Campaigns
This section introduces campaigns, which are special sales promotions that usually results in a lower cost to the end customer with the expectation of generating more sales volume to the merchant.
A campaign is only valid for a given
- Web site
- Currency
- Time interval: Start and end time of a campaign
Also, editing or creating a campaign can only be done in "Inactive" state. The campaign needs to be "Activated" to be considered in Litium pricing calculations.
Time interval: Start and End time of a campaign
For the campaign to take effect, the time at which the order is placed need to be within the start and end time of the campaign.
Note that a campaign may remain in "Active" state outside this start-end time range. The rationale is that the merchant would be able to create the campaign and activate it. It gets applied only during the time specified by the start-end interval. Since there is no "Auto" activation or de-activation of campaigns, the merchant can be in total control of which campaigns will be active at a particular time, as well as be sure that the campaigns get applied only during the times specified within the time interval.
An automatic de-activation after the end time has passed is not desireable, since the reverse, that the campaign is auto activated at the start date, can be presumed by merchants. And auto activation of campaigns at the start date is not desirable because Litium will not be aware of the practical situations which might forbid the merchant from activating the campaign, but yet the campaign needs to be present until conditions are correct to activate it.
A campaign consists of a single action and multiple conditions. The action determines the way the discount is given for an order (for example, 10% discount), and conditions are the eligibility requirements (for example, exceed order total of 300 SEK) that need to be met to get the campaign. All conditions have to be true for the action to be applied.
There are four campaign types: Product Campaigns, Order discount campaigns, Fee campaigns and Delivery campaigns.
There can be multiple campaigns running at the same time, in which case they are applied according to their priority. If two campaigns affects each other and in a situation where only one can be applied, the one with the higher priority will be applied. When both such campaigns can be applied, the one with higher priority may affect the result of the one with lesser priority.
When there are many campaigns active at the same time, it might not be desirable for some of them to be applied to the same order at the same time. On other instances, it might be ok for a customer to get benefits from two campaigns inside a single order. In Litium Studio campaigns, this is controlled by step 2 in campaign create-and-edit, called "Customers are allowed to combine the current campaign with selected campaigns".
A product is considered to have a tier price if any of the price lists valid for the visitor has tier pricing for the article.
An action with customized logic can be created by implementing the IAction and IUIExtension interfaces. This article shows a guided example in creating a custom action.
A condition with customized logic can be created by implementing the IConditon and IUIExtension interfaces. This article shows a guided example in creating a custom condition.
Sometimes a misconfigured campaign will not get applied. The campaign looks "not working" and is not behaving as it should be. This article presents some troubleshooting tips to rectify the most common problems.
Following example shows how to get the list of active voucher codes for the default VoucherCodeCondition in Litium API.