How to set up a Multibuy Offer

A Multibuy Offer is the most commonly used Offer type when discounting tickets across multiple Events.

The Offer works across one or more Events and applies a discount evenly across each Ticket in an eligible ticket set. These can be discounted by either a percentage or a fixed value, however, you need to ensure that, if you choose a fixed value, it can be divided across the Tickets (for example- 10 isn't divisible by 3- so you can't discount 3 tickets by £10). 

REMINDER: Discounts for a multibuy offer will apply only when a the required number of tickets across the required number of events completes a set in the basket. Extra tickets will not have the discount applied unless part of another set.

For example, a multibuy offer is configured to minimum one ticket per event and has a required two events to complete a set.

A customer buys two tickets to Event A and one ticket to Event B. The discount will apply to one ticket from Event A and one ticket to Event B, as these tickets meet the one ticket per event, two events set requirement.

The extra ticket for Event A will not be discounted as it cannot complete the set requirement. If you add in another ticket to Event B or any other event except for Event A, it can complete the set and be eligible for the offer (within limits).

After reading this guide, you’ll be able to set up and edit a Multibuy Offer. To learn more about setting up different Offer types see the below articles:

• How to set up an X for Y Offer
• How to set up a Package Offer

Before you read this guide:

• Read Introduction to Offers first (if you haven’t already)
• Know which type of Offer is going to work for your purposes

Think about the answers to these questions:

What are the discounts you are offering, and on which Events would you like them to apply?

For how long would you like the offer to run?

Is there anyone in particular this offer is aimed at?

Will this Offer interact with any other existing Offers? If so, do you need to create a Priority Group or a Limit Group?

VIDEO: If you're new to Multibuy Offers, take a look at our Audience Loyalty concept video.

Configure the Basic Details 

Have you created a similar Offer in the past? Consider copying an existing Offer with the ‘copy’ button. Once you have checked the Criteria and rules, just activate the copied Offer. This is much quicker than creating a new Offer from scratch!

From Spektrix > Admin Interface > Other > Offers click the ‘Add Multibuy' button.

When you click ‘Add Multibuy’ from the menu on the bottom-right of your page, a new ‘Add Multibuy Offer’ window will appear. From here you’ll set up the Offer.

• Name (required): The name of the Offer. It will be visible to Customers in Order Confirmation Emails and on your website if the Offer is available online so make it clear and unique.
• Description: An internal description of what the Offer does, who it’s for, and any other information that’s useful to know.
• Image: You can upload a .jpg, or .jpeg image that will appear in the Sales Interface and, depending on your integration, on your website.
• Image Alt Text: This box will appear once you have uploaded an image and will allow you to insert an image description for web accessibility.
• Priority group: If you want to include this Offer in a specific Offer Priority Group, choose it here. By default, Offers will be added to the lowest priority group.
• Image: Here you can upload an image to appear alongside this Offer in the Online Savings Panel.
• Start date & time/End date & time: Use these to schedule when an Offer becomes available and when it ends. If you leave these blank, the Offer will be active as soon as you save it and will remain active until it is deactivated.
• Active: Ticking this box will make the Offer active on the System.
• Active in box office: This will make the Offer available to use in the Sales Interface. You can use this and the Active box in conjunction with each other to make a variety of availability levels.
• Cross Selling Enabled: Checking this checkbox makes the Offer eligible for inclusion on the Multibuy Cross-Selling page online. Note: this is an online-only feature, so any Offer you want to be included also needs to have the Active on website option ticked as well. Read the section Configure how the Offer appears on your Website for more information

REMINDER:  A maximum of 10 events will be displayed in the Multibuy Cross-Selling page. Even if more events qualify. Events are displayed in chronological order.

• If you use Spektrix iFrames, the Multibuy Cross-Selling page shows during the online booking pathway before the Customer reaches their Basket, when they have already selected Offer-eligible Tickets. It prompts the Customer to add more eligible Tickets to trigger the Multibuy Offer to apply.

  By default, links on this page will pass to Spektrix iFrames, such as our Event Details iFrame, to give Customers details of the additional Events they can book as part of your Offer. If your website uses an iFrame-only integration then you won't need to worry, as you can add information via Spektrix to include in the relevant iFrames.

  If you have custom-built Event or Offer pages, it’s important to make sure you’re always directing Customers to these pages. If not, Customers could be sent to bare-looking pages without any information encouraging them to purchase more. 

  For more information about this please read the Cross-Selling Links online article.

• Total applications/Total items/Total discount: Once the Offer is live this section will populate to show how many times an Offer has been used to date.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed.

Configure the Discount rules

A Multibuy Offer will apply a discount evenly across each Ticket. You can choose from a value, percentage, or custom discount, with the amount you enter being deducted from each Ticket that matches the Offer’s criteria.  

• Value: Allows you to set a fixed amount to be discounted.

• Percentage: Discounts by a percentage of the Ticket’s price.

• Include commissions in discount calculation: (only appears when discounting by a percentage): checking this box includes the Ticket Commission (if applicable) as well as the Ticket price when calculating the discount, e.g. if you have a £10 Ticket with a £1 commission, checking this box means that the system will calculate the discount of the full £11, meaning a 50% discount would see a discount of £5.50 applied. Leaving it un-ticked would see a discount of £5 apply with the discount only being calculated on the £10 Ticket price.

• Custom: Allows you to set a different fixed value for each Ticket Type and Price Band combination. Use this if you want to set a range of discounts depending on what specific tickets a Customer purchases.

Warning: As Multibuy Offers apply a discount on a per-Ticket basis rather than from a group of Tickets, it is more particular for its discounts, so an Offer such as 'Buy 3 Events and save £10.00' wouldn't be possible, as 10 is not divisible by 3.

• Minimum Tickets required per Event: This is how many Tickets the Customer needs to purchase for each Event in order for the discount to apply, e.g. buy three Tickets to Macbeth and save 10%. The default is 1.

• Commission: Check this box to waive any Ticket Commissions from tickets discounted in the Offer. This applies to Ticket Commission only and can't be used to waive Transaction Commission.

• Minimum price an item can be discounted to: This allows you to set a lower limit to a discount, so that regardless of what you set as a discount amount, a Ticket can only ever be discounted down to a set value. The default is £0.

• Minimum Basket Value: This allows you to set a minimum Basket value, so that the Offer will only apply when Customers meet a minimum spend requirement. For example, you could set up an Offer where, when a Customer spends at least £100, they get 10% off their order by setting the discount to 10% and the minimum Basket value to £100. The default is £0.

You can also discount Tickets to a set price by using ‘Minimum value an item can be discounted to’ in conjunction with a percentage discount of 100%. For example, to reduce all eligible Tickets to £5, just set the percentage discount to 100%, then set the Minimum price an item can be discounted to to £5.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed.

Specify applicable Event(s)

Here you can choose whether an Offer applies to all of the Events, a single Event, or several specific Events.

• Minimum number of Events: The minimum number of Events someone must purchase Tickets for in order to be eligible for the Offer. For example, offering customers a 10% discount on Tickets when they book for at least two Events in a season. 

• Events in Multibuy: Determine which Event(s) your Multibuy Offer applies to. This can apply to all Events in the System or you can set the Discount to be against specific Events only- you can specify which Event.

Drag and drop your chosen criteria into the checked box. If what you’re looking for isn’t visible, untick the ‘Only show commonly used criteria’ box. You can combine criteria using the AND, OR and NOT.

Multibuy Offers split discounts evenly across all Tickets. It's not possible to discount only certain Tickets for only certain Events out of all the Events required or eligible for the Offer. For example, you can’t set up a Multibuy Offer that requires Customers to book for 'Hamlet', 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' and 'Romeo & Juliet', but only apply the discount to 'Hamlet'. The discount will be taken off all Tickets evenly.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed. 

Specify applicable Ticket Types and Price Bands

Here you can choose whether an Offer applies to all Ticket Types and Price Bands or a specific combination of Ticket Type(s) and Price Band(s).

Ticket Types

• Include All: If you want an Offer to apply across all Ticket Types.

• Include the following Ticket Type(s): If you want to specify which Ticket Type(s) to include in the Offer, click ‘Include the following’ and a list of Ticket Types appears. Select one Ticket Type by clicking on it. To select several consecutive Ticket Types, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click on the first and last Ticket Type, or use the CTRL key to select a variety of Ticket Types from anywhere in the list.

Price Bands

• Include All: This is the default option and will include all Price Bands.

• Include the following Price Band(s): If you want to specify which Price Band(s) to include in the Offer, click ‘Include the following’ and a list of Price Bands will appear. Select one Price Band by clicking on it. 

Click ‘Next’ to proceed. 

Specify Fixed Series criteria

Here you can decide whether to include Fixed Series Tickets in an Offer.  You can ignore this if you're not using Fixed Series.

Note: You will only see this tab if you have at least one Fixed Series set up.

• Not Fixed Series Tickets: exclude all Tickets bought as part of a Fixed Series subscription from the Offer

• Only Fixed Series Tickets: make this Offer apply only against Tickets bought as part of a Fixed Series subscription

• Either: include Tickets bought as part of a Fixed Series subscription, as well as Tickets that aren't

Click ‘Next’ to proceed. 

Set Limits on the Offer

Here you can choose how to limit the use of the Multibuy Offer.

To apply a limit to your Offer, choose one or more of the options from the list. For each limit, you can set Max Items (the maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted) and/or Max Discount (the maximum value of discount).

• Per Event: The maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum value of the discount that an Offer can apply. Each Event included in the Event criteria will have its own allocation of discounted Tickets or value. For example, an 'Early Bird' Offer that gives a discount to only the first fifty Tickets booked for each Event selected. 

• Per Event Instance: The maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum value of the discount that an Offer can apply per eligible Event Instance. Each Event Instance included in the Offer will have its own allocation of discounted Tickets or value. For example, an 'Early Bird' Offer that gives a discount to the first fifty Tickets booked for any eligible Event Instance would have a separate allocation of 50 per instance.

• Per Offer: The total number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can ever apply across all eligible Events and Customers. For example, an Offer available as part of a new season launch, where the first twenty people to book for any newly announced shows receive a discount.

• Per Customer: The maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per individual Customer. For example, an Offer which gives 10% off the first time someone books any eligible Event.

• Per Customer Per Event: The maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per Customer for each eligible Event. For example, an Offer that gives 10% off the first time someone books for each particular Event.

• Per Membership Period: The maximum number of Tickets that can be discounted or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per Customer across Events during a Membership period. For example, an Offer that gives Members five free Tickets each year they’re a Member. When selecting limits per membership period, you must include only one membership in the following Eligibility screen. An offer with a limit set per membership period cannot be applied to multiple memberships.

An Offer with any ‘per Customer’ limits will only apply once a Customer has logged in online or been added into the Basket in the Sales Interface.

• Display Offers with ‘per Customer’ limits before a Customer logs in: By default, an Offer with a ‘per Customer’ limit will only apply once a Customer is in the Basket or has logged in online.  However, checking the ‘Override this...’ checkbox will enable an Offer with per Customer limits to apply even before a Customer has logged in or been added to the Basket. This can be useful if you want an Offer to calculate the potential discount a Customer could gain from buying a Membership.

Use this override wisely!  Enabling the override will make an Offer appear to apply before a Customer has logged in/been added to the Basket; but if that Customer has already reached the per-Customer limit of that Offer, it will be removed from their Basket/Cart once logged in to complete the purchase.

• Select the Offer's Limit Groups: If you'd like to add a limit group to the offer you can do this by selecting the name of the Limit Group in the left-hand ‘Available Offer Limit Groups’ column, then click the > button to add it into the right-hand ‘Selected Offer Limit Groups’ column.

Offer Limit Groups allow you to set limits across a group of Offers. This ensures that Customers can’t take advantage of discounts, even if they’re eligible for multiple Offers. If you’d like to include this Offer in an Offer Limit Group, you first need to have it set up. 

For more information about setting up and using Offer Limit Groups please read the Offer Limit Groups article.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed. 

Specify who’s eligible to use the Offer

If you want all Customers to have access to an Offer, leave this section as it is. But if you want to restrict an Offer so that only certain Customers can use it, you’ll need to set some eligibility criteria.

Each subsection includes different types of criteria. Setting these will determine if a Customer is eligible to use the Offer. To select your criteria, click on the relevant subsection:

• Tags: all Tags in your system, organised by Tag Group. If you add a Tag to the eligibility criteria, the Customer will have to have that Tag on their account in order to use the Offer.

• Attributes: all Customer Attributes that you have set up on your system.  If you add a Customer Attribute to the eligibility criteria, the Customer will have to have that Attribute in order to use the Offer.

• Memberships: all Memberships currently available on your system.  If you add a Membership to the eligibility criteria, the Customer will have to have that Membership in order to use the Offer. When selecting limits per membership period in the previous Limits screen, you must include only one membership. An offer with a limit set per membership period cannot be applied to multiple memberships.

• Promotion Codes: requires Customers to enter a Promotion Code in order to use the Offer or for your box office staff to select the appropriate Promotion Code in Basket of the Sales interface.

• Criteria Groups: all available Criteria Groups currently set up on your system. If you add a Criteria Group to the eligibility criteria, the Customer will have to be included in the specified Criteria Group in order to use the Offer.

Drag and drop the criteria into the ‘Drop criteria here’ area to apply it to your Offer’s eligibility. As with other criteria pickers, you can combine criteria using the AND, OR and NOT rules.

For more information about the Customer Eligibility Chooser please see this article. 

If you want an Offer that is only able to be manually applied by box office staff, and is not based on any Customer eligibility rules, then you can use a Promotion Code. If you set a Promotion Code as unavailable for web then this can be applied to a basket by a staff member.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed.

Configure how the Offer appears on your Website

If you want an Offer to be available to Customers online, check the ‘Active on website’ box, and you’ll see website configuration options appear. Leaving it unticked will mean the Offer is only available on the Sales Interface.

You do not need to add any additional information here beyond the Offer name, however the other fields might be useful if there is additional information about the Offer that needs to be shared. For example, terms and conditions or information about the Events included in the Multibuy Offer.

• Name on web: The Offer name Customers will see online.

• Description on web: The Offer description Customers will see online if you are using the Multibuy Cross-Selling page or an Offers iFrame page.

• Web URL: If this Offer already has its own page on your website, add it to this field. This is instead of Offer Page Content. This will turn the Offer Name into a hyperlink everywhere it appears and link to this page on your website.

• Show in online savings panel: Check this box if you want the Offer to be advertised to eligible Customers when they’re adding items to their Basket/Cart. (Please note your page might look slightly different to the below - depending on how your web developer has styled your booking journey)

• No website content necessary: Check this box if you’ve already entered a Web URL above, or, if you don't need to share any additional information about the Offer with the customer online. If you haven't entered a URL above and have checked this box, the Offer name will be plain text, not a hyperlink.

• Offer Page Content: If you want to share more information about an Offer online in addition to the above, and you don’t have an independent Offers page on your website, you’ll want to complete the Offer Page Content field. You can use Wikitext to format your Offer Page Content - just refer to the 'Formatting Help' panel that appears on your right when editing the Offer Page Content. Filling in information on this field will generate an iFrame page with the information you have inputted, which the Customer will be taken to once the Offer Name is clicked. 
  

You only need to complete the Web URL field if you plan to send Customers to a dedicated page on your website with information about this Offer. 

Click ‘OK’ to save the Offer.

Test your Offer

Always test your Offer to ensure it's working as intended.

When testing:

• Try the Offer in the Sales Interface, online, or both, depending on where it should apply. 

• Add the relevant number and combination of Tickets into a Basket/Cart.

• If your Offer has any 'Per Customer' limits, make sure to add a Customer to the Basket who meets the eligibility criteria.

• Try buying the same Tickets without meeting the necessary eligibility criteria to ensure the Offer doesn’t apply where it shouldn’t.

• Don’t forget to double-check the Offer’s limits too!

• If you need to edit your Offer, return to the Admin Interface, locate it and click the 'Edit' button. You'll see the same configuration options as before.

If you need to test your Offer online, and you don’t want Customers to be able to use it yet, try temporarily amending your Customer Eligibility Criteria. Set up a Customer Tag called ‘Offer Testing’ in the Admin Interface. Then edit the Offer by adding the ‘Offer Testing’ Tag as eligibility criteria with ‘AND.’  Return to the Sales interface and add the ‘Offer Testing’ Tag to your Customer Record. Test your Offer, then remove the Tag from your Customer Record, and remove it from the eligibility criteria in the Offer setup.

You should now be able to set up and edit a Multibuy Offer in Spektrix.

For more guidance about Offers, see the Offers section of the Support Centre.