ChannelEngine: promotions

About this article

This article describes promotions on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Merchant promotions
  • Create a promotion
  • Add products to the promotion
  • Create promotions below your minimum price
• Channel promotions
  • Participate in a channel promotion
  • Export and import channel promotions
• FAQs

Introduction

Use promotions on ChannelEngine to set up time-bound price reductions in Pricing, Promotions. After the specified period, your product falls back to its regular selling price and/or any other price rules that are set up. 

There are two types of promotions on ChannelEngine:

• Merchant promotions - promotions created by you, the merchant, on any channel. These promotions are sent as temporary price reductions to the respective channel.  
• Channel promotions - sales campaigns initiated by the marketplace bol, including Black Friday and Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) sales events. Channel promotions appear in Promotions only if you are an eligible seller on bol. 

To set up permanent price reductions, check out ChannelEngine: price rules v2.

Requirements

Pricing v2 is required to use this feature. Pricing v1 will be deprecated soon. If you currently use pricing v1, activate pricing v2 before you continue:

1. In the Pricing step of a given channel, click Configuration mode to start configuring pricing v2 while pricing v1 stays active.
2. When you are ready to fully switch to pricing v2, reach out to the Support team to activate pricing v2 on the respective channel(s).

Overview

To view your promotions, go to the Pricing step and select the Promotions tab. 

The promotions table contains the following columns:

• Promotion name - the name of the promotion.
• Campaign name - the name of the promotional campaign, if initiated by the channel. This field remains empty for merchant promotions.
• Channel - the name of the channel to which the promotion applies. 
• Created by - indicates whether the promotion is created by the channel or the merchant.
• Start/end date - the start and end dates of the promotion.
• Status - the current status of the promotion. Options are:
  • Ongoing - currently active.
  • Scheduled - planned for the future.
  • Expired - no longer active.
• Actions - action to be performed on the promotion. You can edit, pause, or copy a promotion into another channel.

To search for a specific promotion, enter its name in the search bar. You can also filter promotions by status and promotion type - Channel promotions or Merchant promotions.

Merchant promotions

Merchant promotions are time-bound price reductions that you create on any channel. 

Create a promotion

To create a promotion, in the Create promotion section, click Create promotion.

Basic information

1. In Promotion name, provide a suitable name for the promotion. E.g.: 'Summer sale 2026'.
2. Channel is filled out automatically to match the name of the channel that you are configuring.

Discount settings

Choose one of the following discount options:

• Promotion discount per product - set a promotion price on a specific set of products. Follow the steps in the section Define promotion prices per product below. 
• Promotion discount in percentage - set up a percentage discount for all products included in the promotion. The percentage discount is calculated over the Base price (defined in Pricing, Price rules). The percentage discount applies to all included products in the Products section.
• Promotion discount fixed amount - set up a fixed amount to be deducted from the Base price for all products included in the promotion. The fixed discount applies to all included products in the Products section.

Schedule

1. Set the Start date and End date of the promotion.
2. Specify the time zone of the start and end dates and times. Alternatively, select Detect to have ChannelEngine automatically identify and set your time zone.
3. Click Save.
4. The Add products and Products sections are now fillable.

Add products to the promotion

In the Products section, select a price attribute tab before adding products to your promotion.

Select the price attribute

To select a price attribute that you want to define as the promotion price:

1. Go to the Products section of Promotions. 

   A set of tabs appears that correspond to the mappable price attributes in Mappings.

   In the screenshot below, Price and Quantity discount 1: price are attributes that are also mapped in the Mappings step, on the same channel. More mappable attributes appear in More. 

   Next to each attribute, a number indicates how many products you have included. A green checkmark indicates if price rules are correctly set up for the given products in Pricing, Price rules. Before any products are included, the number is zero. The checkmark remains gray before any products are included.   

   

2. Select the tab of the attribute whose price you want to discount. 
3. If you map an attribute in Pricing, Promotions, check if that attribute is also present in Mappings. If it is, you must also re-map that attribute there.

How to add products

1. Go to the Add products section of the Promotions tab.
2. Select the products to be included in the promotion. Options are:
   • Search - manually enter the GTIN or Merchant product number (MPN) in the search bar. Optionally search via the product name by selecting this option from the search bar's dropdown list (slower option than searching by GTIN or MPN). 
   • Import by paste a list of SKU's - paste a list of product SKUs and select the appropriate delimiter. E.g.: comma.
   • Add by listing - select an entire product selection.

   • Import by CSV - upload a list of product SKUs from a CSV file. The CSV format is as follows:

     “SKU”;”Price”
     “12345-S”;”99.95”
     “12345-M”;”69.95”

3. If importing or uploading a list of products, the following cards appear in the Products section:
   1. Added products - the number of products successfully added to the promotion.
   2. Not found products - the number of products that are not matched to an existing product selection on the channel. Click Open report to view the list.
   3. Duplicate products - the number of products that are listed more than once in your promotion. Click Open report to view the list.
   4. Collided with promotion - the number of products that exist in an overlapping promotion and are therefore not uploaded to the current promotion. Click Open report to view the list.

4. Your included products each appear as a line item in the selected tab.

   

Define promotion prices per product

1. For a given product, set the promotion price in the Set price field (or via the CSV upload method). 
2. For efficiency, toggle the filter Show items without set price.
3. Click Save.

Create promotions below your minimum price

Your promotion price overrides any repricing activity and any existing price rules, but, by default, the price never goes below the product’s minimum price that you set in Pricing, Price rules. If you want the promotion price to go below the minimum price:

1. Go to Mappings, Offer mappings.
2. Find the Allow promotion below Min. price attribute.
3. Set its value to ‘true’ to allow the promotion price to go below the minimum price.

For more guidance on creating promotions for your products, check out the microlearning ChannelEngine: merchant promotions.

Channel promotions

Channel promotions are the list of promotions in which select bol sellers are eligible to participate. To use bol's channel promotions, contact your customer success manager at ChannelEngine and ensure that you meet the key seller requirements. For more information on participating in bol's channel promotions, check out bol: promotions.

Participate in a channel promotion

The default fields for a channel promotion (Name, Start/End date, etc.) are already populated by ChannelEngine, based on the data retrieved from bol. You cannot set the start and end dates on bol promotions on ChannelEngine. 

The products eligible for the promotion are automatically grouped in the promotion overview.

To join a channel-led promotion:

1. In Promotions, enable Channel promotions in the filter bar. 
2. Click the edit icon to edit the channel promotion. If your price is below the maximum promotion price and you have the buy box, you are automatically enrolled in the promotion. If not, set a price below the maximum promotion price to join the promotion in Step 3.
3. In Set price, next to the products to be included in the promotion, enter your desired promotion price. The price you set is exported during the period of the promotional campaign.
4. Keep in mind that bol defines the Max. promotion price, or the maximum allowed campaign price, which you cannot exceed.
5. Click Save.

Once the channel promotion is set, your products on bol may be displayed with a Nu in prijs verlaagd (Price reduced now) label. Check bol's documentation to determine when and how this label appears. 

Export and import channel promotions via CSV

You can also manage bol's channel promotions via a CSV file.

To manage promotions via a CSV file:

1. In the Pricing, Promotions overview, click the download icon. Click Ok in the pop-up to confirm that you want to export all of your channel promotions to a downloaded file. A CSV file is downloaded. 
   
   
    
2. To import an existing CSV file, click the upload button. Use this CSV template to create your own CSV file of channel promotions.

FAQs

What happens if my promotion price is lower than my minimum price?
If your promotion price is lower than your minimum price, ChannelEngine checks if the Promotions below min price setting is enabled in the Offer mappings for that product. If it is not enabled, the minimum price is exported instead.

Is it possible to set multiple promotions for the same product?
You can create different promotions for the same product, but the promotion dates must not overlap. If the dates overlap, you cannot set multiple promotions.

My promotion is scheduled but not exported. Why?
If the promotion is scheduled but not exported, check if pricing v2 is fully activated on that channel. If the channel is in Only screen for configuration mode, you can configure pricing v2, but promotions are not exported even if they show as scheduled. To export promotions, pricing v2 must be fully activated.