Setting up a Buy 1 Get 1 Free Promo Code

Article Number: 550 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 5:37 PM

Set up the SKU attribute to Allow Use in Promo Codes. To do this, go to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. Search for Sku. Open the attribute. Under the Frontend Properties, find the "Use for Promo Rule Conditions” option and set the drop menu option to Yes. Save changes.
Next, create a new Shopping Cart Rule. This is done through the NRO Admin panel under Promotions > Shopping Cart Price Rules. Click the Add New Rule button located in the upper right corner of the admin panel.
When you create a rule, you want to provide a clear and descriptive Rule Name. This will help you easily find and identify the purpose of the rules, in your Shopping Cart Rules list. The fields denoted with an asterisk are required, in order to save the shopping cart rule. First, define your Shopping Cart Rule Name:
Next, select the Customer Groups who should get the discount. Tip: To select multiple options, hold the Control key and click the individual options in your list.
Next, indicate whether or not the customer is required to enter the promo code, during checkout. If so, change the Coupon drop menu to "Specific Coupon." Upon changing the drop menu setting, another box will appear into which you can enter the coupon code. If you want the coupon to automatically apply to the cart, leave the option set to "No Coupon."

NOTE: It is possible to auto-generate multiple promo codes for the purpose of distributing these promo codes to specific customers. To generate several unique promo codes, set the Coupon option to "Specific Coupon." Do not indicate anything in the "Coupon Code" text field. Check the "Use Auto Generation" box. Upon enabling the feature and after saving the promo code, a new tab named, "Manage Coupon Codes" will appear. Under that tab, a quantity can be indicated.

On this tab, indicate a quantity of unique codes to be auto-generated.

Coupon Qty is set to how many coupon codes should be generated, when the Generate button is clicked. It's possible to come back here later and create additional groups of promo codes. Code length is how long the auto-generated code will be. This number is in addition to any prefix or suffixes added. In other words, based on the example above, the auto-generated promo code will be a total of 12 characters long (Code Prefix + Code length). After indicating the values on the menu, click the Generate button.
The next two settings on the Rule Information tab are, "Uses Per Coupon" and "Uses Per Customer." An example of "Uses Per Coupon" would be a sale for the first 50 customers who buy a specific product with one purchase per customer. Then, the Users Per Customer would be set to 1, so each customer will only be able to use the coupon once. In the example below, the promo will allow unlimited usage per customer, as well as allow an unlimited amount of purchases, of the item.
Dates the promo code become active and inactive can be indicated, on the Rule Information tab:
Multiple shopping cart rules can be applied to a single order. A Priority of 0, has the highest priority. The priority is used when you have 2 Rules or more applying to the same products. The rule with the highest priority (lowest number) will take effect first. If all rules have the same number, they'll be applied based upon the rules (dates, etc) and their order in the promo code list.
Lastly, individual price rules can be made public in the price rules RSS feed for which your customers can sign up. This feature is enabled, by default.
The next step is to create the rules that create the promotional pricing. This is done, on the Actions tab. To begin, set the "Apply" setting to Buy X Get Y Free (discount amount is Y).
Next, indicate a Discount Amount of 1 and a Discount Qty Step of 1. Finally, apply a condition to specific SKUs, Categories or other attributes of the items that should be considered, for the discount.