Getting Started with Marketing & Promotions

AccuArk's Marketing & Promotions module gives you a complete toolkit for driving sales, rewarding loyal customers, and running targeted campaigns — all integrated directly with your Point of Sale. This guide provides a full overview of every feature area, explains how to navigate the module, and walks you through creating your first promotion.

Feature Overview

The Marketing & Promotions module covers eight major areas:

Promotions (8 Types)

Promotions are the core of the marketing system. AccuArk supports eight distinct promotion types, each designed for a different sales strategy:

1. Invoice Discount — Apply a flat dollar amount or percentage discount to the entire invoice when a minimum purchase threshold is met
2. BOGO (Buy One Get One) — Customers buy qualifying items and receive reward items for free or at a reduced price
3. Bundle Deal — Combine specific items into a package and offer a discount when the customer buys the complete bundle
4. Tiered Spend — Set spend thresholds that unlock increasing discounts the more the customer spends
5. Happy Hour — Schedule time-of-day based discounts that recur automatically every day during the active period
6. Flash Sale — Run short-duration, limited-quantity promotions that create urgency and drive immediate sales
7. Category/Item Discount — Target discounts at specific inventory categories or individual items rather than the whole invoice
8. First-Time Customer — Offer a one-time welcome discount to new customers making their first purchase

Each promotion type has its own configuration form with fields tailored to that strategy. All promotions share common settings for date ranges, location scope, usage limits, priority, and status.

Coupons

Coupons are redeemable codes that customers can enter at the Point of Sale to activate a linked promotion. You create a coupon, assign it a unique code, and link it to an existing promotion. Coupons can have their own usage limits, expiration dates, and can be restricted to specific customers or customer segments. A single promotion can have multiple coupon codes associated with it.

Gift Cards & Store Credit

AccuArk supports both physical and digital gift cards. Gift cards carry a monetary balance that customers can use as a payment method at the POS. Store credit works similarly but is typically issued as a refund alternative or customer goodwill gesture. You can create gift card types with preset denominations, track balances, view transaction histories, and manage activations and reloads.

Loyalty Program

The loyalty program rewards repeat customers with points for every purchase. You configure how many points customers earn per dollar spent, set redemption values (how much each point is worth in discounts), and define minimum redemption thresholds. Customers accumulate points over time and can redeem them at the POS. The loyalty settings panel lets you enable or disable the program, adjust earning and redemption rates, and set point expiration policies.

Customer Segments

Customer segments let you group customers based on shared characteristics for targeted marketing. You can create segments based on criteria such as purchase frequency, total spend, location, or custom tags. Segments can be used to restrict promotions and coupons so that only customers in a specific segment qualify for certain offers.

Marketing Campaigns

Campaigns are organizational containers that group related promotions together for tracking and reporting. For example, you might create a "Summer Sale 2026" campaign and assign all your summer promotions to it. Campaigns provide aggregate reporting across all their promotions, making it easy to measure the overall performance of a coordinated marketing effort.

Stacking Rules

Stacking rules control how multiple promotions interact when more than one applies to the same invoice. You can configure a global maximum discount cap (so no invoice gets more than, say, 30% off total), define which promotion types can combine with each other, and set whether tiered spend thresholds measure against the original subtotal or the already-discounted subtotal. Stacking rules prevent runaway discounts and ensure promotions combine in predictable, profitable ways.

Reports

The promotion reports and analytics area provides visibility into how your promotions are performing. You can view total discount amounts given, redemption counts, revenue impact, and per-promotion breakdowns. Reports can be filtered by date range, location, campaign, and promotion type.

Navigating the Marketing Module

All marketing features are accessed from the Marketing menu in AccuArk's main menu bar. The menu contains the following items:

Access to each area is controlled by user permissions. Users must have the appropriate marketing permissions assigned to their role to see and use these menu items.

How Promotions Integrate with the POS

Promotions are not applied manually at the Point of Sale. Instead, AccuArk's promotion engine runs automatically every time an item is added to, removed from, or modified on an invoice. The engine evaluates all active promotions against the current cart contents and applies qualifying discounts in real time. The cashier sees discount line items appear on the invoice as promotions are triggered.

This automatic evaluation means your staff does not need to remember which promotions are running or manually apply discounts. The system handles it, reducing errors and ensuring every qualifying customer receives the correct discount.

Quick-Start: Create Your First Invoice Discount

Follow these five steps to create a simple invoice discount promotion and see it work at the POS:

1. Open the Promotion Editor — Navigate to Marketing > Promotions and click the New button. The Promotion Editor form opens.
2. Select Invoice Discount — In the Promotion Type dropdown, select "Invoice Discount." The form updates to show the fields specific to invoice discounts.
3. Configure the Discount — Enter a descriptive name (e.g., "10% Off Orders Over $50"), set the discount method to Percent, enter 10 as the value, and set the minimum purchase to 50.00. Choose your start and end dates.
4. Set Status to Active — Change the status from Draft to Active. An active promotion is visible to the POS engine and will be evaluated on every invoice.
5. Test at the POS — Open the Point of Sale and create an invoice with items totaling more than $50. You should see the 10% discount appear automatically as a line item on the invoice.

Once you are comfortable with invoice discounts, explore the other seven promotion types to build a comprehensive marketing strategy.

What to Read Next

This knowledge base is organized to guide you through every aspect of the marketing module:

• Understanding Promotion Types — Detailed breakdown of all eight promotion types, how they work, and when to use each one
• Recommended Setup Order for Marketing — Step-by-step guide to setting up the marketing module from scratch in the right sequence
• Invoice Discount Promotions — Complete walkthrough of creating and configuring invoice discount promotions
• Tiered Spend Discounts — How to set up spend thresholds that unlock increasing discounts
• First-Time Customer Discounts — Configuring welcome offers for new customers