As a mobile app developer, you are probably always on the lookout for ways to increase your app’s visibility. Sometimes a good, old-fashioned sale is all it takes, and Amazon’s Developer Promotions Console (DPC) now gives you the ability to specify when you want to discount your app or in-app items. As an added benefit, promotions set up through the DPC will be featured automatically on the Appstore Deals Section of Amazon Appstore in the US and Germany, if appropriate.

The DPC makes it quick and easy to discount the list price of your apps and in-app items, perfect for promoting an update, taking advantage of a holiday or special event, or conducting price elasticity tests. You can specify in the DPC when and where these discounts are available, activating them over time in one or more marketplaces, or at a single instant worldwide. For example, you might want Amazon to discount your app 50% to promote the most recent update, or offer certain in-app items for free during a limited time. These promotion “campaigns” are a snap to create.

Get Featured Merchandizing on Amazon Appstore Deals

Once your price drop promotion is live, it will automatically feature in merchandizing on the Appstore Deals section of the Amazon Appstore in the US (and Germany, when applicable) to help drive traffic to your app.

Create a Campaign

To set up a price drop campaign:

1. Log on to the Amazon Developer Portal
2. Click the APPS & SERVICES tab and select Promotions
3. Click the Price Drop button, and
4. Choose the type of campaign you would like to create

A single campaign can discount one or more mobile apps, mobile in-app purchase items, or PC and Mac apps at a time. Every campaign type allows you to set a start and end date, but you have even more control over mobile discounts.

Fine Tune Timing and Availability

For example, you might choose to discount an app only on Amazon’s main marketplace in the US, kicking off the promotion at one o’clock in the afternoon. You have the option of using fixed or relative start and end times. Fixed means the campaign will go live simultaneously across all marketplaces you select, measured in Pacific Time. Relative means start and end times will be adjusted to a reference time zone local to each marketplace (see below for the time zone used in each case).

To fix the campaign timing across all marketplaces, click the radio button labeled Start at a single global instant (relative to PDT). To stagger availability by marketplace, click Start at the same local time in each selected marketplace.

This setting applies to start and stop times both, which you can specify only once per campaign. If you want a promotion to be active at different times for different marketplaces (but not necessarily simultaneously, as with fixed), create a separate campaign for each marketplace.

You can only activate a campaign in marketplaces where your app or in-app item is available. If the specific items you want to discount are not available in China, for example, you will not be able to select amazon.cn as a target marketplace for the campaign. Publish to any of these marketplaces and they become valid targets for your promotional campaigns:

• amazon.com               time zone: America/Los_Angeles (PST/PDT)
• amazon.co.uk              time zone: Europe/London (GMT/BST)
• amazon.de                  time zone: Europe/Berlin (CET/CEST)
• amazon.fr                    time zone: Europe/Paris (CET/CEST)
• amazon.co.jp               time zone: Asia/Tokyo (JST)
• amazon.ca                   time zone: America/Vancouver (PST/PDT)
• amazon.cn                   time zone: Asia/Shanghai (CST)
• amazon.es                   time zone: Europe/Madrid (CET/CEST)
• amazon.it                    time zone: Europe/Rome (CET/CEST)
• amazon.com.br           time zone: America/Sao_Paulo (BRT/BRST)
• amazon.com.au          time zone: Australia/Sydney (AEST/AEDT)

Define Discount and Confirm Campaign Settings

After you have set start and stop times for your promotion, click Next to define the discount amount, then click Next again to preview the campaign settings. If everything looks good, click Submit to save the campaign and indicate it should be launched when the time comes.

Refine Your Mobile Promotional Campaigns

The Developer Promotions Console offers a self-service interface for scheduling temporary discounts on your mobile apps and in-app items sold through Amazon. It provides the ability to set up promotions to launch simultaneously around the world or at the same hour of the day in multiple marketplaces. These discounts can be made available everywhere or limited to specific geographic regions. Promotions you create are featured automatically on the Appstore Deals section of Amazon’s Appstore in the US and Germany, when appropriate.

Use this flexibility to refine your promotional campaigns and tailor them to your specific needs. Get more information about the Developer Promotions Console online, or simply log on to the console to look around and give it a try.

-peter (@peterdotgames)

We’re excited to announce a new tool for developers called the Developer Promotion Console (DPC). DPC gives you a self-service way to manage the pricing of all your apps with pricing campaigns. Want to run a 24-hour special holiday sale or discount all of your apps to celebrate the launch of a new game? It’s now much easier.

The Developer Promotion Console is available just in time for the holidays and it’s a great time run a special offer. In 2012, we saw a 50% increase in the number of app downloads during Thanksgiving week as compared to an average week. During ‘Digital Week’ 2012, the week after Christmas, customers purchased and downloaded 600% more apps than any other week during 2012.

What is it?

DPC allows you to create campaigns that run from 24 hours to any amount of time you choose, up to a maximum of 27 consecutive days. Pricing is worldwide so you can set discounts by Amazon marketplace. Best of all, you can run campaigns for the price of your mobile apps and any of your mobile in-app items.

What does it include?

Set temporary price drops: Create price drop promotions for your mobile apps and mobile in-app items to incentivize your customers to purchase your products. 

Reporting: Easily view your ROI during your price drop promotion. Compare the performance of your promotion with your performance prior to the promotion.

Ease of use: Creating a price drop promotion is simple. Typically, it will take no more than five minutes and three steps to go from start to a scheduled promotion.

How do I get started?

Inside of the developer console, you will see a new tab called ‘Promotions.’ Clicking on the tab will display a new button to create a ‘Price Drop,’ as well as a list of your existing campaigns.

You will be able to set a discount for any of your apps and in-app items available for purchase.

For this example, we are going to create a new campaign for one app and set a price discount for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. We start off by giving the campaign a name, in this case the ‘Thanksgiving Holiday Promo’, and then selecting the app (currently blocked out in the image for privacy reasons) that we want to include in the promotion.

We then select the Amazon marketplaces we want the campaign to run in. Since Thanksgiving is a US holiday, we will only run it in the amazon.com marketplace.

Next, we can choose the dates for our campaign, with the minimum being one day and the maximum being 27 consecutive days. We are going to run this campaign for Thanksgiving Day only, on November 28, 2013.

We then click ‘Next’ and define the discount we want to apply to our app. We are going to do a 50% off sale with the price being rounded to the nearest 9. Selecting the amazon.com marketplace from the dropdown shows us that the list price for our app will go from 2.99 USD to 1.49 USD when the campaign is active.

Again, note that the app name in the above screenshot has been hidden in this example for privacy reasons.

Clicking ‘Next’ will give us a final confirmation of our campaign’s details. We have the ability to edit any of the sections before hitting ‘Submit’.

We’re finished. Our campaign is now ready to run on Thanksgiving Day in the amazon.com marketplace, where our app will be available for sale at 50% off.

How much did we increase sales?

Rather than guessing if we made more money with increased sales at a discount, the DPC reports will show us our net results of our campaign sales compared with our normal app pricing.

To view the results of the campaign, we just click on the ‘Promotions’ tab again (the same one we used to create our campaigns), and we will see a list of the campaigns that have run or are planned.

In the above example, we can see that we ran a campaign from October 29^th through November 3^rd (campaign name hidden for privacy reasons), and we have the option to click ‘View’ to see the results of that campaign.

We can see that during the campaign period, we sold 21 units of our app at 50% off.

The ‘Effect’ column takes the guesswork out of the ROI for our campaign and gives us the net results. Based on sales during the period of time before the campaign ran, we have increased our revenue for the period by 84%, resulting in a nice boost.

We can also click on the CSV icon, which will create a detailed view of daily sales during the campaign period and compare them with previous run rates.

Conclusion

The new Developer Promotion Console helps you manage discounted pricing which can lead to increased sales and customer engagement. Creating a new campaign is easy through the Developer Promotion Console, at no cost to you. With detailed reports that will show you the ROI of your campaign, you can feel more confident experimenting with discounts on your apps and in-app items.
 

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)