Note: We use "Program" and "Member" as label-agnostic terms to refer to any marketing you are using Buzzbassador to facilitate, whether you refer to it as an affiliate program, influencer marketing, ambassador program, referral program, creator partnerships, brand reps, partner program, etc.
You always want to adjust the rates for your members' discount codes and affiliate links when you are running a seasonal or otherwise temporary promotion, such as a site-wide Black Friday sale.
For example, many Shopify stores offer large flash sales during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) with big discounts, sometimes even more than half off. So, it's important to make sure that your members' promotions are not contradicting or under-cutting the sales you are running, as this can be off-putting for both the member and their audience (your potential customers).
Instead, you have two options: either get creative with the offers your members are sharing and make sure they are complementing the deals on your site, or pause your program's discounts entirely. Of course, the latter is the less ideal option of the two, but we will cover how to do both in this article.
Option 1: Make Your Program Settings Complementary To Your Site Deals
The goal is to make sure that even if a customer purchases through a member at the same time your deal is going on, they're not missing out on any potential discounts. This ensures that the members are incentivized to promote you and their audiences are incentivized to engage with them. Why not let your members help you bring in customers during your big promotion?
Idea: Give the members' promo code a slightly better discount
Raise the rate of your members' referral codes to 1%-5% more than your site-wide deal. Even the smallest edge will ensure that your members are able to promote an exclusive, enticing, and exciting deal.
Idea: Use influencers' codes to drive sales beyond the big promotion
Don't have room in your margins to offer a higher discount than your existing site wide sales? Get creative with what else you can offer. For example, you could make your members' codes give the customer a $5 gift card to use the next time they purchase. Drive return customer rates even after the big sale!
Idea: Offer incentives other than just product-based
Already offering great deals on your products? Consider letting your members' codes offer something else, like access to a certain free gift, enabling free or expedited shipping, or access to an exclusive event or digital product.
Note: Do you need a discount stacking app?
Maybe your big promotion is not built in to your products automatically, but instead requires a discount code to be used at checkout for the customer to activate it (i.e. "BFCM2022"). If this is the case, since Shopify only allows one discount code to be entered at checkout, the customer is less likely to use your members' codes for the latter two ideas, because they're likely going to want the biggest discount possible. So, instead of undercutting your members, you could consider using a Shopify app that enables discount "stacking" at check out, so that your customers can use both a discount from your promotion and a discount code from one of your members to attribute the sale to them. Some apps we recommend for this are:
Stackable Discounts - click here
All In One Discount On Cart - click here
All In One Automatic Discounts - click here
Stack Discounts Ninja - click here
Note: If you do this, just be mindful of your margins!
Option 2: Pause Your Program Discounts Throughout The Big Sale
Another option, although less favorable for the member of course, is to pause your program(s)' discount offering until the end of your promotion. This means that all of your members' code settings will have to be adjusted in Buzzbassador, which will then synch the change to the actual discount code in Shopify.
You can either adjust all of your members' settings or only the settings of specific members/programs. Either way, here is how to accomplish this:
Step 1: Temporarily change your program(s)' settings
In your Buzzbassador program settings, when or just before your promotion starts, open the program(s) you want to adjust. Then, make the changes to your program's discount settings, referral settings, etc. that you want to go into effect during your promotion. Please refer to this article for instructions on editing your program settings.
Once you click "Save" this will automatically adjust the Shopify settings for all the codes (and members) in that program. You can check the code(s) in Shopify after the change to verify that they were updated successfully. Please refer to this article for instructions on checking codes in Shopify.
Do not save the changes until you want them to go into effect, as this will happen immediately upon clicking "Save".
Step 2: After the promotion ends, change your program(s)' settings back to what they were
When your sale is over, just go back to your program(s) in Buzzbassador and change the settings back to what they were before. This will again synch the code settings changes over to the actual codes in Shopify without any further action needed from you.
Hope this helps! If you have any questions, please reach out to us with the chat bubble in the bottom right corner of your account, or send us an email at [email protected]. 😊