Preparing your shop for the holidays can increase your shop’s visibility and help you reach more customers. Get your shop ready with our Guide to Holiday Success.
Etsy provides sellers with three methods to discount items in their shops: Sales, promo codes, and targeted offers. We’ve laid out the different types of discounts and how to use them below.
You can learn strategies for running effective promotions with sales and discounts in our Seller Handbook article. Connect with other sellers sharing marketing tips and best practices in the Community Forums.
How to create a promo code
Buyers can use promo codes you’ve set up for your shop to receive a discount during checkout. You can share this code with buyers in Messages, in your shop announcement, on social media, or anywhere else where you interact with your customers.
To create a promo code:
- On Etsy.com, go to your Shop Manager.
- In the Marketing tab, select Sales and Discounts.
- Choose Create a promo code.
- Select the options you’d like for your discount.
- Choose which individual listings will be eligible for this promo code, or select Add all active listings.
- Review the details for your promo code, and select Confirm and create code.
What are the available discount types?
When creating a promo code, you can choose from the following discount types:
- Percentage off: Offer any percentage off the list price of items in your shop.
- Fixed amount off: Offer a fixed amount off the list price of items in your shop.
- Free standard shipping: The shopper won’t pay a shipping fee. You can choose to only offer free shipping on domestic orders or selected regions. Learn how to offer free shipping.
If you choose to only offer a percentage-off discount on certain listings, you will need to manually add new listings to your existing promo codes. You can edit the sale or discount later to include them.
How to run a sale
When you run a sale on Etsy, you’re offering a discount on some or all of the items in your shop for a set audience for a certain period of time.
To set up a sale or discount:
- On Etsy.com, go to your Shop Manager.
- In the Marketing tab, select Sales and Discounts.
- Select Run a sale.
- Choose between a Percentage off or Free standard shipping sale.
- Customize the details of your sale, setting parameters like the discount amount, which countries the offer is valid in, and more.
- Select Review and confirm.
Etsy periodically has site-side sales events that you can choose to participate in. Learn more about Etsy-wide sales.
Can I run listing-specific sales as well as shop-wide sales?
If you don’t set a minimum order to qualify, you will be able to select specific listings to include in the sale. You can edit the sale later to include new listings if needed.
If you do set a minimum order to qualify, your sale will be shop-wide and you won’t be able to exclude items from it.
How to send targeted offers to interested shoppers
When you send targeted offers to interested shoppers, you create promo codes that are automatically emailed to shoppers who have shown interest in your items. The buyer can then enter the promo code at checkout.
What kind of offers can I send?
There are 3 types of targeted email offers for shoppers opted-in to receiving marketing email messages:
If a shopper has an item from your shop in their cart for more than 24 hours, they’ll get an email offering them a discount for that item 24 hours after they abandoned it in their cart.
A shopper can receive this type of targeted offer email once every two days. We’ll include up to 12 different discounts per offer email. If a shopper adds an item to their cart and then removes the item within 24 hours, they won’t receive an offer for your shop in a targeted offer email.
If a shopper adds one of your items to their favorites, they’ll receive an offer 48 hours later.
A shopper can receive this type of targeted offer email every 7 days. We’ll include up to 6 different discounts per offer email. If a shopper favorites an item and then removes that item from their favorites within 48 hrs, they won’t receive a favorited item email.
After a buyer has purchased from you, they are sent a targeted offer email to encourage them to buy from you again.
This offer email is sent to the buyer after the order is completed.
To send offers to interested shoppers:
- On Etsy.com, go to your Shop Manager.
- In the Marketing tab, select Sales and Discounts.
- Find Automatically send offers to interested shoppers.
- Choose a targeted offer and select Set up.
- Select the options you’d like for your campaign.
- Finish by selecting Create offer.
How long will my targeted offer last?
A campaign will continue to run until you decide to stop it by choosing Details under the discount on your Sales and discounts page.
Why didn’t a shopper receive my promo code?
Some shoppers may have opted out of receiving this type of discount, so an offer may not be sent to every single shopper who favorites an item or leaves an item in their cart.
How free shipping works with other discounts
If you offer more than one promotion, shoppers can apply both a list price discount and free shipping to an order.
The order must be eligible for both promotions for a shopper to apply both discounts.
If you don’t have an active free shipping promotion, then shoppers won’t see the option to apply more than one discount to an item in your shop.
Learn more about strategies for free shipping promotions.
How to see your current and scheduled sales and discounts
To check to see that your sales and discounts have been set up properly:
- Go to Sales and discounts.
- Navigate to Offer details and stats.
Here, you’ll be able to see which offers you currently have available, the duration of your promotion, and your other stats.
How to review performance of sales and discounts
You can track the performance of your offers during a specific date range in the Sales and discounts section of your shop. Here you'll see a breakdown of:
- Orders with a discount
- Items sold
- Average order value (AOV)
- Revenue from discounts
Want to learn more about how to effectively market your business?
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