Black On Stuff

Gift certificates are good when you want to give discounts to your products. It’s a nice way to give presents around Xmas or other holidays. You can call this concept Gift certificate or Discount card or Discount coupon or whatever you want, but the idea behind it is that someone buys one certificate and gives it to someone else to get a partial or total discount for one or more of your software products. It is a great way to let the end user of the product choose and not spend the money on a gift nobody will use. The concept works not only in classic retail with real cards but also in software sales, where the products are usually delivered electronically.

The process to set up such a system with Avangate is quite easy:

1. build your discount coupons list (or Avangate can generate one list for you)
2. add your Gift Certificate product, with the price you want it
3. add a Static Electronic Delivery List and add to this list the discount coupons from step 1. Add the Gift Certificate product to this list, to enable code delivery when buying this product
4. generate a link to your product and you’re ready to add it to your website
5. add a Promotion and set it up to have multiple discount coupons. Add to the promotion coupon list the coupons from step 1 above. Don’t forget to add your regular products to this list.
6. you’re done

At this stage, everyone who’s buying the Gift Certificate product will receive the discount coupon by email. The discount coupon can be used by anyone else to get a discount for the list of products you’ve specified in Step 5.

Is that easy. Of course, this is just a base scenario that works. From here we can start playing with various things like email customization, combination of the Buy as a Gift option with the Gift Certificate buying etc. Any sugestions are welcomed any time.