Daily Deals

Hi, I searched this forum and I'm surprised this question hasn't come up before! I am running a daily deal with an online media company and what that is, is you run an ad and offer your product at a significantly reduced price in order to get exposure for your company. I have been provided with an Excel sheet of voucher codes by the media company and as customers purchase my product through the online media company, they will be issued one of the voucher codes on the excel sheet I was given. I now need to be able to set up my Zen Cart so that the customer can come to my site and enter the voucher code they were given and have either $60 or $100 credited to their account so that they can use it at their leisure. I don't see how I can do this with gift certificates because Zen Cart generates the voucher codes and I don't see how to do this with coupon codes so that the customer can carry a credit if they don't spend either $60 or 100 in one shopping trip. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this please?

First question would be, I get codes for 3 Products ...

Does my balance stay at $60 or does it go to $180?

If it goes to $180, does this amount ever expire?

Is this amount limited to what Products it can be used on, or can it be used on anything?

If this amount can be accumulated and never expires and can be used on any Products ... then you really are doing this as a Gift Certificate rather than a Discount Coupon ...

Gift Certificates maintain a balance for the customer and never expire ... Gift Certificates are "cash" and need to be treated as such ...

Discount Coupons are only valid during the current order that is being processed and are not accumulated or saved ...

If you were doing a Gift Certificate that was automatically generated for a customer, you would need for each one a record created in the tables:
coupons
coupon_email_track

Now, the customer can come to your site with a Gift Certificate redemption code and redeem it and the balance will be maintained forever for the customer until the balance is used up ...

Is this more along the lines of what you are trying to do?

Hi Linda - yes, that is what I am trying to do. To be specific, what the the media site is offering is a $60 store credit for $30 and an option B, which is a $100 store credit for 49.99. I have been provided with the voucher codes that will be issued as the media site's customers purchase them, so i need to have them ready so that they can just enter the voucher code on my site and they will get either a 60 or 100 credit on their account that they can spend on anything in my store. there will be no expiry date and as you said, they will be just like cash and cash never expires! the starting balance of 60 or 100 will decrease as the customer purchases items from my store by however much the item was they purchased. if i need to go into the database to enter these voucher codes i was given and if you have the time and the patience can you handhold me through what I need to do and give me the "for dummies" version of instructions please ? :) if it's a long and detailed set of instructions and you don't have the time, in the alternative, can you point me to somewhere online that would be of help to me please?

You can do this two ways ...

You can manually create the Gift Certificates in the Gift Certificate/Coupons ... Mail Gift Certificate ... or you can create the data and import it into your database tables ...

How many Gift Certificates are you trying to make?

I have been provided with the voucher codes that will be issued as the media site's customers purchase them, so i need to have them ready So you will want these voucher/GC codes to be waiting unattached in your db, and when a customer tries to use one, it will be looked up and applied as long as they have a valid number, right?

Hi Linda - I can't create the GV and email it because I've already been provided with the voucher codes. There are 400 of them to start with and if sales go well, I will be provided with more. I have the identical list of voucher codes as the online media company and they will issue the voucher codes to the customers as they buy my "daily deal." The idea is that I'm supposed to do whatever I need to do with these voucher codes I was sent so that the customer can come to my website and enter the code and automatically get a credit of either $60 or $100 on my website, depending on which option they purchased through the online media company. i actually have 200 + 200 voucher codes to enter. 200 are for the $60 credits and 200 are for the $100 credits. I'm glad you're helping me because these online daily deals are really taking off and I was really surprised that I was the first to bring this up :)

Yes, Glenn - that is correct :)

kathie:

Hi Linda - I can't create the GV and email it because I've already been provided with the voucher codes. There are 400 of them to start with and if sales go well, I will be provided with more. I have the identical list of voucher codes as the online media company and they will issue the voucher codes to the customers as they buy my "daily deal." The idea is that I'm supposed to do whatever I need to do with these voucher codes I was sent so that the customer can come to my website and enter the code and automatically get a credit of either $60 or $100 on my website, depending on which option they purchased through the online media company. i actually have 200 + 200 voucher codes to enter. 200 are for the $60 credits and 200 are for the $100 credits. I'm glad you're helping me because these online daily deals are really taking off and I was really surprised that I was the first to bring this up :)

I use something like this a year or so ago. It's not perfect by no means and probably buggy, but you might be able to play with it to get it to work for you. The only down side is the code will not show in admin under coupons.

insert into coupons (coupon_code, coupon_type, coupon_amount, date_created) values (coupon_code_goes_here', 'G', '60.00', now() );
insert into coupons (coupon_code, coupon_type, coupon_amount, date_created) values ('coupon_code_goes_here', 'G', '100.00', now() );

countrycharm:

insert into coupons (coupon_code, coupon_type, coupon_amount, date_created) values (coupon_code_goes_here', 'G', '60.00', now() );
insert into coupons (coupon_code, coupon_type, coupon_amount, date_created) values ('coupon_code_goes_here', 'G', '100.00', now() );

Hi there! I don't know what this means. Is this something to do with the database? :)