Amazon Vendor Central Business Value
Amazon Vendor Central Promotions, Coupons and Deals
Section 4: Lightning Deals
Cheat Sheet
How to Create a Lightning Deal
• In order to create a Lightning Deal, select “Promotions” from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Merchandising” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central.
• On the next page, click the “Start a New Campaign” button on the top right side of the page.
• On the following page, click the “Create a Lightning Deal” button to the right side of the “Lightning Deal” block.
• On the following page, select your “Vendor Code” from the Drop-Down Menu supplied as well as your “Billing Contact”.
• Choose your Start Dates for your campaign in the relevant box below, knowing that the Lightning Deal only runs for up to 6 hours at a time.
• Below this Start Date box is an option you can select that reads, “I want Amazon to evaluate my deal and consider placing purchase orders at a reduced promotional cost.”
• What this basically means is that you are allowing Amazon to choose the funding method as we discussed in the previous section, that is: either to offer Amazon inventory at a reduced promotional cost, or to offer per-unit funding, which will be applied as products are sold during the promotion.
• If you offer inventory at a reduced promotional cost, Amazon will consider placing purchase orders for products at that cost during the term of the promotion.
• You can see purchase orders placed to support the promotion after the promotion is approved.
• If Amazon chooses this funding method, you cannot edit the promotion amount after you submit it.
• But you can prevent additional purchase orders by cancelling the promotion entirely.
• Please note that Amazon makes its inventory decisions independently, so offering a reduced cost does not guarantee that Amazon will place purchase orders.
• If you offer per-unit funding, Amazon will create a billing agreement and you will fund a per-unit discount for each unit sold during this promotion.
• For example, if you enter an ASIN and the corresponding per unit funding amount of $10, and Amazon sells 30 units of this product during the promotion, you will be billed $300.00 ($10.00 x 30 products).
• By selecting the checkbox, you are asking Amazon to choose the funding method.
• If you leave the checkbox clear, per-unit funding will be the funding method.
• You can then choose to add your products to your campaign in one of two ways:
* Option 1: Enter the ASINs you wish to create Lightning Deals for in the “Refine by” box to the left of the page. Click the “Add” Button alongside the ASINs you searched for as they appear in the blocks to the left of the “Refine by” section. You can then proceed to enter your maximum quantity that can be sold on this deal and either enter one discount as a percentage or monetary value for all selected ASINs, or individually enter unique discounts per ASIN. Note that the minimum discount you can offer on a Lightning Deal is 15%. You will notice that, as you enter your discount value, Amazon gives
you a cost breakdown under the product, that is, your cost to Amazon, the current retail cost on the Amazon Marketplace and the likely promotional price. Your percentage will change to a monetary value in the box as well.
* Option 2: You can add products by clicking the “Add” Button alongside the ASINs as they appear on the left side of the page. You can then proceed to enter your maximum quantity that can be sold on this deal and either enter one discount as a percentage or monetary value for all selected ASINs, or individually enter unique discounts per ASIN. Note that the minimum discount you can offer on a Lightning Deal is 15%. You will notice that, as you enter your discount value, Amazon gives you a cost breakdown under the product, that is, your cost to Amazon, the current retail cost on the Amazon Marketplace and the likely promotional price. Your percentage will change to a monetary value in the box as well.
• Note that for both of the above options, you will be notified if this ASIN is not suitable by a message appearing in a block to the right of the page that says “Based on our forecasting model, this product will not meet our financial or demand requirements for promotions” and a “more info” link, or any other reason the product may not be suitable for the deal.
• Therefore, the Marketing Recommendations can come in handy as they will show you which products are eligible for Lightning Deals.
• Once you have completed adding your products with the relevant discounts, click on the button to the top right of the page that says, “Continue to Next Step”.
• Here you can review your Lightning Deal Promotion and choose to edit it further by clicking the “Edit Promotion Details” button or finalise the promotion by clicking the “Submit Promotion” button.
• Items to take note of in your overview are the “Maximum funding” and “Merchandising Fee” lines.
• Amazon will review your submitted campaign, and if approved, will send you an agreement to accept which we will go through in the Billing video of this section, unless you have opted to accept Purchase Orders as stated above and Amazon chooses to go with this option for your deal, in which case the Purchase Orders Amazon places will be your agreements for the Lightning Deal you created.
How to Edit a Lightning Deal
• It is important to note immediately that you cannot edit a Lightning Deal Promotion Campaign once it has started and you cannot edit a campaign once it has finished so this video only pertains to Lightning Deal Campaigns that have not yet started, or for which Amazon has not chosen to submit Purchase Orders for.
• In order to edit a Lightning Deal, select “Promotions” from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Merchandising” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central.
• On the next page, use the “Refine By” filter section on the left of the page to search for your “Lightning Deals” Campaigns and select “Lightning Deal” from the “Promotion Type” Drop-Down Menu.
• In the table to the right, locate the Lightning Deal Campaign you wish to edit and click on the “Promotion Details” link in the top right-hand corner of the Campaign Block.
• On the Lightning Deal Promotion Campaign page, click on the button to the right of the page that says, “Edit Promotion”.
• Here you can amend your Lightning Deal by adding more products, changing your discount value or remove products from the campaign.
• Once you are happy with your amendments, click the “Continue to next step” button in the top right hand side of the page to review and submit your amended campaign as per the steps mentioned in the previous video when creating your Lightning Deal promotion.
• You would mostly need to edit campaigns that have the status reading “Needs your attention” as something is not eligible on your campaign: this can be the ASIN is no longer eligible.
• Either way, you would need to go into this Promotion Campaign and edit it as required.
How to Cancel a Lightning Deal
• You can cancel Lightning Deal Promotion Campaigns that have yet to run or have already started running but can obviously not cancel Lightning Deal Promotion Campaigns that have ended.
• In order to cancel a Lightning Deal, select “Promotions” from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Merchandising” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central.
• On the next page, use the “Refine By” filter section on the left of the page to search for your “Lightning Deals” Campaigns and select “Lightning Deal” from the “Promotion Type” Drop-Down Menu.
• In the table to the right, locate the Lightning Deal Campaign you wish to cancel and click on the “Promotion Details” link in the top right-hand corner of the Campaign Block.
• On the Lightning Deal Promotion Campaign page, click on the button to the right of the page that says, “Cancel Promotion”.
• A Pop-Up Window will appear where you have the option to cancel your cancel request by clicking the “Don’t cancel promotion” button or approve it by clicking the “Cancel Promotion” button.
Viewing Lightning Deal Results and Metrics
• To view the results and metrics of your Lightning Deal Promotions Campaigns, for those that have started as well as for those that have ended, select “Promotions” from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Merchandising” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central.
• On the next page, use the “Refine By” filter section on the left of the page to search for your “Lightning Deals” Campaigns and select “Lightning Deal” from the “Promotion Type” Drop-Down Menu.
• In the table to the right, locate the Lightning Deal Campaign you wish to view the results and metrics of.
• These results will be shown in the Lightning Deal Campaign block under the headings to the bottom right of the block “Units Sold” “Amount Spent” and “Revenue”.
• Should you wish to download this report, click on the “Promotion Details” link in the top right-hand corner of the Campaign Block.
• At the top of the Lightning Deal Promotion Campaign page, you will again see the results and metrics of “Units Sold”, “Amount Spent” and “Revenue” but there will now be a button to the right of these results saying: “Download Report” with a date the report was last updated beneath it so that you can see the relevancy of the data within.
• The Report, once opened, will give you the same results as displayed on the Campaign page along with the ASINs on the campaign, the campaign name, start and end date, et cetera.
• You can then use this report to analyse the promotion as needed.
How Lightning Deals are Billed
• With each Lightning Deal that you create and submit, you will be presented with a Funding and Fee Agreement which outline how you will be billed for the Promotion which you will be required to accept in order for your Lightning Deal Campaign to go live.
• Alternately, Amazon will submit Purchase Orders if they choose to buy the inventory from you at the promotional cost, in which case the Purchase Orders become the agreements.
• To locate Funding and Fee agreements, select “Promotions” from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Merchandising” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central.
• On the next page, use the “Refine By” filter section on the left of the page to search for your “Lightning Deals” Campaigns and select “Lightning Deal” from the “Promotion Type” Drop-Down Menu.
• In the table to the right, locate the Lightning Deal Campaign you wish to view the agreement and billing invoices for and click on the “Promotion Details” link in the top right-hand corner of the Campaign Block.
• In the “Promotion Details” table, there will be a clickable link to the right of the Field “Funding Agreement”.
• This clickable link is the number of your agreement for reconciliation and recognition thereof when reconciling your deductions from your payment remittances from Amazon.
• Click on this link.
• You will be taken to the “Co-Op” page where you can download the invoices for this promotion by clicking the “View Invoices” link to the right of the agreement.
• On the next table, you will be able to download your invoice as a PDF or excel and download the backup report explaining the invoice.
• The Backup report will give a rebate value per line item which is as per the Agreement and so is easily calculable when reconciling the Backup Report and the invoice against the agreement and your Metrics mentioned in the previous video.
• To view the agreement again, click the “See your Co-Op Agreements” button at the top right side of the Co-Op Page (which can also be located from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Payments” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central).
• On the next page, select the “Accepted/Rejected” tab at the top of the page to view all your agreements.
• From the table provided, locate your Funding Agreement Number and click on the Title Link to open the Agreement.
• You are also then able to print this agreement for your reconciliation file by clicking the “print” button at the bottom of the Agreement Pop-Up.
• This Agreement will show you the per unit discount in dollars alongside each one of the ASINs in this Campaign.
• In this instance, the per unit discount is $2.94 per ASIN.
• Going back to our Backup report, you can easily work out that the rebate is indeed $2.94 per unit sold.
• The “Per-Unit Funding” on your Campaign is indeed $2.94.
• The “Amount Spent” in your Metrics or Results is $26.46 and the Backup Report Rebate Total is $26.46.
• The Invoice is also for $26.46.
• The “Units Sold” on your Metrics is 9 units and the total quantity on your Backup Report is 9 units.
• Your invoice also says that the “Per-Unit Funding” was $2.94 and that 9 units were sold in this campaign.
• Further to this, there is still the Fee Agreement.
• Each Lightning Deal promotion has a base merchandising fee.
• This is a one-time, flat fee that will be invoiced separately after the promotion ends.
• If your deal is suppressed before going live, you won’t be charged.
• However, if your deal is suppressed after going live, you will be charged.
• Promotions may be suppressed after they go live if, for example, Amazon runs out of inventory, or the promotional funding you provided does not support a promotional price that beats the lowest price in the trailing 30 days by at least 5%.
• The fee amount will depend on when your promotion goes live.
• The current fee structure in the US is as follows:
* Non-event days: $150.00
* Prime Day: $500.00
* Week of Prime Day: $300.00
* Black Friday or Cyber Monday: $500.00
* Holiday: $300.00
• The fee amount shown is based on the start date you proposed; if the start date changes, you will be charged the base merchandising fee applicable to the actual start date of your promotion.
• To now view your Fee Agreement for the above, go back to your Promotion Details page as explained earlier and click the link alongside the “Fee Agreement” field, noting that this clickable link is also the number of your agreement for search purposes.
• You will be taken to the “Co-Op” page where you can download the invoices for this promotion by clicking the “View Invoices” link to the right of the agreement.
• On the next table, you will be able to download your invoice as a PDF or excel and download the backup report explaining the invoice.
• To view the agreement again, click the “See your Co-Op Agreements” button at the top right side of the Co-Op Page (which can also be located from the Drop-Down Menu of the “Payments” tab on the top menu of Vendor Central).
• On the next page, select the “Accepted/Rejected” tab at the top of the page to view all your agreements.
• From the table provided, locate your Funding Agreement Number and click on the Title Link to open the Agreement.
• You are also then able to print this agreement for your reconciliation file by clicking the “print” button at the bottom of the Agreement Pop-Up.
• This Agreement will show you what your Merchandising Fee is for this promotion, based on the dates when the promotion ran, that is, whether it was during an event time or a non-event time.
• Most of these Agreements and invoices are deducted from Payments that Amazon makes to you for the Purchase Orders they place with you.