How to guides

How to use Cookaborough's Promotion tools

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Learn how to unlock a powerful set of marketing and promotional tools to help build awareness and grow your business. 

 

What’s in this guide? 

This guide details our complete set of tools that offer you the ability to reward loyal customers, incentivise past customers, and attract new ones with customised promotions.

Where to find Promotions on Cookaborough 

All the promotional tools sit within the Marketing tab on the side menu of your Dashboard.

You will see that there are two types of promotions you can implement via the platform:

  1. General promotions - applied for the customer automatically at checkout
  2. Coupon-activated promotions - activated at checkout by the customer typing in a code at checkout

After creating a promotion you can then switch it on or off, and also have multiple promotions running at the same time.

Type # 1 General promotions

General promotions are the most commonly used promotional tool on Cookaborough. 

The best part about a General Promotion is that it is automatically applied, so the customer doesn’t need to input a code or do anything special to receive the promotion benefits.

Whether it is a certain % off for that week, or a set amount discounted from an order total, the general promotion is applied automatically at checkout. 

 

Examples of General Promotions:

  • First order discount: an ongoing offer to new customers as an incentive to try your food for the first time - for example, 10% off a first order
  • Loyal customer discount: a one-off discount for any customers who have ordered regularly with you to say thank you - for example 10% off your next order
  • Lapsed customers: a one-off discount to re-engage any customers who have ordered previously but not recently

 

Type #2 Coupon-activated promotions

You can create promotions where customers can activate a benefit through the use of a coupon code. These coupon-activated promotions behave in a similar way to a general promotion, but customers will need to use a coupon code you supply to them to activate the promotion. 

The advantage of a Coupon-activated Promotion is that it allows you to promote a coupon code in marketing campaigns, as well as set additional limits on how often - coupons can be single or multi-use - and how many times in total the promotion can be used by an individual customer or across the whole chosen customer group. 

 

Examples of Coupon-activated Promotions:

  • Use "SAVE15" to get 15% off the next 3 orders
  • Use "WELCOME" to get $20 off your first order
  • Use "FREEBIE" for free delivery this month


How To Set Up a Promotion

Typically you imagine promoting certain ideas to certain groups of customers. So before you jump to the Promotions tab, you will need to create a group of customers which you can then easily apply any Promotions to. The platform automatically generates these groups from a series of criteria you set within the Customers tab.

Once you have a Group set up, you can then create promotions that apply to them through the Promotions tab.

Step 1: Create Customer Groups

Groups are used to organise customers by their ordering frequency, tags you give them, and other criteria. 

There are two types of groups - Filtered or Custom. 

With filtered groups you can choose from a predetermined set of filters making it easy to apply a common promotion to a group that meets these criteria.

A custom group is suited to those instances where you may want to send a promotion to a very particular group of customers - for example a specific network you may have, very good friends or a group of people in a particular club or organisation. With custom groups you need to find and select each customer. You can set a Custom group up to give members the choice to opt in to this group when they sign in to their Cookaborough account, or set them up as already ‘belonging’ to this group and therefore automatically receiving any live promotion benefits.

 

Filtered Groups

Go to Customers > Groups

  1. Create Group > New group
  2. Group Type: Select the Filtered groups option
  3. Group Name: Give the group a clear name you will recognise (the customer won’t see this) such as “Introductory offer for first time customers”
  4. Choose filter: choose one of the predefined filters and follow the prompts to customise your filters

 

Custom Groups

Go to Customers > Groups

  1. Create Group > New group
  2. Group Type: Select the Custom groups option
  3. Group Name: Give the group a clear name you will recognise (the customer won’t see this) such as “Primary school parent network”
  4. Choose to tick or untick the box allowing the customers to opt in or out of this group at signup. 
  5. Add customers: Find a customer from your Customer database by typing in the first three letters of their name or surname.

 

TIP: Once a group is set up you can use the group in other platform tools such as Messaging where group emails can be sent to all customers within that group.

 

Step 2: Choose your Promotion type

General Promotion Setup

Now it’s time to set up a promotion that applies to your group.

Go to Marketing > Promotions 

  1. Promotion Type: Select the General option at the top of the window
  2. Promotion Name: Give the promotion a clear name ‘such as Introductory Offer
  3. Description: Describe the details of the promotion - for example, when the promotion starts and finishes, and whether there are any conditions such as a minimum spend.

 

 

Qualification Rules: 

    1. Duration: There are two options available: Ongoing - the promotion will run until you stop it or you can apply a date range where the promotion will run for the length of time you decide.
    2. Who Qualifies: The drop down option will present you with a list of any groups you’ve established, as well as the default options that cookaborough provides based on customer behaviour, as pictured below. Choosing to apply a promotion to a particular group or set of customers means that the promotion will only be available to that particular segment.
    3. Single Use: You’re able to set the promotion to single use per customer, and set a minimum order required before the discount is applied.
    4. Minimum order amount: Apply a condition to the amount a customer needs to spend in order to receive the promotion - this is different from an ongoing minimum order and free delivery which are built into the platform via your Settings page. Those are ongoing whereas this promotion is applied at checkout in addition to those conditions

Customer Benefits: 

To complete a general promotion setup, you need to allocate the benefit. You’ve got two options via the drop down box: a certain percentage off, or a fixed dollar amount off.

  • Percentage off ….x %
  • Fixed dollar amount off… x$

 



Don’t forget to save the promotion and you’re ready to go! 

Coupon-activated Promotion Setup

 

Remember you can create promotions where customers can activate a benefit through the use of a coupon code. These coupon-activated promotions behave in a similar way to a general promotion, but customers will need to use a coupon code at checkout.

 

Coupons can be created from the ‘Coupon’ page, or via the Promotions page. Here’s how to create a coupon-activated promotion:

 

Step One: Create a Promotion

Use the Promotions tab and select ‘Coupon activated.’ (as pictured below). Selecting this option will allow you to create the general settings for the promotion such as qualification rules and date range as outlined above. You will then be prompted to ‘Save & Create Coupon’ at the bottom of this page.

 

Step Two: Creating a coupon:
  • On the Coupon tab, first select the promotion you wish to link the coupon to. 
  • Create a unique code for this coupon such as SAVE15
  • Select an expiry date for the coupon. If no date is chosen, the coupon will expire on the same date as the linked promotion
  • Select how many times each individual customer is able to use this particular coupon code. 
  • Select how many times the coupon code can be used during the promotion - this is particularly useful in offering time or amount-limited promotions such as ‘LIMITED TO THE FIRST 100 CUSTOMERS.’ 
  • Save the coupon and it will be linked to the promotion. 



TIP: You can also do this the opposite way around - - starting with creating a Coupon, then creating the Promotion. So essentially you can do Step Two before Step One.

 

 

TIP: You can choose to Disable a Promotion once you have saved it, which essentially archives it for later when you’re ready to switch it on or repeat it for next time.

 

More Marketing and Promotion ideas?

 

Once you’ve used the Promotional tools on Cookaborough once or twice it’s easy to  generate them when you have an idea of what you might like to do, then switch them on or off whenever you wish. Find some inspiration for ideas with topics such as Customers, using Social Media, using your Kitchen Link and Media Coverage.

 

Need more help?

Online: Helpful information can be found by visiting our Learn centre here.

Email: And as always, if you need additional support, feel free to contact our team for help

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The only platform developed specifically for food businesses to start, run and grow their Ready-made meals business.

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