set up, time to create the keycode.

Setting up the Keycode

1. Choose 2: Maintain Key Codes
2. Enter the keycode you've chosen to create.Again, I randomly chose 8675 so that's what I entered here.
3. Enter the offer you just created in the offer field.I entered 8675 because that's what I'm using on this one.
4. Enter a description.I entered "2004 WORLD BOOK FREE SHIPPING" again. You don't have to make it the same as the offer but I did.
5. Enter begin and end dates and grace period in the fields provided.
6. Enter the price code in the price code field.I entered 5OF here.
7. NOTE: I just noticed that there is another field for Ship Terms. We have a Ship Terms field of NFC for No Freight Charges. That might have worked for this example too but I didn't test that. I'm not sure if WebStore would pick that up or not...it's worth a try because next year we might charge $6 for shipping and would have to set up a new price code for 6OF. With this, that might not be necessary.As I thought about this further, this would not work in this example. We want free shipping ONLY if they enter our keycode and ONLY if they purchase RR50 or RR50M. If we wanted to offer free shipping ONLY if they entered our keycode but we didn't care what product they ordered then this might work. (I created a FREESHIPPING offer and a FREESHIP keycode to test this. It didn't work on the web.)
8. Press F5 to save this keycode.
9. Press F3 to exit Keycode Maintenance.
10. Press F12 twice to return to the main menu.

Setting up the Price on the Item

1. Enter the Order Entry menu.
2. Choose 2: File Maintenance.
3. Choose 2: Price Files Menu.
4. Choose 1: Maintain Price File.
5. Type in the Item NumberI typed in RR50 for the first item I wanted to set the discounted price for.
6. Type in the price code.I typed in 5OF.
7. Press enter.This takes you to the screen where you can enter the price you want to set up.
8. I entered an expiration date of 09 30 04, but if you don't have an expiration you can tab through these fields.
9. Fill in the To Quantity field with 9'sUnless you're offering different prices based on the number they buy, then you want the item to be the same price no matter how many they buy.
10. Enter the price in unit price.RR50 is normally $24.95. We're offering free shipping which costs $5 by offsetting the price of this item by $5. So I entered 19.95. For RR50M, which costs $65, I entered 60.00.
11. Press F5 to update the priceThis takes you back to the Price Selection screen.
12. If you have other items you're discounting at this price level then repeat the steps above to enter them too.
13. Press F12 four times to return to the main menu when you are done entering prices.

That's it! You've created a price level, an offer, a keycode, and you've set up a discounted price on your desired items and now you're done.

NOTE: This does not require an import. This is immediately available (dependign on start date) on the web and in manual order entry. You need to also be aware that the standard core/comprehensive discounts will also apply, so if they buy your item with a core/comprehensive it will still be another 10% off (or whatever is set up this year).