This is the first part of our guide How to use coupon codes. To start at the very beginning, take a look at the guide overview.
Creating coupons
To create coupons, navigate to the coupon creator by clicking Sales and choosing New Coupon from the navigation menu.
Understanding the coupon creator
To create a coupon, you will be asked to set different parameters, such as:
In this part of the guide, we'll go over these parameters in detail.
Coupon code
There are two types of coupon codes you can create: descriptive and generated.
Descriptive: for public-facing codes for a public event (e.g. Black Friday sales), you can use a descriptive coupon code like BLACKFRIDAY-2020 or HALLOWEEN-50OFF
Generated: for codes that you will share directly with your customers, you can click on Generate unique code to create a unique coupon code
Only alpha-numeric characters are accepted for coupon codes and any special characters will be removed, with spaces converted to dashes (-).
Discounted items
You are able to choose between 5 different coupon types based on how you want to apply the discounts across your products and subscription plans on your site.
All products and plans: This coupon type will allow you to discount all available products and plans in your store. All future products and plans added to the store will also be discounted.
Products only: This coupon type will discount only the available current and future products on your site, including online courses, digital downloads and bundles.
Plans only: This coupon type will apply the specified discount to all available plans on your site.
Specific plans: This coupon type will allow you to search, select and discount only specific plans.
Specific products: This coupon type will allow you to search and add specific online courses, digital downloads, webinars, and bundles to apply the discount.
Note: any coupon that is created with the intent to be used for a subscription plan will be applied to the invoice each month.
Example: If your plan is $10/month and you provide a $5 off coupon, the plan will now be $5/month for the lifetime of the subscription.
Discount value
There are two types of value you can assign to coupons.
Percentage (%): This is the most popular coupon value (with over 70% of the coupons) used for products and plans. This value type will allow you to discount a percentage of your plans or products, thus providing more control over your discounts.
When using a coupon with multiple products and/or plans, a percentage (%) value will allow you to have more control over the discounted amount for both products and plans.
Amount: An amount discount allows you to specify a specific amount to discount from your product or plans. If multiple products or subscription plans are selected for a coupon, this amount will apply to all the selected products and plans for that coupon.
Amount discounts work better for specific products where the price is static, and there aren't multiple variants with regard to monthly or annual subscriptions, as in the case of plans.
Limit uses
Limiting uses will allow you to add limits on the number of times a coupon can be used or redeemed on your site. Podia coupons can either have no limits on their usage or a specified usage limit.
These limits are not specific to any particular customer but are related to its total uses.
Depending on how the coupons are setup, some customers may be able to use coupons across various products and/or plans, and have multiple coupon usages or redemptions associated with a single customer.
No matter the usage you set, a member will also get a coupon's discount value every month/year of the plan they are signing up for.
The discount reflects each month/year, but what counts as a 'usage' is the coupon being entered at checkout, which only happens when you first sign up for a plan.
Expiry
To set an expiry date on coupons, you can use one of the preset expiry times, or select a date and time from the date and time dropdown.
On the expiration date, the code will no longer be able to be redeemed at checkout. However, the discount will continue to apply to existing payment plans and subscription plans that it was applied to prior to the expiration date.
Example: A user signs up for a $10 monthly discount in May with a code that expires in June. In July, they will continue to receive that $10 discount each month, regardless of the expiration date of the coupon used.
Saving your coupon code
To save your coupon and mark it as active, you'll simply click on Create coupon at the bottom of the coupon creation page.
Now that you've set up your first coupon, let's head over to part 2: Archiving and unarchiving coupon codes.