Building and Managing Promotions

This article covers how to build and manage discounts and special offers using the Promotions Manager.

You must have the Administrator-level access to the CellarPass platform to view, edit and create promotions.

Promotions Overview
There are several types of different promotions you can run through CellarPass.

• Business Page Promotion This allows you to create a promotion that will be displayed in the Special Offers section of CellarPass.com. If an online visitor clicks on your Property Listing, the promotion will be displayed over your profile page.
  
  
• Survey Invite Promotion (Requires Reservations Plan) This will allow you to embed a promotion into the Experience Review Invitation that is sent to a guest that has booked a Reservation and checked into your property. A CellarPass Reservations subscription is required to use this feature.
  
  
• RSVP Check-in Promotion For guests that have placed a Reservation and have been checked in by one of your staff, you can create a RSVP Check-in offer that will immediately send the check-in offer email. A CellarPass Reservations subscription is required to use this feature.
  
  
• Tix Check-in Promotion If you build a Ticketed Event and associate a Tix Check-In Offer to the event, anyone that purchased a ticket and is subsequently checked into the event, will trigger the system immediately send the Check-In offer promotion to their email address associated wit their ticket or order.

Creating & Managing CellarPass Promotions
There's different advantages to using promotions based on what your goals are. Are you looking to engage new guests, then we recommend you build a Profile Page Promotion as that will allow you to engage those on CellarPass.com. If you are looking to send an offer to guests that you've already engaged with (they've made a reservation or purchased a ticket), then the check-in offers allow you to send a message while they are most likely to still be on property.

No matter which promotion type you choose, the basic setup is essentially the same. What you will find slightly different from the Profile Page Promo template from others like the RSVP Check-In or Tix Check-In Offer is the ability to associate a specific event that would trigger the promotion to be sent. This allows you to offer promotions for specific events, instead of sending it to all of your events.

To get started building or managing existing CellarPass Promotions:

1. Log into CellarPass back office by going to https://www.cellarpass.com/manage
2. On the left-hand, main menu, select Marketing
3. From the dropdown menu, select Offers & Promotions
4. You will now see the Manage Promotions Dashboard. If you have any active promotions, they will be displayed here. If you would like to see expired promotions, you can select expired from the Promotion Start Time dropdown menu that is displayed at the top of the Manage Promotions Dashboard.
5. To create a new Promotion, click the New Promotion button located at the top right-hand corner of the screen.
6. We recommend that you first select the Promotion Type which is found on the right-hand side. If you need a description of what each type is used, review the top section of this article.
7. Enter a Promotion Name which is only used in the back office to help you keep track of different promotions.
8. From the Promotion Schema dropdown, select one of the dozens available (from % and $ discounts to special offers).
9. Enter some text in the Redemption Instructions section that would help assist the guest or your staff member on how to redeem the Promotion.
10. In the Referral Code box, you can enter a Source Code or Referral Code that you would use to apply the discount in your Point of Sale or eCommerce platform.
11. In the Redemption Policy box, you can enter additional instructions as to how the discount or special offer would be redeemed.
12. If you would like to make this promotion active, check the Enabled checkbox. The Promotion Start & End Date(s) would still apply for this to become officially active.
13. In the Promotion Start Date, Time and Promotion End Date. Time can be used to determine when the promotion will automatically start and end.
14. Click the Save button when ready.
15. Lastly, we always recommend that you test, re-test and test again any new promotions or whenever you make changes so you can catch mistakes earlier, than when it's too late.

Managing Promotion Start & End Dates
One of the great advantages of using the CellarPass promotions manager is the ability to create promotion campaigns that auto-start and auto-end based within the promotion. But the added bonus is that CellarPass artificially sets a 7-day expiration based on when the promotion has been triggered by the system.

For example, if I were to build a promotion that starts January 1st and ends July 30th and a customer goes to CellarPass.com on February 1st and claims a profile page promotion, that promotion will artificially expire on 2/8/18, despite your campaign ending months later. The goal of this is to get customers to use the promotion now, not months later. We display this expiration date clearly throughout the customer engagement so the expectations are set from the very start.

We recommend that you review the Customizing Check-in Promo Offer Email Template article next.