How to Send Scheduled Notifications for Daily Specials

One-time, expiring coupons

In ProductCart, you can create one-time coupons that have an expiration date  (e.g. they could expire tomorrow). The coupons (also called Discounts by Code elsewhere in our documentation) can be restricted to only certain products or categories.

Using these features you can start offering daily (or weekly) specials, which is an effective marketing tool to bring customers back to your store.
 

Notifying customers

The key to successful daily (or weekly) specials is obviously to let people know about them. For this purpose, you need to use a professional e-mail marketing system where you can schedule mailings in advance. You can use any e-mail marketing system (MailChimp, ConstantContact, iContact, etc) that allows you to schedule the delivery of messages in advance. 
 

Steps to executing a Daily Specials Campaign

 

Create the Coupons

Create several electronic coupons in advance, with expiration 24 hours after the campaign day (or 7 days after if you are running a weekly special). You can restrict coupons to certain products or categories.
 

Set up a new mailing list

Create a new mailing list in your service for “Daily Specials” or “Weekly Specials”, so customers can sign up for it when they register on your store.

For existing customers: you can send them a message (using one or the other lists that you are currently using) and ask them to enroll in the new “Daily Specials” list if they want to receive daily specials. Include an example of a Daily Special to give them an idea of the kind of offers they will receive.
 

Create the messages

In your service, create the messages you will be sending, in advance, using the coupons you have created in ProductCart. Create the first message, save it as a template, and you will then be able to create future messages very rapidly.

Use the “Share Message on Social Media” button when creating the message to insert icons into the message that allow recipients to easily share it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
 

Schedule the mailings

In your service you should be able to precisely define when messages will be sent. Select a message you have created and then click to schedule the date and time of the mailing. When you set the schedule, make sure to indicate the correct date, time, and time zone.

You're done: the messages will be sent automatically at the scheduled time.
 

Restricting specials to only certain customers

 

Restricting coupons by Customer Category

In ProductCart you can restrict the applicability of a coupon (Discount by Code) by Customer Pricing Category. For example, you could create a coupon that is only available to “Preferred Customers”. This allows you to run more creative marketing campaigns.
 

Targeting select customers with exclusive offers

For example you could crate a “ Weekly Specials Club” that requires special enrollment. To enroll, people might be asked to fill out a quick survey (to better understand what they are interested in). Based on the results of the survey, you could create Groups in your e-mail marketing system, and target specific groups with specific messages.

The coupon included in the message would only be available to members of the “Weekly Specials Club” customer pricing category  in ProductCart.

Just one example of many creating marketing campaigns that you could run by taking advantage of this interesting feature!