Once you’ve established your ecommerce business in the Amazon store, you can explore a variety of strategies for expanding your customer base. One popular strategy for sellers is to offer promo codes. Whether you share them across social media channels or highlight them on product detail pages, promo codes can help you encourage customer loyalty—and attract new customers.
In this article, you’ll discover:
- What Amazon promo codes are
- The difference between Amazon coupons, price discounts, deals, and promotions
- The benefits of Amazon promo codes
- The types of Amazon promo codes you can create and when to create them
- How to create Amazon promo codes using the Promotions tool
What are Amazon promo codes?
Amazon promo codes—also known as promotion “claim codes”—are alphanumeric codes that a seller can create for products in the Amazon store. A customer uses a claim code or promo code to redeem a specific promotion for a product they wish to purchase.
What’s the difference between Amazon coupons, price discounts, deals, and promotions?
Though they may seem similar, there are important differences between coupons, price discounts, deals, and promotions in the Amazon store:
- Promotions: There are two kinds of Amazon seller promotions: percentage-off and buy one, get one free (also known as “BOGO”). Sellers can create promo codes for both types of promotions.
- Deals: Deals are promotional offers that run for a limited time. There are two types of deals in the Amazon store: Lightning Deals and Best Deals. Lightning Deals run for 4 to 12 hours. Best Deals can run anywhere from 1 to 14 days. Deals are applied automatically, so promo codes don’t apply.
- Coupons: Coupons appear on product detail pages and in other parts of the Amazon store. They give customers a percentage off or a specific amount of money off a single product or set of products. There’s no such thing as a coupon code on Amazon because promo codes don’t apply.
- Price discounts: Price discounts are time-bound campaigns in which you can offer discounted prices on your products for up to 30 days on a limited number of units. There’s no such thing as an Amazon seller price discount code because promo codes don’t apply to Amazon pricing discounts.
In this article, we’re going to focus on claim codes for Amazon promotions.
What are the benefits of using promo codes?
Whether you’re a seasoned seller looking to boost your sales, or you’re new to the Amazon store and want to attract customers, using an Amazon seller promo code or claim code is a great way to expand your business.
Benefits include:
- Targeting an audience through a specific channel, such as social media users or followers of a particular influencer, to expand the reach of your products
- Increasing sales conversions for new customers who may have been on the fence about shopping with you
- Helping you stay competitive when other sellers may be offering similar products
- Offering exclusive codes that can be tracked, so you’re able to guard against code abuses (for example, websites that list promo codes for broad use)
- Encouraging customer loyalty and increasing their satisfaction with a code that can benefit or reward repeat shopping
- Driving traffic to your product listings, particularly for products that may be newly launched, newsworthy, or popular—or, on the flipside, driving traffic to less popular or less well-known products to help them gain traction
What types of promo codes can you create?
You can create claim codes for two types of promotions in the Amazon store: percentage-off and buy one, get one free (also known as “BOGO”):
- Buy one, get one free (BOGO): This kind of promotion lets you provide customers with one or more free items when they purchase a set number of items or spend a certain amount. For example, you could do buy three items, get one free. You could do spend $15, get two free items.
- Percentage-off: Percentage-off promotions act like a tiered discount, where the more a customer spends, the more they save. For example, you could run a promotion like, “Save 20% for every 5 pairs of socks purchased.”
One option you can use for percentage-off promotions is to share a claim code with an Amazon Influencer or a member of Amazon Associates, which can be helpful if you don’t have your own social channels or you want help amplifying a promotion. You can also create claim codes to share through your own social channels and emails.
You can use two types of promo codes with both BOGO and percentage-off promotions:
- Single-use claim codes are unique to each customer. When you create this type of claim code, you can limit the number of times a promotion can be applied. For example, you can create 60 single-use claims codes that can be redeemed by 60 unique customers.
- Group claim codes are shared by all customers and have no quantity limits. When you create this type of claim code, there’s only one code associated with your promotion, and it can be redeemed by any customer who has it. However, you can limit the code’s use to once per customer.
If you want to share a claim code with Amazon influencers and associates, or to show the promotion on the product’s detail page, you’ll have to create a group claim code.
When should I create an Amazon promo code?
The right time to create an Amazon promo code can depend on your business needs and inventory, but here are some suggestions:
- When business is slow and you want to stimulate sales
- When you want to target a promo to a specific audience
- When it’s holiday shopping season and customers are on the hunt for savings
- When your business is new, or you have new products, and you want to introduce customers to them
- When you have overstock or slow-moving inventory you want to move
- When you want to boost your business’s visibility by appearing on Amazon Deals pages, in search results, or on product detail pages
How do you create Amazon promo codes?
You have the option to create claim codes each time you create a promotion in the Amazon store.
To get started, hover over Advertising in the Seller Central main menu, then select Manage Promotions to access the Promotions tools. From there, you’ll have the option to create a buy one, get one free or percentage-off promotion. Select the promotion type you want to offer, choose Create, then follow the prompts.
If you’re creating a percentage-off promotion, you’ll have the opportunity to share a claim code for it with Amazon influencers and associates in the first step of the process. You’ll have the opportunity to create a single-use or group claim code in the third step. When you’ve completed all required entries, submit your promotion for review.
Once your promotion has been activated, you can select the Manage Your Promotions tab in the Promotions tool to check the status of all of your active promotions. This includes monitoring your tracking ID, promotion start and end dates, number of orders, and more.
Ready to create an Amazon seller promo code?
Using the Promotions tool in Seller Central can make it easier for you to create, manage, and track all your product promotions. This will help you gauge your success and adjust your promo plans as you go. Even better? Creating promo codes can help you build your business by creating customer loyalty while attracting new ones, all by offering a little shopping incentive. Explore this tool and more when you sign up for a Professional selling plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to create a promo code?
What’s the difference between a single-use and group claim code?
Can I do a discount code for a product I sell on Amazon?
What are Amazon seller promo code best practices?
- Making sure your customers know about them, whether via email newsletter, a social media campaign, or by highlighting the promo code directly on the product detail page
- Making your promo code time sensitive to encourage customers to shop while the code is active
- Offering good value, so customers know they’re getting a good deal, which encourages them to shop
What is Amazon Influencers?
What is Amazon Associates?
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