Create coupon codes for transactional products

You can offer all of your customers a fixed percentage on transactional products (TVOD) such as rentals and direct purchases, similar to subscription product promotions. 

In this article

• What are coupons?

• Campaigns

• Creating coupons

• Editing a coupon

• Deleting a coupon

• Downloading random coupon codes

• Redeeming a coupon code

What are coupons?

Coupons let you offer discounts on transactional products and track how they're being used. Here at Vimeo OTT, we use the term “coupons” exclusively to refer to promotions for TVOD (buy/rent) products.

You get 100 free coupons per month to give out. After that, they are $1 per redemption charged to your credit card.

Campaigns

Create codes for promotional partners, festivals, events, weekend specials, and more. Here’s what we’ve seen:

1. Contests - Doing a contest for a giveaway on social media? Use coupons to give out the winnings.
2. Weekend specials - Create a coupon for a weekend flash sale
3. Festivals - Going to Sundance or SXSW? Give out custom codes there for a discount on your movie.
4. Merchandise sales - Include free unique coupons in your physical merchandise so customers can also download the file from your site.

Creating coupons

1. From your site’s admin page, go to your Products tab drop-down menu and select Promotions.
2. You will be presented with managing several promotional tools; select Manage Coupons under Transactional Coupons
3. The next page is where you can manage your existing and deactivated coupons. Select Create Coupons.
4. Next, you’ll be presented with the following fields: 
   • Campaign name: Name your campaign ex. Weekend Special
   • Coupon Type: Select Custom or Random 
     • RANDOM coupon codes will give you a list of unique codes that you will be able to mail or give out to a group of people. Each code is different from the others. These are great for including inside the DVD and Blu-ray cases of your movie for digital access. 
     • CUSTOM coupon codes are fixed and set by you and can be used as many times as you specify. These custom codes are really nice for public giveaways or promos, with a set limit.
       • Note: Coupon codes must be alphanumeric and cannot contain special characters.
   • Quantity: the number of coupons you want to allow redeemed
   • Coupon code: this is what your customers will use to redeem at checkout, e.g. WKNDSPECIAL (If you selected Random, this will be grayed out.)
   • Redemption type: Select Purchase or Rental
     • Select if you want the redemption type to be for the rental or the purchase of the product. If you only have one of these configured for your product, that will be automatically selected.
   • Discount: Select Discounted or Free. If discounted, set the amount of the discount 
     
     • In order to accommodate international currencies, we no longer support a fixed dollar amount. However, if you previously created a coupon code with a fixed dollar amount, the codes will still be redeemable. 
5. When you are satisfied with all of your coupon settings, click Create. After doing so, you can only update the campaign name, increase the quantity, or delete it.

Once the coupon is created, you will be directed to the general coupons page where you can check on your newly created coupon.

Editing a coupon

1. Navigate back to Promotions and select Manage Coupons
2. On the right side of the coupon, click the options icon (•••) to open a drop-down menu, then click Edit.
3. On this edit page, you can:
   • Change the Campaign Name
   • Increase the Quantity of the coupon (you cannot decrease the number)
   • Delete the coupon. This will make all of the unredeemed codes no longer redeemable.

Deleting a coupon

1. On the coupon manage page, hover over the options icon (•••) and click Delete on the drop-down menu.
2. There will be a pop-up message to confirm the deletion; click OK.
3. The coupon will be deleted and a confirmation banner will appear at the top of the page.

Downloading random coupon codes

If you created Random coupons, you can download the codes from the main coupon page:

1. On the right side of the coupon, click the options icon (•••) for the drop-down menu, then select Download codes
2. You will see a banner confirming that we will e-mail a .CSV file with the codes
3. Check your e-mail for a message with the subject: Your CSV with coupon code data is ready!

Below is a preview of what your CSV can look like.

Here is what each column provides:

Column	Definition
code	Random code that is generated to be used at check-out
active	TRUE - is available to redeem FALSE - not available to redeem
user_email	User email will populate here once the code is redeemed
redemption_link	Direct link to check out with the code redeemed

Tip: If you change the number of codes after downloading the initial CSV file, you will need to re-download the codes to get an updated CSV.

Redeeming a coupon code

If a customer needs help with redeeming a coupon code, here's how they would do it:

1. Go directly to the desired product to buy or rent.
2. Ensure that the correct purchase type is selected.
   • For example, if you’ve advertised your coupon for Purchases only, then the customer should select the Buy option (instead of rent).
3. The customer will need to enter their email address and payment information.
4. Under the payment details, click the ☑ Promo Code. checkbox.
5. Enter the coupon code and click APPLY.
6. If the code is 100%, the customer can click Redeem Now and watch immediately without entering payment information.