Is it possible to use a gift discount (promo code) as long – on different orders – as the total amount of the gift value is reached?
Hi @Jerome,
If I understand correctly, you would like a Promo code discount with a X$ value that gets reduced by the order total after each use?
For a 50$ promo code:
- First use for order of 10$, 40$ remains on promo code.
- Second use for order of 20$, 20$ remains on promo code.
- Third use for order of 25$, 0$ remains on promo code (and customer has to pay 5$).
If this is your use case, that would be more like a Gift card and would not be currently supported out-of-the-box by our Discount feature but could be implemented using our API.
EDIT: See @AndyKnz answer below
Hi Jerome,
We’ve just implemented a gift card product on our site that generates a discount code with a value the customer has determined. The customer gets sent a nice PDF of their Gift Card with the Value amount, Date of Expire and the code so they can print it out and give it to someone.
When the code is used, the discount is applied. If their order is less than the total value of the order, the discount code is updated with the amount remaining, and the customer gets an email to inform them of the new amount remaining on the gift card.
This is all done with the No-code tools and the Snipcart API. I was thinking about doing a little video on how I’ve done this. If this is what you also want to do, let me know, and I can give you a little more detail. Here is a link to the product on our website to see how we’ve implemented it - Gift Voucher | AJS
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Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking of – great – please tell me how to make it.
There are a couple of pre-requisites that my solution uses.
- You are comfortable using the Snipcart API to Create and Update discounts
- The glue that automates this process is ‘Integromat’ although you could use another automation tool like Zapier to do the same thing. Integromat uses a clean slick interface to connect applications with little to no coding experience.
I first started by reading this post on the Snipcart Blog Creating a Gift Card Application with Snipcart & PHP - Snipcart which gave me the initial direction on how to use the Snipcart API. I am not a coder so all the PHP suff was over my head. The most important bits are what API calls you are going to make to Snipcart.
Once I understood that I then had to set up automation in Integromat https://www.integromat.com/ . We use Integromat to update all our order and product information in Airtable and for updating Snipcart when we add products or change inventory levels.
In a nutshell, when an order is received a webhook is sent to Integromat. If the order contains a Gift Voucher product then Integromat will send an API call to Snipcart to create a discount voucher. We then create a PDF with the discount information and then email it to the customer. Here is just the part of our New Order automation in Integromat that handles.
The first step is setting variables for the Value, Expire and random code.
These variables are sent to Snipcat via the HTTP module.
I created a Google Doc template and get Integromat to load template and populate this with the variables and then save a new file our Google Drive.
The reason I use Google Docs instead of a MS Word template is for one reason. With Google Docs you can natively download a PDF version which is important as we want to send this to the customer.
The final module in this automation is to send an email to the customer with the PDF that was generated in the previous module.
That’s the creation process, the next part is modifying the discount once a gift code has been used. Let me know if this is a level that you feel comfortable working with. There is a lot to take in but it’s actually quite simple once you understand what you can do with Integromat and API calls.
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Thanks Andy, but this is too complicated for me. I only use discounts via the Snicpart dashboard. Perhaps gift cards could be added as a feature request.
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That’s okay @Jerome I completely understand. That’s why I thought I would only write up the first part of this process. Over the Christmas Holidays, I’m hoping to do some videos on how to do this and the second part which will update vouchers.
Hi, do you mind sharing your blueprint of Integromat?
I am also looking for a gift card solution.
Thank you.
Hi Eirik, sorry I’ve not responded sooner. I’m going to be doing some work on our systems this weekend and will put some notes on my process for creating the gift vouchers using Integromat.
Any updates on the notes?
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