Create Promotions

The Promotions feature is a powerful marketing tool that can be used by theater and festival management to offer discounts on tickets and products to incentivize engagement and boost sales.

Promotions can be used to accomplish a variety of goals:

Increase attendance to specific shows or showtimes

Incentivize customers to bring friends & family

Empower partnering organizations to attract their own followings

Share codes on social media to grow engagement

Reward VIP customers for their continued patronage

Excite the highest-paying customers to return more frequently

Note: It is possible for a single promotion code to apply a discount to both tickets and concessions in the same order.

Overview

The general steps are as follows:

Create a Promotion Visit Promotions > Add New - this is where you'll define the discount rules, validity rules, and reporting options.

Create Promotion Codes - These are the short pieces of text that customers can apply at the web checkout or staff can look up in the Box Office app to apply the discounts defined in the Promotion. Every promotion code is attached to a promotion and has its own end date. You can create multiple codes for the same promotion. The methods for creating promotion codes are described later in this article.

Create A Promotion

First, visit Promotions > Add new. Enter a title for the promotion which will be used internally on sales reports. Fill out the following fields:

Promotion Rules: Tickets

Promotion Type - two options (required for ticket discounts)

Amount off per ticket

For example, entering $1.00 would result in a $12.00 ticket being discounted to $11.00

Discount % off per ticket

For example, entering 25% would result in a $12.00 ticket being discounted to $9.00

Discounted tickets allowed per Promotion Code (optional)

This setting will limit the total number of tickets that can be discounted by each code that's created for this promotion.

You can leave this setting blank for no limit on the number of tickets that can be discounted per code.

Minimum ticket quantity required in the order (optional)

For example: if the number is set to 2, then a customer must be purchasing at least 2 tickets for the promo code to successfully apply.

You can leave this setting blank for no minimum number of tickets required in the order.

Does discount apply to the booking fee? (optional)

If this is enabled, the discount will also subtract from the booking fee. If this is not enabled, the booking fee will never be discounted.

Eligible Ticket Types, Showtimes, and Shows (optional)

You can leave these fields blank to allow any ticket to be discounted by the promotion.

Eligible Ticket Types: Use if the promotion is only valid for specific ticket type(s).

Eligible Showtimes: Use if only specific showtime(s) should be eligible for this promotion.

Ineligible Showtimes: Use if there are specific showtimes which should not be eligible for the promotion.

Eligible Shows: Use this setting to make a Promotion only eligible for specific Shows. Using this option is effectively the same as adding all of the showtimes for specific shows to the Eligible Showtimes field (any new showtimes created after this option is set will also be included as eligible automatically).

Promotion Rules: Products

Discounts on concessions can be set for Promotion Codes and applied for customers at the box office, in combination with ticket discounts or on their own. Both tickets and concessions can be discounted by a code in a single order.

Discount Type (required for products discounts): Select either "Dollar amount off per item" or "Percentage off per item"

Amount off per item (required for "Dollar amount off" product discounts): Enter how much should be discounted

Discount % off per item (required for "Discount % amount off" product discounts): Enter the amount to discount from each eligible product

Discounted products allowed per code: Enter how many items can be discounted per code in total.

Note: If this promotion is attached as an "Additional Promotion" to a Membership, this field will be called Discounted products allowed per term, and usage will reset each time the membership renews.

Eligible products: Add which products should be eligible for the discount

Once you have set up your promotion rules, click "Publish".

Promotion Rules: Validity

Promotion code validity period (optional)

This determines the expiration date of any promo code created for this promotion.

Note: The validity period includes whole days only, so the first day ends at 11:59pm the day after the code was created. For example, if the period is set for 1 day and the promo code is created on Friday, it will expire at 11:59pm on Saturday night.

Require email match at checkout (optional)

If checked, the customer must enter the email address at checkout that received the promotion, in order for the code to be successfully redeemed. This only applies to codes that are generated by campaigns.

For cinemas with multiple locations: The "Limit this Promotion to the current location only?" checkbox can be checked if you only want the promotion code(s) to be eligible for redemption at the current location. This setting can only be changed before any codes are generated for the promotion.

Promotion Rules: Reporting Options

Reported cost (optional)

The cost that will appear in distributor reports when a ticket is discounted using this promotion. If left blank, the actual discounted price will be reported.

Reported ticket type (optional)

The ticket type name that will appear in distributor reports for tickets discounted with this Promotion. If left blank, a title will be generated automatically from the original ticket type title + the name of this Promotion.

Create promotion codes in one of two ways

After you have saved and published your promotion, you can generate promotion code(s) in one of two ways:

Option 1: Create A Promotion Code

After your Promotion has been published, scroll down to the Create a Promotion Code box > Promo code name field:

Enter a custom code. This is the code customers enter at checkout. It is case-insensitive.

Click "Create promo code"

This code can then be shared with customers manually.

Note that any limitations you have set on the Promotion Rules above, such as "Discounted tickets allowed per code" or "Discounted tickets allowed per showtime", will be applied to this code, regardless of how many people use it. For example, if you set "Discounted tickets allowed per code" to 1, then the code can only be used for one ticket in total, across all customers.

Option 2: Generate and distribute unique codes via Campaigns

Visit the Create CampaignsCreate Campaigns article for instructions.

Additional Notes

Promo Codes may be redeemed by customers on your website or at your box office. During web checkout, customers may enter the promo code into the promo code field and Apply. The discounted price will appear as the Total.

At the box office, you can tap the "Apply Discount Code" checkbox before taking a customer's payment, and a search field will appear, where you can search for available promotions by code or by the customer's email address. Once you select the promotion, it will apply the discount to the total.

Code Tracking

On the Promotion editor in the admin, you can see how many times a promotion was redeemed, and how much has been discounted for the promotion. When a customer refunds a discounted order, the used quantity for that promotion code is reduced accordingly, freeing up that usage for future redemptions.

Changing settings after promotion codes have been generated

Changing the Promotion code validity period field has no effect on promotion code(s) that have already been created. If that setting is changed, it will only apply to new codes going forward. If you need to change the validity period of a specific code, you can visit Promotions > Codes, edit the code, and set the End Date to the desired validity end date.

All other promotion rules which are changed after codes have already been created will apply to all new and outstanding codes.

Preventing existing codes from being used

If you want to prevent further usage of all codes attached to a promotion, you can unpublish the promotion.

If you need to remove or prevent usage of a specific promotion code, visit Promotions > Codes, edit the code, and set the End Date to a date in the past.