How to Set Up an X for Y Offer

An X for Y Offer will discount the price of one or more Tickets to zero or a specified minimum price. 

This Offer works well with group or schools bookings, as the Offer allows for discounts such as 'Buy 10, get the 11th free' etc. It is also good for a Buy One, Get One Free offer. It is important to note that you can only use this Offer against the same Instance of an Event.

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

• How to Set Up a Multibuy 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?

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 X for Y' button.

When you click ‘Add X for Y’ from the menu on the bottom-right of your Offers page, a new ‘Add X for Y Offer’ window will appear. From here you’ll set up the Offer in a series of steps.

• 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. 

• 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 a .jpg or .jpeg image to appear alongside this Offer in the Online Savings Panel. 

• 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.

• 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.

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

Click ‘Next’ to proceed.

Configure the Discount rules

An X for Y Offer will discount the price of one or more Tickets to zero or a specified minimum price, leaving the remaining Tickets full price.

• Offer [  ] Ticket(s) for [  ]: In this area, you will specify your Offer amounts, such as 2 Tickets for 1 etc. Your Offer will apply when the number of Tickets in the first box are selected. 
• Commission: Selecting this box waives the Commission on discounted items. Leaving this box unticked means that, even if the cost of the discounted Ticket is £0 (such as the free Ticket in a '2 for 1' deal), a Ticket Commission will still be charged. Applicable Commissions will apply to all non-discounted Tickets regardless of whether this box is checked or not.
• Minimum price an item can be discounted to: This allows you to set what price the Tickets discounted by the Offer are reduced to, if not £0, for example 'Buy 3 Tickets and get the 4th for £1'. The default is £0.
• Minimum Basket Value: This allows you to set a minimum Basket value, meaning that the Offer will only apply when Customers meet a minimum spend requirement. For Example, you could set up an Offer where a Customer would not be eligible for a '2 for 1' Offer unless the total value of their Tickets is above £50. The default is £0.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed.

Specify applicable Event(s)

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

• All Events: If you want an Offer to apply across all Events, leave this section as it is - the default setting is for all Events to be included.

• Specific Event(s): If you want to specify which Events to include in the Offer, click on the Specific Event option and you’ll see the Event Instance criteria picker appear.

This works in the same way as any other criteria chooser does in Spektrix, giving you a range of options to choose from by clicking criteria boxes and dragging them into the ‘Drop criteria here’ box. If what you’re looking for isn’t visible, untick the ‘Only show commonly used criteria’ box to see the full range of options. As with other criteria pickers, you can combine criteria using the AND, OR and NOT.

Please note: Your X for Y Offer will only apply to Tickets purchased for the same Event Instance. If you had a ‘4 Tickets for the price of 2’ Offer on one Event, the Customer would not be able to buy two Tickets for one eligible Instance and two for another and still redeem the Offer.

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 you want to select, 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. 

How it works: The X for Y offer will apply across all of the Ticket Types and Price Bands you have chosen in this window, e.g a '3 for 2 Offer' would apply with 2 Adult and 1 Child Tickets in the Basket if both Types are selected as eligible, or 2 Tickets from Band A and 1 from Band B if both Price Bands are included in the Offer. The cheapest option will be the one discounted if there is a difference in price.

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 use of your Offer

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

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

• Per Event: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied or the maximum value of the discount that an Offer can apply per eligible Event. Each Event included in the Event criteria will have its own allocation of Offer applications or overall discount value, for example; a '2 for 1' Offer which can be applied up to 30 times across the whole run of ‘Aladdin’ and 30 times across the whole run of ‘Jungle Book’.

• Per Event Instance: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied or the maximum value of the discount that an Offer can apply per eligible Event Instance. Each Event Instance included in the Event criteria will have its own allocation of Offer applications or overall discount value, for example; a '2 for 1' Offer which can be applied up to 30 times on each different Instance of ‘Aladdin’

• Per Offer: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied overall or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply across all eligible Events, for example; a '2 for 1' Offer which can only be applied 30 times in total whether booking for ‘Aladdin’ or’ Jungle Book’.
  

• Per Customer: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per individual Customer, for example; a '2 for 1' Offer for the first time someone books either ‘Aladdin’ or ‘Jungle Book’ but that could not be used to get free Tickets for both.
  

• Per Customer Per Event: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per Customer for each eligible Event, for example; a '2 for 1' Offer for the first time someone books for ‘Aladdin’ and the first time they book for ‘Jungle Book’.
  

• Per Membership Period: The maximum number of times the discount can be applied or the maximum amount of discount an Offer can apply per Customer across all Events during their Membership period, for example; an Offer that gives Members five opportunities to 'bring a friend for free' 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...’ box will enable your 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 they log in to complete the purchase.

• Select the Offer's Limit Groups: If you'd like to add a limit group to the offer, this can be done 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 ‘Selected Offer Limit Groups’ column.

• Offer Limit Groups allow you to set limits across a group of Offers. This ensures that Customers don’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 set it up. 

You can get more information in our article about Offer Limit Groups.

Click ‘Next’ to proceed. 

Specify who’s eligible to use the Offer

If you want all your 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 Customer Record 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 on their Customer Record to use the Offer.

• Memberships: all Memberships that are currently available on your system.  If you add a Membership to the eligibility criteria, the Customer will have to have that Membership 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 to use the Offer or for your box office staff to select the appropriate Promotion Code in the Basket of the Sales interface. If you don't already have a Promotion Code for your Offer, click the 'New' button to set one up. 

• Criteria Groups: all available Criteria Groups that are 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 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.

You can get more information in our article about the Customer Eligibility Chooser. 

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 don't need to add any further 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 or items included in the 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 an Offers iFrame page (not the same as the 'Offer description' field in Step 1).

• 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 finish.

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 an X for Y Offer in Spektrix.

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

If you need any additional guidance, get in touch with the Spektrix Support, Training & Consultancy Team.