Newsletters for VIPS

[Ace of Dubs]

Howdy yall,

I am putting together my first zencart site and my client has requested an advanced feature that I am not sure is possible.

Basically they are a record label and for the majority of mailing promos, zen-cart works great out the box. Here's the rub though. They want an exclusive "VIP" mailing list to send promo items to DJs and other record companies.

Folks on the VIP list will get an email containing download links to the latest MP3s or other free downloads that regular users are charged for... this link should be set to expire at a designated time to avoid any abuse...

Is this something that is possible with zencart (without having to rip up its intestines and get my fingers all dirty) ?

:)

[DrByte]

You would need to do several things:

1. use an external method to create your special "link" that "expires". You could use an extenal hosted service to do this, or perhaps write a .htaccess rule that you could go and change later. This provides limited or no security to prevent recipients from forwarding the newsletter to others who could download similarly. But that may not be a concern in this case. An externally-hosted link service could limit clicks to one per unique ID.
Regardless, you'll need to know this "link" in order to paste it into your newsletter.

2. Create a VIP Customers Group in Zen Cart and manually match each VIP customer to that group.

3. Manually hack up a new SQL query for the "query_builder" table in phpMyAdmin to pull recipients who match your VIP group.

Then create your newsletter in Zen Cart as you normally would, but when you go to "send" the newsletter, choose the VIP group from the audiences list (which will appear after doing step #3 above). Of course, be sure to include your special VIP download link somewhere in the newsletter before sending it.

[Ace of Dubs]

Wow..I had given up hope on this thread, thanks for answering!

There are a few things I dont understand though..

You would need to do several things:
1. use an external method to create your special "link" that "expires". You could use an extenal hosted service to do this,

I dont know of any services that do this, any pointers would be appreciated. I am a little surprised Zen Cart doesnt have an expire link feature. I tested out SquirrelCart the other day and while they are a little skint on features compared to ZC, they do have this one.. should I post a request for this feature?

Manually hack up a new SQL query for the "query_builder" table in phpMyAdmin to pull recipients who match your VIP group.

I love how easy you make that sound! Wish I had the skills to pull it off but am just starting to get my head around server-side programming.