If you’re an advertiser of any sort, you may have wondered, “Who doesn’t love a good ole fashioned coupon?” While it’s true, most do love coupons, they’ve evolved quite a bit since the days of sitting at your kitchen table and meticulously rifling through newspaper inserts with your trusty pair of scissors. According to RetailMeNot, 96% of consumers use coupons, and Deal Nerd estimates that coupon users are spending 24% more than regular shoppers.

The great thing about coupons these days is that many can be found online at the opportune moment – offering us that instant gratification. No more needing to plan a special trip to the store just to use your coupons or wondering if a coupon exists for an item you were recently eyeing. In fact, you might not even be “offered” a digital coupon these days unless you show interest based on how you’re behaving online.

While it is a whole new world for coupons, it’s also a whole new world for those with Amazon Seller Central accounts, who can now create and customize their very own coupons (a service once reserved only for those on Amazon Vendor Central). The unique thing about Amazon coupons, compared to all the other promotion types in our full promotion guide, is that your coupons can target specific products and specific audiences.

In this post, we’ll be detailing exactly how to run coupons in your Seller Central account.

Step 1 – Login & Go to Lightning Deals:

To create a Coupon, log into your Amazon Seller Central account, and at the top select Advertising > Lightning Deals

Scroll to the bottom of the Lightning Deals page and look for this box. Then, click “Create Coupon.”

Once you click this, you’ll be taken to a Coupon page. In the top right, click “Create Your First Coupon.”

Step 2 – Create Your Product Selection:

After selecting “Create Your First Coupon,” you’ll be taken through a step-by-step guide, starting with Product Selection.

Here, you can select which products to add to your coupon using your SKU/ASIN list.

When creating a coupon, you may upload a maximum of 50 products to one coupon. Per Amazon’s guidelines though, you’ll want to make sure that items added to one coupon are in the same general category or sub-category. As in, don’t have the same coupon for two completely different items with completely different price points.

After finding your SKUs or ASINs and adding specific products to the coupon, click “Continue to Next Step”. This will take you to the Budget & Discount tab.

Step 3 – Setting Up Your Budget & Discount:

In this section, you’ll want to set a discount amount and a maximum budget – which can be tricky to understand. First, you’ll select whether you’d like to use a percentage-off or money-off coupon. The discount must be between 5-80% of your lowest price for a product within the last 30 days to be eligible to run on Amazon.

You’ll also select if you want to limit the redemption of your coupon to one per customer or allow your coupon to be redeemed multiple times by the same customer. If you haven’t run a coupon yet, and don’t know what types of results to expect, we recommend limiting your first coupon to only one per customer to start.

Also, in this section, you must set a coupon budget. This part can be a little confusing. There is no straightforward option like “I’d like to create 100 useable coupons.”

Instead, it works like this:

A coupon’s “budget” is eaten away by two metrics: The Discount Value + the Coupon Referral Fee ($0.60 per coupon).  So, if you are selling an item for $10, and a user gets $5 off, your Coupon Budget will be depleted by $5.60 each time a purchase is made using the coupon. So, for you to be profitable with your coupon, you’re going to have to run the math to understand how much you want to invest in the coupon. If your coupon budget is $2,000, using the example above ($2,000 / $5.60), the coupon can be used 357 times before your coupon will be deactivated (or until it expires, whichever comes first.)

After planning your budget and discount parameters, click “Continue to the next step” in the top right.

Step 4 – Schedule & Target Your Coupon:

The first step in this section is to give your coupon a title. It should describe your promotion as accurately as possible within the Title Guidelines. To learn more about acceptable titles, click Title Guidelines to the right of the title field.

Once you’ve named your coupon, you have the option to choose Target Customers (or who is eligible to see your coupon on Amazon). You can offer a coupon to everyone, or only to those who have purchased your products (even specific products) on Amazon before. You can also select from some audiences created by Amazon, like Amazon Prime Members, Amazon Student Members and more.

After selecting your target, it’s time to schedule your coupon! Remember, a coupon will run for your set duration (max of 90 days), or until your coupon budget is depleted, whichever comes first.

Once you’re finished with this step, continue to the next section.

Step 5 – Review & Submit Your Coupon

So, how’s it look? Is everything in the proper place? (Don’t look at mine above, ha, just yours – your product images and title won’t be blurred out!) You should be able to see a coupon preview displaying your coupon title, and all the targeting and restrictions you’ve put in place.

If everything is good to go, click submit.

You, my friend, have just created your first Amazon Seller Central coupon!

If you need help with advertising on Amazon, or managing your promotions and coupons, reach out to our team today. We’re happy to help!