How Amazon Coupon Codes Work for Brands

Consumers love a good coupon code – especially when it comes to trying new products. Creating coupons and promo codes are a great way to drive traffic to your Amazon Store, or product pages, and give your sales a boost. And the even better news is, Amazon gives Sellers a variety of options to offer discounts to their customers. 

Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon coupon codes, the different types of promo codes Amazon offers, and how to decide which one to use in your next promotion or influencer marketing campaign.

What are Amazon Coupons?

Amazon Coupons provide customers with a way to save money on products with just the click of a button. To use, customers must clip the coupons by clicking the ‘Clip’ button. This will automatically apply the discount to their purchase. The more coupons your customers use, the higher the chances are of your products ranking categorically on Amazon’s main coupons page. 

Some important things to note:

• Sellers are charged $0.60 for every coupon that’s redeemed
• Amazon Coupons can serve as advertising for your products, as the more sales you make, the higher you’ll rank on Amazon.
• Amazon lets you use one coupon for up to 50 item listings
• You have the ability to target the coupon to certain target groups, like Prime subscribers or students. 
• They can last anywhere between 1-90 days.

What Types of Coupons are There?

Amazon offers two types of coupons: 

• Dollar Amount: set a dollar amount off by choosing a discounted amount that’s between 5-80% of your product’s lowest price in the last 30 days.
• Purchase Discount: set a percentage off discount between 5-80% of your product’s lowest price in the last 30 days.

To create your coupon code, you’ll need to log in to your Seller Central account, go to the Advertising tab, click Coupons and follow the setup steps. Here's an example of how a coupon code appears from the customer's view:

What Are Amazon Social Media Promo Codes?

Social media promo codes allow you to offer customers a percentage off discount for the product (or products) of your choosing. They can be shared to your social media pages or within influencer marketing campaigns–although keep in mind that they only last for 30 days. This means if your promotion extends beyond 30 days, you should consider a different promo code option (which we’ll discuss below). 

When you create a social media promo code, Amazon also creates a unique landing page URL that features the products in your promotion. When a customer visits this URL, their discount will be applied to their shopping cart automatically. Sellers and influencers can share this URL to their social media posts, profiles, blogs and website in order to share the discount with their audiences. 

Some things to consider:

• They only last for 30 days
• They take 4 hours to become active once they’ve been created
• Can be combined with other offers 
• The claim code can be customized and must be 8 to 12 characters long
• Must be at least 5% off but not exceed 80% off
• Allow you to set limits on the number of units the code can be applied to

What are Amazon Percentage Off Discount Codes?

Amazon’s Percentage Off discount codes are discount codes that allow customers to redeem a percentage off of their purchase. Contrary to Amazon coupons, which can be clipped, promo codes need to be copy/pasted into a code box at checkout. 

Similar to social media promo codes, they are a popular way to advertise your Amazon listings on other social media channels or in your influencer marketing campaigns--incentivizing new customers to give your product a try for a special, promotional discount. 

Some things to consider:

• Allow you to set a start and end time of your choosing (great for extended campaigns)
• They take 4 hours to become active once they’ve been created
• Allow you to create a custom code, like “SPRING20”
• Customers can claim them, along with multiple promotions (unless you set them up to be Preferential)
• Great way to offer conditional discounts (like buy 1, get 50% off the second item) and unique promo codes for each customer.
• Unlike Social Media Promo Codes, Amazon does not create a unique landing page URL for these discount codes. 

Unlike Social Media Promo Codes, you can’t set limits to the number of units the code can be applied to, so be sure to set these up carefully!

What Types of Percentage Off Discount Codes are There?

Amazon offers two types of Percentage Off discount codes: 

• Single-use: creates multiple, individual promo codes that can only be used once. 
• Group claim: creates one code that can be used by multiple people. 

To create a group promo claim code to use in your influencer marketing campaign or other promotions, log into your Seller Central account, navigate to Advertising, Promotions and then click the Percent Off option. Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial that will walk you through how to set one up and create your group claim code. 

Which Type to Use

If your promotion will run 30 days (or fewer), you can use Amazon’s social media promo codes option or set the end date of your Percentage Off discount codes 30 days out from your start date. 

If your promotion will run longer than 30 days, and you want to create a shareable discount code, you should use Amazon’s Percentage Off discount code. Here's how to set it up.

Keep in mind that if you are using a Percentage Off discount code in your influencer marketing campaign, you will want to set it up as a group claim code rather than a single-use claim code. This will allow the code to be shared with multiple influencers and used by multiple people. 

Be careful not to confuse Amazon’s social media promo codes with Amazon’s Percentage Off discount codes. Their names are similar, so this can get confusing, but choosing the wrong one could mean your code expires before your campaign ends! Remember: social media promo codes only last 30 days, whereas Amazon’s Percentage Off discount codes can be set to any duration you specify. 

This means if you’re running a multi-month marketing campaign, you’ll want to use Coupons or Percentage Off discount codes. Keep in mind that Coupons won’t allow you to share a discount code and can only be claimed if an Amazon user clips them from Amazon’s website. 

Want to get influencers sharing your promo codes and driving content to your Amazon products? Statusphere can help find you the perfect-fit influencers for your brand and manage your entire influencer marketing campaign from start to finish. Contact us today to talk to one of our influencer marketing specialists and get started!

Last updated December 3, 2021.