How to Build Discounts and Promotions for commercetools?

Future-oriented enterprises know all too well that compostable commerce is the future. Componentized architecture allows businesses to connect best-of-breed platforms into a single powerful system built on top of microservices connected by a rich set of APIs. This approach helps companies choose the right technology and quickly capitalize on new commerce trends while saving time and money in the process. 

commercetools is an outstanding commerce platform built around MACH principles. And now, their advanced commerce functionalities can be extended with world-class promotional experiences provided by Voucherify Promotion Engine. Read on to learn how to integrate Voucherify with your commercetools store and what benefits it brings.

Why do you need Voucherify promotions in your commercetools store?

commercetools is a top headless commerce engine on the market, but due to the sheer number of features, not all of them may be advanced enough for your unique business needs. Thanks to the API-first approach, commercetools allow users to extend their native functionalities with external, specialized software providers to deliver the best results. This is the case for discounts and other promotional campaigns. commercetools supports the following discount types out-of-the-box:

• Relative (percentage) and absolute (amount) discounts as unique promo codes.  
• Product discounts based on various product attributes (e.g., SKU, category, country, price, and more) applied automatically to products. 
• Cart discounts with additional fixed amount effect and free gift effect (e.g. BOGO), also applicable automatically or with a promo code.

In commercetools, discount codes can represent up to 10 different cart discounts. However, if you need to generate a bulk of unique codes it might take some development time and resources, as commercetools does not offer a unique promo codes generator functionality right in the Merchant Center. 

The promotion module offered in the standard commercetools instance is a great starting point for any business, however, if you need more customization and control over your discount campaigns and promo codes, you need specialized software. With Voucherify, you get to run plenty of sales promotions unavailable in commercetools by default. These include:

• Dynamic discounts that change value based on order total and other attributes.
• Discounts only for the cheapest and most expensive items in the cart. 
• Discounts split proportionally between items or order total.  
• Multi-tiered double and single-sided referral campaigns. 
• Product and order-specific discounts. 
• Free item promotions and BOGO deals. 

The integration also includes gift vouchers, loyalty programs and cart promotions that let you unlock the full potential of commercetools promotions. 

However, one of the biggest benefits of using Voucheriy for commercetools promotions is the next-level fraud control and discount analytics, unavailable in commercetools by default. With Voucherify, you can build plenty of budget-based discount restrictions, such as the total discount amount, or the precise number of redemptions per customer in a limited timeframe. In commercetools, there is also a scale limitation with the maximum number of active product discounts (500) and cart discounts (100). In Voucherify, there is no limit on the number of campaigns you need to run simultaneously. 

Another great benefit is visual charts displaying detailed information about who, when and how used your discount codes. See all information at a glance or track each activity related to the given promo campaign or voucher with technical logs. Better understand how a given promo campaign turned a profit and react quickly if anything goes south thanks to easy campaign management from the UI level – no need to engage the development team each time you need to modify or stop campaigns. 

How does the Voucherify and commercetools integration work?

Voucherify and commercetools integration is based on the API Extension functionality that allows you to extend the API with custom business logic. Here is how this process works at a glance:

1. At checkout, commercetools fetches Voucherify API to validate and redeem the promo code. 
2. Voucherify returns the result and applies the discount to the order (to the cart, items, or triggers another behavior based on the discount effect). 
3. Once the order is paid, the code is redeemed and commercetools order and customer data in synced with Voucherify. 

For enhanced security of your promo codes, Voucherify supports the session lock mechanism that temporarily locks the voucher usage after validation. If you register a session, Voucherify will block incoming validation and redemption requests until the session is released. Once redemption is successful the session is removed automatically. You can use this feature to prevent users from using the same code simultaneously (e.g., by placing the same code at the checkout in multiple tabs).

Another interesting feature is the data sync between both platforms. The integration supports the synchronization of product, customer and order data, letting you run plenty of product-, order-, and segment-specific promo campaigns. 

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Connect commercetools with Voucherify

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