If you’ve been selling on Amazon for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that they offer a variety of ways to create discounts and promotional codes for your potential customers to take advantage of.
You may have also heard a few horror stories about people setting them up incorrectly and seeing their inventory gobbled up by hungry consumers (or other sellers, who want to take advantage of your mistake) in just a matter of minutes.
In this guide, we will walk you through each type of promotional code that Amazon offers (including the best ways to take advantage of each different type) and show you step-by-step, how you should set them up.
Use the Table of Contents Below to select the type of promotion you're trying to create.
- Types Of Promo Codes On Amazon:
- How To Setup Promotional Codes Inside Of Amazon Seller Central:
Types Of Promo Codes On Amazon:
As of writing this, there are currently 5 different ways to create a promotion (or discount) inside of your Amazon Seller Central Account.
Percentage Off Promotional Code:
When most Amazon sellers hear the words “promo code” this is generally what comes to mind. Percentage Off promo codes are the bread and butter discount codes that most sellers use.
Using a percentage off code allows you to create a discount between 1% and 99% for any or all of the products inside of your catalog.
Side Note: You may have seen some people talking about giving away “free” products using promotional codes. While this was able to be done in the past using “dollar off” codes, Amazon no longer offers that as an option.
These types of codes also allow you to create a “tiered” discount structure.
For example:
- Buy 1 Unit get 10% off
- Buy 2 Units get 15% Off
- Buy 3 Units get 20% off
This can be extremely useful for helping to drive additional sales of your product, especially if it’s a product that is prone to repeat purchases (like a supplement or food item) or if it’s an item that makes a great gift.
Amazon has 3 different types of “codes” available under the umbrella of the percentage off codes.
One Time Use Codes:
This is probably the option you’ve heard the most about. If you select the “one time use codes” option, when creating a percentage off discount, each code that is generated can only be used for one purchase by the customer.
Keep in mind that if they add more than one of your products to their cart, the discount will apply to each item.
While the code restricts the number of PURCHASES that the code can be used on, it does not limit the number of products that your customer can buy.
If you want to stop people from buying more than one product (I’m not sure why you would, but that’s up to you), you’ll need to edit the “Max Order Quantity” inside of the listing details.
When Should I Use a One-Time Use Promotional Code?
While this used to be the most common type of code to create, it’s becoming less common to use. Generally speaking, the only time you would need to create a one-time use code is if you’re offering a large discount (think 40%+) or if there is another reason you want to limit the total number of purchases someone could make.
Many “product launch services” ask for these types of codes and if you’re considering using one (I would usually suggest avoiding them), you will want to create a set of single use codes for them.
Group Claim Codes:
Group claim codes are essentially the same as one-time use codes, with the only difference being that you’re able to create ONE code and have it be used multiple times.
When Should I Use a Group Promotional Code?
Group promotional codes are great if you’re going to be sharing the code with multiple people.
It allows you to create a single code and have that be used by anyone that wants to utilize it.
For example, if you’re going to email your list to offer them a discount, you would want to use a group promotional code instead of a one-time use code.
With a group code, you could simply copy and paste the code into the email and send it.
If you were to use a one-time use code, you would need to create a unique code for each person on your list and use some advanced features of your email service provider to insert them for each person.
Additionally, group codes allow you to actually choose the promotional code you want to use, which makes it easy to create something your audience can remember to use like “SAVE20NOW”.
In place a group claim code, if you’re going to be sharing the code with your email list or on social media, you may want to use a social media code instead (we talk about them below), as they’re easier to set up without issue and allows you to restrict the number of products each person can buy, as well as, how many times the code is used.
No Code:
Selecting the “no code” option allows you to create a promotional discount that can be redeemed without the use of any kind of code.
When Should I Use a No Code Promotional Code?
If you select the “no code” option, you would be creating a percentage discount that would apply automatically to the products you selected during the promotion creation process.
This is an easy way to create a general “sale” across a variety of products in your catalog.
Alternatively, if you’re only creating this type of promotion for one product in your catalog, you could simply create a “sale price” inside of your listing and avoid the promotion creation process entirely.
Social Media Codes:
Social Media promotional codes are a separate type of percentage off promotional codes that you can create within the Amazon ecosystem.
As the name implies they were originally created for us posting on social media (like to your Facebook or Twitter page), but they have a few features that may interest you.
Unlike percentage off promotional codes, Social Media codes allow you to limit the number of units that the code can be redeemed on.
They also allow you to create a special landing page to drive your followers to and can even be sent to “Amazon approved influencers” to help your code get even more traction.
When Should I Use a Social Media Code:
Unless you have a specific need for the “one off” promotional codes, Social Media codes are what you should be creating.
If you’re planning on using the code for your social pages, email list, or anything else that you can dream up, this type of a code makes the process extremely easy to setup, offers more options, and is harder to setup “incorrectly” (meaning you don’t have to worry about your inventory being cleared out if you accidentally click the wrong button during the setup process.

The Simple 5-Step Process We Used To Generate $64,000 In 12 Months Working Part Time On Etsy.
Yes, Send Me The Roadmap!Buy One Get One Promotional Codes
Buy One/ Get One promo codes are a special type of codes inside the Amazon platform that allow customers to purchase one item (item x) and get another item (item y) free.
This can be extremely useful for setting your offer apart (especially if you sell high end products), by offering something else for free.
It allows you to give the customer a ton of additional value, without having to discount the main product.
When Should I Use a Buy One Get One Code
If you’re setting up a Buy x Get Y Free promotion (think buy a cell phone and get a free cell phone case), you’re going to want to use this promo code type.
If you aren’t creating an offer like that, feel free to skip this one.
Coupons
Amazon Coupons (not to be confused with promotional codes), are a newer discount method offered by Amazon.
The Difference Between Amazon Promo Codes and Amazon Coupons

Unlike promotional codes, which only show on your product detail pages (or not at all if you hide them during the setup process), Amazon Coupons are “discoverable” by Amazon users, meaning they have the potential to bring a flood of new traffic to your listing.
There are a variety of ways Amazon helps to “advertise” the coupon including:
- showing it on the coupons page (coupons.amazon.com)
- showing them within Amazon search results
- showing it in the price box of your product detail page,
- showing it inside of the customer's shopping cart and a few more
Secondly, unlike with promotional codes, Amazon Coupons work off of a defined budget (just like Amazon PPC), meaning you don’t have to worry about selling all of your inventory at a discount.
For example, if you set a coupon budget of $500, Amazon will stop showing your coupon when $500 worth of discounts have been redeemed on your product.
Third, Coupons can be setup to give a discount of either a fixed $ amount (meaning the customer would save $5 for example) or for a percentage off (e.g. 20% off), Promotional Codes only work on a percentage off basis.
Lastly, Amazon will charge you $0.60 every time an Amazon Coupon is redeemed (in addition to the amount you discounted the product).
For example, if you offer a discount of $10 via a coupon, every time a customer redeems a coupon, Amazon will deduct $10.60 ($10 for the discount and $0.60 for the redemption fee) from your coupon budget.
While they never charge you a fee when someone uses a promotional code, the small fee associated with the coupons can be more than worth it for the additional advertising that coupons can bring to your listing.
When Should I Use an Amazon Coupon
Amazon coupon codes are ideal if you’re trying to take advantage of all the traffic that Amazon already has, Coupons are one of the best ways to bring in additional visitors to your product detail page and they can do a great job of boosting your conversion rate.
They work well when combined with a variety of other strategies (like running Amazon Ads) and can go a long way to help boosting your sales (and organic Amazon rank), without you having to do any promotion yourself.
Deals
The final type of Amazon discount that is currently offered is what’s known as a “Deal”.
Unlike promotional codes or coupons, products need to meet specific criteria set out by Amazon in order to be “selected” for a deal.
This means that you can’t simply “create” deals like you can with the other types of discounts, instead you must wait to see if a product is selected by Amazon.
Additionally, there is a large fee (often $150+) that is paid (in addition to the amount you’re discounting the product for the deal), in order to secure your spot.
Before you throw your hands up at the $150+ price tag, it’s important to remember that because these are much more limited than other promotional types Amazon does put a lot more of their “marketing might” behind them, going as far as featuring them in emails to relevant customers and building dedicated pages for current deals.
Currently, there are two different types of “deals” that can be created inside of Amazon.

Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are a special type of promotion that you can create inside of the Amazon ecosystem.
Unlike other promotions or discounts these are “time and quantity restricted,” meaning that it’s only available for a few hours (typically 4 but occasionally up to 6) and when the quantity (e.g 100 units) sells out, the deal is gone in a flash (hence the lightning deal name).
When Should I Use a Lightning Deal
People ask all the time about using lightning deals and if it will boost sales. The honest answer (say it with me now) is “it depends.”
If you have an offer for one inside of your deals tab, it’s worth taking a look at and they CAN work like a charm to boost sales.
Keep in mind, that you ONLY want to test a deal if you’ll still be making money and in order to know that, we need to do a bit of math.
For example, Amazon wants us to offer 100 units at a minimum of a $5 discount, which sounds great because we have a $7 margin, which would leave us with $2 in profit on each unit….right?
Wrong.
We also need to take into consideration the deal fee (in most cases $150) and divide that by the number of units, to see the actual cost of the promotion.
$150 deal fee / 100 units = $1.50 per unit.
That would mean, we would only be making $0.50 on each sale (slightly more because Amazon’s fees are adjusted, but let’s keep it simple).
If that’s a margin we are ok with, then we could give the deal the green light, if not….wait for a better opportunity to test it.
Keep in mind, that you pay the full amount of the deal fee, regardless of how many units you sell during the lightning deal, so if you don’t sell the full hundred, you still may lose money, but that’s all part of the “testing” game.
7 Day Deals
As the name implies, these deals last “up-to” 7 days and are treated much the same way as lightning deals, in terms of the marketing love that Amazon gives them.
When Should I Use a 7 Day Deal
Just like with lightning deals, if you have a 7-day deal available inside of your dashboard, it’s worth testing to see what your results may be.
Remember, you need to take into account the deal fee in addition to the discount you’re offering on the product if you want to understand what it will cost you.
How To Setup Promotional Codes Inside Of Amazon Seller Central:
Once you’ve figured out the best type of promotion for your situation (using the information above), it’s time to actually dive in and set them up.
The first step for setting up any of these promotions is to navigate to the advertising menu and to select the promotion you’re trying to setup.

From there, you can use the guides below to follow along and setup your chosen promotion correctly.
Promotional Codes:
If you’re going to set up any of the promotional code types discussed above like:
- Percentage Off Codes (Group or Single Use Codes)
- Social Media Promo Codes
- Buy One Get One Codes
The first thing you’ll need to do is select the “promotions” option from the advertising menu.
From there, you’ll be taken to the promotion selection screen.

From here, you’re going to need to create a “product selection”. A product selection is a product (or group of products) that you want to apply the promotion towards.
To create your product selection, click on the “manage product selection” tab in the top of the promotion selection screen.

Then, you’ll need to select the type of product selection you want to create.
Current options include:
- SKU List
- ASIN List
- Browse Node ID List
- Brand Name List
- Advanced Product Selection
We could spend a few minutes talking about the pros and cons of each type, but for the vast majority of cases (99.99%), you’re going to use a SKU or ASIN list.

My suggestion would be to use an ASIN list, as it’s the most easily used across promotion types and saves you time setting things up the next time around.
Once you’ve selected the ASIN list option from the dropdown menu and click the “Create” button.

Here, you’ll need to enter 3 pieces of information:
- The Product Selection Name: This is how you will see the list referenced inside of your promotion creation screens.
- The Internal Tracking ID: This is a description of the list (e.g. a list of all garlic presses we sell). If the list contains multiple products, be descriptive here. If not, it’s ok to use the product name as both the selection name and tracking ID.
- The ASINS you want to be a part of the group: You can add up to 4,000 ASINS to each product group and they can be separated by spaces, line breaks, commas or semi colons (I would suggest line breaks to keep it clean).
Side note: if you’re not sure where to get your product’s ASIN, click on the inventory tab and look for the “product name” column. Directly underneath the name of each product, you will see a mix of numbers and letters. That’s the ASIN. Simply copy and paste each ASIN into your ASIN list.
When you’ve filled in all 3 fields, press the “create” button at the bottom of the screen and your list will be created.
Remember, once you have created a product selection, you can reuse it across any future promotions you create, so make sure to name it with something that makes it easy to find in the future.
When your list is successfully created, you will be taken back to “Manage Product Selection Screen” and you’ll see a green confirmation message at the top.
Once you’ve confirmed that your list was created, you’ll need to click on the “Create a Promotion” Tab and select the type of promotion you want to create
Percentage Off Promotional Code:
To setup a “percentage off” promotional code (the most common type of code used for launching a new product), you’ll want to select the “Percentage Off” Option and click the “create” button

Once you’re inside the Percentage Off Promotion creations screen, you’ll see a whole bunch of open fields and blank spaces to fill in, but fear not….it’s easier and less overwhelming than it looks
Step 1: Setting the Conditions for Your Promotion
The first thing we need to do is to set the conditions for our promotion. This tells Amazon what products we want the promotional code to work with, as well as, what things the customer needs to do for the promotion to apply.
In order to complete this section, we will need to fill out 4 options:
Buyer Purchases:
This field is what Amazon uses to “start” understanding of the promotion you’re creating might apply to a purchase that a customer is making.
What they’re looking for here is for you to tell them what that “trigger” should be and they offer 3 different options:
- At Least This Quantity of Items: this is the default and most common option. If you leave this selected, it would mean your discount would be triggered by any one purchasing AT LEAST the number of items you see in the box to the right (set to 1 by default). E.g. if a customer purchases AT LEAST 1 item, the discount may apply.
- At Least This Amount in $: Similar to the “quantity of items” option, selecting the “Amount in $” option allows you to specify a minimum spend a customer needs to meet in order to qualify for the discount. E.g. A Customer must spend AT LEAST $30 to qualify for the discount.
- For Every Quantity Of Items: This is the least used option. If you select this option, it means you want to offer a discount any time someone buys a certain quantity of items. E.g. If you select this option and use 4 as your number of items, the discount would apply on every quantity of 4 items that the customer buys (4,8,12, etc).

Generally speaking you’re going to want to leave this option alone (keep it set on “At Least This Quantity) and make sure the quantity is set to one.
Using those options, the discount would apply to each person who buys “AT LEAST” one of your items.
Purchased Items:
If your buyer meets the criteria you laid out in the “buyer purchases” section (in our example…they buy at least 1 item from our store), Amazon needs to know what products they should check for in the customer’s cart.
This is where the product selection we created (instructions above) comes in.
Simply Click the drop down menu in the “Purchased Items” row and select the product selection that you want Amazon to check for in The Customer’s cart.
E.g. If we created a product selection featuring our world famous garlic press, I’m going to select the Garlic Press product selection from my drop down.
Buyer Gets:
This section will tell Amazon what we want them to do, if the customer has purchased the product we want to offer the discount on (in our example, they’ve purchased AT LEAST 1 World Famous Garlic Press).

By default, Amazon will show “percentage off” in the left-hand side here. We simply need to fill in the percentage we want to offer as a discount (between 1-99%) in the box to the right.
Applies To:
This field is asking how we want to apply the discount.
By default, Amazon will apply the discount to items that are being purchased (in our case, the customer would get 25% off the world famous garlic press) and it will show a value of “Purchased Items”.

While this is normally the setting you want, you can actually have Amazon apply the discount to a different item, by clicking on the drop down and selecting “ Additional Item” and adding the ASIN that you want the discount to apply to.
For example, if we were selling kitchen knives along with our garlic press, we could offer 25% off kitchen knives with any garlic press purchase, by changing this field to “additional item”.
For most uses however, we want the discount to apply to the same item (meaning people would save money on the thing they were already planning to buy) and can ignore this field.
Step 2: Scheduling Your Promotion
After we’ve told Amazon the “conditions” for when we want the discount to apply, we need to give them the dates and times for when we want to run the promotion.
Side Note: If you’re setting a promo code up for more than a few days or weeks, a better option would be to use the “sales price” feature inside of your listing.
Here we will need to fill out 4 fields.

Start Date:
This field will tell Amazon when you want the promotion to start.
Simply select a date from the calendar, by clicking on the date box and select a time from the drop down.
Keep in mind that by default Amazon Promotions work off of US Pacific Time (Amazon’s Home Time Zone), so you may need to do a little bit of math if you’re in a different time zone.
Additionally, You need to create promotions that are at LEAST 4 hours in the future (so Amazon has time to approve them), meaning you’ll want to create these promotions at least the night before you need them, so they’re ready to go, when you want them to be live.
End Date:
Just like with the start date, you’re going to want to select a time and day for the promotion to end.
Internal Description and Tracking ID:
In each of these fields you will need to enter a name or id for the promotion. This will show up in a few different places across your reports and dashboards, so making it easy to remember and obvious is the way to go.
E.g. if we were offering 25% off our garlic press for Mother’s day, I would type “Mother’s Day 2020 25% Off Garlic Press”
Additionally I typically use the same value for both fields, so there isn’t any confusion later.
Step 3: Setting The Options For Your Promotion
Once we have set the conditions for the promotion and told Amazon the time and dates we want it to be valid, we need to finalize a few options before we make it live.
Amazon gives us 3 types of promotional codes to choose from, One Time Codes, Group Codes, or No Code
One Time Use Codes

When you select this option you will be creating a discount code that can only be used by a single customer (you’ll see how to create lists of these codes in Step 5).
Once you’ve selected this option, there are a few additional fields you’ll want to review.
One Redemption Per Customer:
This box should be checked by default and limits each code to one customer and one transaction. As noted previously, one transaction does NOT mean one unit.
Amazon will apply the percentage off discount to each unit the customer orders in their first transaction.
If it’s not checked and you want to limit the number of times a code can be used, make sure it’s checked by clicking on it.
This can be an important way to protect your inventory, especially if you’re offering a high discount percentage or creating these codes for something like a product launch.
Claim Code:
When you select to use a one time code, this box should be grayed out and unclickable. You won’t be creating codes at this point (Amazon will do that for you), and you’ll get them at the end of Step #5.
Claim Code Combinability:
Amazon gives you two options here, preferential or unrestricted.
This should be set to preferential.
Unless you want people to be able to combine a variety of your promotional codes for additional discounts (there’s almost never a reason), this should ALWAYS be set to preferential, meaning amazon will “prefer” the best deal for the customer (and only allow one code) if the customer is trying to utilize multiple codes.
Customize Messaging:
If you want to adjust any of the wording that customers might see (like what they’ll see when they apply the promo code), you can do that inside of this menu.
One item you may want to look out for is the Detail page display text, by default this should be disabled (meaning the promotional code won’t show on your product listing itself), but this menu is worth opening to double check that the box is unchecked, especially if you’re offering a high percentage off.
Once you’ve set each of these options the way that you want them, scroll to the bottom and click on the “review” button.
Then, continue to step 4.
Group Codes
After you’ve selected the “Group Code” option, you’ll have a variety of other fields you need to fill out and double check.

One Redemption Per Customer:
This box should be checked by default and limits each customer to one transaction.
As noted previously, one transaction does NOT mean one unit. Amazon will apply the percentage off discount to each unit the customer orders in their first transaction.
Claim Code:
When you select to use a group code, you’ll need to fill in the code you’d like to use here. Amazon will suggest a randomized code by default, but if it can be extremely useful if you make the code easy to remember.
E.g. Garlic25 to save 25% on a garlic press.
Your code needs to be 8-12 characters long and can be a mix of letters and numbers.
Claim Code Combinability:
In virtually every case, this should be set to “preferential”. What Amazon is looking for here is if you want the code to have the ability to be used in combination with other codes, which would result in a higher discount (you don’t!)
Make sure it’s set to “preferential”
Customize Messaging:
While the main reason you would open this menu would be to change the wording Amazon displays for the promotion, it contains something you need to double check.
Open the customize messaging menu and double check the “Detail Page Display Text” option.
By default with group codes, this option is checked, meaning your promotion will show on your product listing.
If you’re offering a high discount or simply want to keep your code secret and to be used only by your audience, you’re going to want to uncheck this box.
Once you’ve set each of these options the way that you want them, scroll to the bottom and click on the “review” button.
Then, continue to step 4.
No Codes:

As the name would imply, customers would not need to use a code to take advantage of the discount you’re offering. If the order meets the criteria you set above, it will be automatically discounted.
While this might sound a bit crazy it can be useful. For example, we ran a Black Friday Sale, where any customer that bought any 2 of our products saved 25% off of their order. We didn’t want them to have to find 2 products AND remember to use a coupon code at checkout, so we selected the “No Code” option.
If you select this option, you don’t need to change anything else and you’re ready to submit the promotion for review.
Although, you may still wish to open the “customize messaging” section and remove it from the product detail page, but that’s up to you.
Once You’ve selected the “None” option under the claim code section, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “review” button.
Then continue to step 4.
Step 4: Review Your Promotion
After you’ve pressed the “review” button inside of the promotions creation screen, you’ll be taken to the promotion review screen.

Take the time to double check all of the settings are set the way that you want them, especially things like “product detail display text”, the time and dates for the promotion, and the percentage discount that you’re offering.
When you’ve reviewed everything, press the submit button and your promotion will be submitted.
You should be taken back to the promotion selection screen (where you can see the different types of promotions you want to create) and you’ll see a confirmation message appear at the top of the page.
If you created a promotion that is using one-time codes, follow step 5 below. If you setup a group code or no code promotion, congrats…..you’re finished!
Step 5 OPTIONAL: Get Your Codes (Only For One-Time Use Codes):
If you need to create a set of one-time use codes, there are a few things you need to do (after you’ve completed the steps above) to get them.
After you receive the “promotion created” confirmation message.
Navigate to the “Manage Promotions” section, inside of the promotion selection screen.
Next, click on the promotion you want to create the one time codes for. This will take you into the “view promotions” screen.
Click the manage claim codes button and you’ll be taken to the claim code creation screen.

Here, you need to fill in two fields.
- Group Name: Each group of codes you create for a promotion will have a unique name. Enter it here.
- Number Of Codes: Enter the number of codes you want created. E.g. if you want 100 unique codes, you’ll enter 100 here.
Once you’ve filled out both fields, click the “create” button and Amazon will create the list of codes.
When the list of codes has been generated (it can take up to 15 minutes, but is often instant), you will see the group appear at the bottom of the screen

Click on the download button to save the file to your computer and you’re done!

Social Media Promotional Codes:
Once you have created your product selection (as outlined above), you can create a social media promotional code.
Start by navigating to the promotions creation screen (Click on the advertising menu, then promotions).
Then click “create” under the “Social Media Promo Code” block.

Once you’re inside of the Social Media Promo Code Creation screen, you’ll need to complete 4 simple steps in order to activate your code.
Step 1: Choose Your Conditions
First, you’ll need to set your conditions for the promotion to apply.
With social media promotional codes (unlike with percentage off promotional codes), you only need to fill in two fields and the process is extremely straightforward.

Under the “Purchased Items” section, you’re going to select the product selection (the group of products for the code to apply to) that you created previously, by clicking the drop down menu and selecting it from the list.
Next, you’re going to type the percentage discount you wish to offer into the box in the “buyer gets” section.
For example, if you wanted to offer 15% off you would simply type “15” into the box.
Remember, for Social Media Codes, the discount amount must be between 5-80%. If you want to offer a discount outside of that range, you may want to use a Percentage Off Promotional Code, which allows a range of 1-99%.
After you have filled in the “buyer gets” box, you can move on to setting your schedule.
Step 2: Set Your Schedule
When you have finished setting up the conditions for your promotion, it’s time to set the schedule

In order to do this, we need to fill in 3 fields:
- Start Date: This will tell Amazon when to start the promotion. Select a date and time from the dropdown menus.
- End Date: This will tell Amazon when to start the promotion. Select a date and time from the dropdown menus.
- Internal Description: This is basically a name for the promotion and how you will see it referenced inside of your promotions screen. Keep this simple and easy to remember. E.g. 25% off garlic presses for Christmas.
Side note: Remember, promotional times are set to US Pacific time by default. So make sure to set your start and end day based on using US Pacific Time, if you want them to start and end properly. If you need some help with converting your timezone to US Pacific Time, go here.
Once you have filled in those 3 fields, you can move on to selecting the additional options to customize your social media promotion.
Step 3: Additional Options
Amazon gives a variety of options to help you customize your social media promotion and we will need to customize 3 different options, depending on the result we’re looking for.

Share This Promo With Amazon Influencers and Associates:
For social media promos, you will see this box checked by default. If this box is checked, it means there is a possibility that Amazon will help you promote your code, by sharing it with anyone who has an Amazon associates account or with select influencers.
If you really don’t want the extra potential help you can uncheck the box, but I generally will leave it checked (who would say no to free help!).
Redemptions Per Customer:
With Social Media Promos, Amazon gives you 3 options to choose how often you want people to be able to use the code ( percentage off discounts don’t limit the number of units a customer can buy).
- One unit in one checkout – A customer can only get the discount on one unit and may only complete one transaction.
- Unlimited units in one checkout – A Customer can purchase any number of units, but is limited to a single transaction (this is the only available option for traditional percentage off discounts).
- Unlimited units in unlimited checkouts – a customer can use the discount an unlimited number of times.
To choose which option you want for your promotion, simply click the circle next to the option you desire.
Claim Code:
This section is where you're going to type in the code that you would like people to redeem, Amazon will suggest one by default but if you want to customize it so it's easier to remember you can do that.
Keep in mind, that it needs to be between 8 and 12 characters long and with social media promotions Amazon will automatically include the percentage off as the first two digits.
For example, if you create a 15% off promotional code and change the code to “forgarlic” Amazon will automatically add the number 15 to the front of that. meaning your full claim code would be “15forgarlic”
Once you have filled in the claim code field, you can submit your claim code by pressing the review button at the bottom.
If this button is grayed out, it means something is wrong in the setup and you need to scroll up and look to see what the error is.
Step 4: Review and Submit
After you have submitted your promotion code for review, Amazon will give you a chance to double-check all of the information that you submitted inside of the social media promotions creation screen.

Give this screen a quick read and if everything is set up the way that you want it to be, click the submit button.
After you have submitted from the review screen, you'll be taken back to the main promotion screen and you will see a green notification at the top letting you know that your promotion has been successfully created.
Buy One Get One Promotional Codes:
If you want to create a buy one get one free promotion inside of Amazon, the first thing you should do is treat your product selection, as we outlined above.
Once you've done that, navigate to your promotion creation screen by clicking on Advertising and then on promotions.

Here, you'll want to select the “create” button inside of the “buy one get one” section of the page.
This will take you into the buy one get one promotion creation screen, where we will need to fill in 4 steps.
Step 1: Choose Your Conditions
In order to complete the conditions step of our promotion creation, we need to fill in five different areas

Buyer Purchases:
Inside of the buyer purchases area, we need to fill in two separate Fields.
The first field is a drop down menu that allows us to choose from three different options.
- At Least Amount in $ – using this option means the promotion will trigger anytime somebody spends a certain dollar amount
- At Least This Quantity of Items – this option, selected by default, means the promotion will apply any time somebody buys at least that number of items.
- For Every Quantity Of Items – Do you select this option, the promotion would trigger anytime somebody purchases that set quantity.
For most promotions, using the default options is the way to go.
Once we've selected from the drop-down, we need to enter a numerical value in the box next to it.
For example, if you want to give away a product every time somebody buys a product, you would select the at least this quantity of items option and then place a 1 in the box next to it.
Purchased Items:
Here, we will need to fill in the product selection that we created above.
To find your product selection, all you need to do is click on the drop-down menu and find the product selection that you created previously
Buyer Gets:
Here Amazon is looking for us to tell them what the buyer should receive when they purchase the item or spend the dollar amount that we selected above.
Currently the only option in a buy one get one is to get a free item. that should be selected by default, but if for some reason your field is blank simply click on the drop-down and select free items.
Applies To:
This section will tell Amazon how what we want the “get one” to apply to.
By default Amazon will apply it to the same item and the field will say “purchased items.”
If you would like to give away a different product when someone purchases one of your products, for example giving away a cell phone case with the purchase of a cell phone, You can select the drop-down And click on the words additional item.
This will open a separate box where you can paste an ASIN of the additional item ( in our example the cell phone case) and Amazon will apply the discount to that ASIN.

Buyer Benefit Applies to a Quantity Of:
Here Amazon is looking for us to tell them how many of the items we would like to give for free when the buyer purchases the items that trigger the promotion.
If you wanted to give away one free phone case every time somebody purchased one phone, you would simply enter the number 1into this field. if you wanted to give away 15 phone cases, you would enter 15.
Bonus: Exclusion
If the product selection you created contains multiple products, for example two models of the same phone and you only wanted your case promotion to apply to the more expensive phone, you could click on the advanced options button and select a group that contained only the phone you did not want to include.
Generally speaking, there's no reason for you to use this field so you can ignore it.
Step 2: Set Your Schedule
Once you have selected all of the options that will trigger your promotion, you need to set the schedule.

To do this we need to fill in 4 different fields
- Start Date: choose date and time from the drop downs for your promotion to start
- End Date: choose a date and time from the drop-down for your permission to end
- Internal Description: the name of your promotion, you will see this inside of your promotions tab. You want to keep this short and easy to remember something like “buy one garlic press get one free”.
- Tracking ID: this is how you will see your promotion labeled in many of your reports, I typically like to use the same name that I entered into the description field above
Once you have filled in all four Fields you can move to the additional options section.
Step 3: Additional Options
After you successfully selected your times and dates to run the promotion oh, you're going to need to finalize your additional options in order to complete the setup of your buy one get one promotion.

Claim Codes
Just like with percentage off promotional codes, Amazon gives us three different options for promotional codes to use with the buy one get one promo.
Single Use:
Choosing the single use promotional code option will require you to create a list of codes later. This option can be useful if you want to give a variety of individual codes to people, and is often used with something like a launch service.
Group:
You would choose a group code, if you want one code to use for something like Distributing on social media or with your email list.
None:
Choosing the no code option would mean that anyone who adds the qualifying products to their purchase would receive the free product without the use of additional codes. Generally speaking, if you're trying to run a buy one get one sale this is the option that makes the most sense
One Redemption Per Customer:
If you selected to use either the single-use code or group codes, you will see this option appear. Leave it checked if you would like for each person to only be able to use their coupon code one time.
Keep in mind that this is a limit on the number of transactions not the number of units that a person can purchase so if they were to purchase two of your cell phones and two of your cases, in one transaction, the promotion would apply to both of them.
Claim Code Combinability:
Amazon gives you two options for how you would like people to be able to use, meaning combined, their promotional codes if they have more than one.
Preferential:
This is the default option and it means that if a customer has multiple promotional codes that Amazon will prefer to give them the best deal. In most cases you'll want to leave this option selected.
Unrestricted:
If for some reason you want customers to be able to combine multiple promotional codes that you're offering, then you can select the unrestricted option. However, keep in mind that if you allow customers to stack discounts, especially percentage discounts, that you can lose significant money if you're not paying attention to how they are setup. With that in mind, there's almost never a reason to enable unrestricted redemptions as an option.
Customize Messaging
If you click on the customize messaging menu, you'll see a variety of different things that you can change in terms of how your customer will actually see the promotion.
Generally speaking you don't need to make any changes to this, unless you're very particular about the way that things are worded.
However if you're using single-use or group codes in combination with this buy one get one promotion, you may want to open this menu and uncheck the option labeled “ detail page display text”

Unchecking this option, will make sure that the promotion does not appear on your product detail page, meaning the only people who you give the codes to will know that the promotion is running.
Once you have selected your claim code Type and the way you want codes to be able to be combined, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the ” review button”.
Step 4: Review and Submit
Clicking the review button from inside of the buy one get one promotion creation screen will take you to the promotion review screen, take just a minute or two to read over all of the details of the promotion just created to make sure that everything is correct.
When you're sure that it is, click the submit button at the bottom of the page and you will be taken back to the main promotions creation than you, where you will see a confirmation that your promotion has been successfully created.
Step 5 OPTIONAL: Get Your Codes (Only For One-Time Use Codes):
If you need to create a set of one-time use codes, there are a few things you need to do (after you’ve completed the steps above) to get them.
Click here to read the walk through on creating one time use codes.
Coupons
In order to create a coupon within Amazon Seller Central first you need to go to your advertising menu And then click on the “coupons” option.
This will take you into the coupon reports screen.

To create a new coupon, simply click the “create a new coupon” button.
This will take you into the coupon creation screen. once inside we need to complete a four-step process in order to properly create our coupons.
Step 1. Select Products
The first thing you need to do in order to create a coupon inside of Amazon is to add our products to the coupon.
Unlike promotions which run off of a product selection list, to add products to a coupon all you need to do is copy and paste their ASIN or SKU into the search box and then press go.
Amazon will find the product inside of their catalog and give you the option to add it to the coupon

When Amazon finds the item, a button will appear that says” add to coupon” click that button and your product will be added.
if you wish to add multiple products, you can continue this process by pasting in more SKUs or ASINs to include.
Along the right-hand side of the page, you'll see a running list of all products that you have added to the coupon.
When you are finished adding all of the products, click the “Continue to Next Step” button.
Step 2. Set Budget and Discount
Here, we will need to set up the discount that we wish to offer the customer in either money off or a percentage off of the products we selected previously.

Discount:
in this section, first select whether you want to offer the money off or percentage off option.
Then, in the box you'll need to fill in the dollar amount or the percentage that you wish to Discount the product.
Leslie you'll need to select whether or not you want the customer to be able to redeem the coupon more than one time.
Budget:
In the budget section you simply need to fill the total budget that you're willing to spend in terms of discounting the products.
Remember, this number not only needs to account for the amount of products that you're willing to give away at the discount that you selected but Amazon also charges a $0.60 fee for each time the coupons are redeemed
When you have filled in both the discount and budget section, click the “Continue to Next Step” button.
Step 3. Set Schedule and Target
In step three, we're going to be setting the schedule, the targeting, and naming the promotion in a way that customers will be able to understand.

Coupon Title:
We're going to need to fill in this field with what we want the coupon to be titled. this is what customers will actually see so it's important we make it readable.
Generally speaking something like “save 15% on stainless steel garlic presses” or “save $5 on garlic crushers”, is what we're going to want to use.
The easier and more clearly it can be understood the better.
Targeting:
In the targeting section, Amazon will allow you to choose who you want the coupon to show to.
By default they will select all customers, this is the ideal option since it gives you the most visibility across the Amazon platform.
However if you have a student specific offer, a family specific offer, or you only want people that have Amazon Prime to be able to purchase your product, you can select from one of the other options.
Schedule:
Next, you'll need to select a start and end date from the drop-down menus Amazon allows you to create coupons that can run up to 90 days from the start date.
However the coupon will stop If your budget runs out before then.
Once you have set your title and your schedule, click the “Continue to Next Step” button.
Step 4. Review and Submit
The final step in creating your coupon on Amazon is to review the details that you set up in the previous three steps.
Amazon will give you the ability to take a look at the products they're included, the title, the budget, the targeting, and the dates.

Take just a few minutes to review this and when you're sure all of your details are correct click the submit coupon.
After you submit the coupon, Amazon will review and approve the coupon.
If there is an issue with the coupon creation you'll be notified and you can login to modify the details that you need to.
Deals:

If you want to create a deal, Like a lightning deal or 7 Day Deal for example, inside of Amazon Seller Central, the first thing you need to do is navigate to your advertising menu and then click on the deals option.
Then, click the “create a new deal” button.
Keep in mind that the process for creating 7 Day deals and Lightning Deals is exactly the same.
Step 1. Select Products
The first thing that you have to do inside of the deal creation screen is to select a product that you want to create the deal for. Unlike with any other promotion type on Amazon, only products that Amazon selects are eligible for deals.
Meaning you can't just jump into your deal creation menu and create a deal for any product in your catalog.
if you don't see any products that are eligible for a deal you may want to check out Amazon's guidelines on making products eligible and come back at a later date.

Any products that are eligible, will show up inside of the deal selection screen.
Amazon will pre-populate all of the details for you in terms of what they think will make a fair deal and when they will run.
If you find a deal that you're interested in running, like the select button and move on to step two.
Step 2. Schedule Deal
Here, we're going to Simply select the option of the dates that we want our deal to run during.
Keep in mind that different date ranges can have different deal fees, typically associated with higher traffic days or events like Cyber Monday, so keep that in mind as you're making your date selection

In order to select your date range simply click the circle next to the dates that you wish to run your deal and then click continue to Next Step.
Step 3. Configure Deal
At this stage we need to finalize all of the details about the deal.
Amazon, will pre-populate the deal with the maximum deal price, the discount per unit, and a minimum quantity that you need to commit to if you would like them to give you the deal.

You can make changes to these numbers, by clicking on their boxes and changing the values.
Keep in mind that your price cannot be higher than the maximum price, but it can be lower and that the number that Amazon pre-populate for the quantity is the minimum that you must commit.
Generally speaking, the better the deal for the customer ( meaning the lower your price and the more units you have available) the more likely it is that Amazon will accept and promote your deal.
When you're happy with all these details, click the continue to next step button.
Step 4. Review and Submit Deal
Inside of the review step, Amazon will give you a quick picture of all of the details of the deal that you just agreed to.

Take just a few minutes to review those details, make sure the dates that you selected and the fee that you selected are correct and then press the submit deal button.
Amazon will then review the deal, and if they approve it you will be notified.
Wrapping things Up
Amazon offers a huge variety of ways for you to offer discounts and boost sales using their platform, and while it can be confusing if you take the time to go through each step in this guide you'll be able to utilize each type of promotion that they allow you to make and get the most out of every single one.
if you have any questions about how to set up any of these different types of promotions or discounts or if you just want to share a story good, bad, or horrific let us know in the comments section down below.
Remember….as always, We’re here for you, we believe in you, and we’re rooting for you….but YOU have to TAKE ACTION.
Chris Shaffer
Chris lives at the intersection of business strategy and growth tactics. Having consulted with dozens of different businesses (as well as building several of his own), he brings a unique perspective on what's working across the eCommerce world in businesses of all shapes and sizes.
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