Walmart: how to set up discounts

About this article

This article describes how to configure discounts on Walmart.

Table of contents

Introduction

Setup

• Set up a Walmart promotion
• Set up a ChannelEngine promotion

Troubleshooting

FAQs

Introduction

There are two ways of setting up discounts on Walmart – via Walmart’s own promotion fields and via ChannelEngine's promotions feature.

• Walmart’s own promotion fields - provide values for Walmart's promotion fields that are exported by ChannelEngine to Walmart’s API.
• ChannelEngine promotions – create a temporary price reduction in Pricing, Promotions and let ChannelEngine calculate and export the promotional price.

You can choose a method that meets your needs best, depending on your use case.

Setup

Set up a Walmart promotion

To set up a Walmart promotion, map specific offer and pricing attributes on ChannelEngine. To learn more about the differences between promotion types on Walmart, check out Promotional pricing: Overview.

1. In Pricing, Price rules, configure your Selling price, which is your regular price.
   • Both Min. price and Base price fields must be defined. Note that ChannelEngine exports the higher of the two values –  typically the Base price.
2. Configure your Promotional price. Note that you need a discount of at least 5% to trigger strikethrough pricing for products that are equal to or greater than USD 200; and at least 10% for products that cost less than USD 200.
   • Both Min. price and Base price fields must be defined. Note that ChannelEngine exports the higher of the two values – typically the Base price.
3. In Mappings, Offer mappings, set the Promotion applied attribute to Applied. Note that optional attributes related to promotions become required once you select Applied.
4. Set the Promotion start date and Promotion end date. The supported format is ISO 8601, with UTC offset. E.g.: 2021-07-16T19:20:30+5:30 when the time zone is ahead of UTC.
5. Either:
   • Map the Promotion type attribute. The options are clearance, reduced, and base. If you leave this attribute empty, the product is not displayed with a strikethrough, Reduced, or Clearance label.
   • Or map the Promo placement attribute by specifying when to apply the promotion. The options are cart and checkout. Note that you can only select a Promo placement if you have not set a Promotion type.

For large campaigns, avoid repeatedly changing promotion data, as Walmart allows only a limited number of bulk promotion API calls per day.

Set up a ChannelEngine promotion

ChannelEngine promotions are created in Pricing, Promotions. These are time-bound price reductions that do not trigger promotions labels or strikethrough pricing on the marketplace, if used on their own.

After the promotion ends, the product falls back to its regular selling price.

To create a merchant promotion, follow the steps outlined in the Create a promotion section of ChannelEngine: promotions. The steps include creating a promotion, choosing the discount type, selecting the correct price attribute, adding products to the promotion, and saving the promotional prices.

Keep the following in mind when going through the configuration steps:

• You can override the Promotional price field with another price field.
• Make sure you set the attribute Allow promotion below min price to true if your Min. price for Promotional price in Pricing, Price rules is higher then the promotion you created.

Troubleshooting

The promotion is set up on ChannelEngine, but Walmart does not show it.

Check the following:

1. All required offer and pricing fields are mapped. For Walmart's promotions, Promotion applied, Promotional price, Promotion start/end date are required for a promotion to apply.
2. Promotion type or Promo placement is mapped, but not both. Mapping both makes the setup invalid.
3. The promotion start date is at least four hours in the future. Walmart requires the start date to be more than four hours from the current date/time.
4. Is the promotion price below the minimum price? If yes, set Allow promotion below min price to true; otherwise ChannelEngine exports the minimum price instead.
5. Check Listed products feedback for validation and feedback imported from Walmart.

The discount price is live on Walmart, but there is no strikethrough.

This can happen even when the promotion is correctly exported. Check the following:

1. Promotion type is set to Reduced or Clearance.
2. Promo placement is empty if you expect product-page display.
3. The discount is large enough. You need a discount of at least 5% to trigger strikethrough pricing for products that are equal to or greater than USD 200; and at least 10% for products that cost less than USD 200.
4. Whether Walmart chose not to display the strikethrough. Although ChannelEngine sends the required promotion data, the final display behavior is controlled by Walmart.

FAQs

I cannot set up a promotion on Walmart Mexico. Why is that?

Promotions are currently not available on Walmart Mexico.