Quote: Originally Posted by takeflightphoto Can a single coupon code be given to multiple customers for a limited time sale on all items on a site? In other words, "Until December 31, get 10% off your purchase, not including shipping." One coupon code generated that can be used any number of times by any number of customers? It just shuts off on Dec. 31. Yes. You can also limit how many times it is used if you want to.

I saw the above in another thread, but I didn't see a sorcerer reply... so I'm not sure if it's true....? It seems to answer by question, but I'm still unsure..

Does Smugmug take a cut of sales made with an "at cost" coupon?
I want to have my family be able to order from any of my galleries without me ordering the prints for them. Would the "at cost" coupon serve this purpose? Or would I be charge 15% of my default price for everything they order?

Andy,

I am thankful coupons have been made available. But I am just wondering why SmugMug has not done more to get the message out. If I had not actively watched the old thread daily, I would have not known myself.

There has been nothing in the news on the Control Panel. Nor was any announcement made in the RSS SmugBlog Pro Corner feed which I joined to waiting for any word about coupons. In fact, I have not seen anything in this since 5/8/2009.

I am sure you have your reason such as not wanting to get hit with mass questions all at once. I am just curious.

Also, I think most users, including me, would like to limit a coupon to a set gallery. Is this something SmugMug is going to start working on in the early part of 2010 or is Coupon new features taking a back seat to some other projects people have requested? Personally, I would rather have gallery coupons before packages but I know others may disagree. Not asking for a release date, just wanting to which one is taking priority.

Thank you,

DM

Originally Posted by jchin Does Smugmug take a cut of sales made with an "at cost" coupon? I want to have my family be able to order from any of my galleries without me ordering the prints for them. Would the "at cost" coupon serve this purpose? Or would I be charge 15% of my default price for everything they order?

Why not just set your family galleries to default pricing? I set mine to .01
profit so I can check using proof delay their crops etc.

Originally Posted by Allen Why not just set your family galleries to default pricing? I set mine to .01 profit so I can check using proof delay their crops etc.

Allen, no need for penny over pricing anymore. All sales are now visible in your sales history, regardless of profit.

however, if there is no profit on an order you will not be able to see the full name/address of your customer. By using your default pricing and an at-cost coupon you will be able to see the customer information if that is important to you.

Originally Posted by bigwebguy Allen, no need for penny over pricing anymore. All sales are now visible in your sales history, regardless of profit. however, if there is no profit on an order you will not be able to see the full name/address of your customer. By using your default pricing and an at-cost coupon you will be able to see the customer information if that is important to you.

Can the crops, photo replace, etc. be fixed using proof delay if price is at default?

Originally Posted by drmoon I am sure you have your reason such as not wanting to get hit with mass questions all at once. I am just curious.

We released Thursday night. Friday we get some initial feedback from folks that see release notes or just find it.
We don't put the homepage news item and the opt-in email out on Fridays, because it will make for a lot of emails over the weekend We're much better able to handle them during the week, so we'll be sending that out tonight.

This is great and thank so much for getting this done. I plan to try it out right away.

There is a feature that I was hoping would be part of the coupon release. Please consider this for the next release:

I sell mostly sports photos. I try to encourage my customers to purchase an extra copy or two of the print for friends and relatives. Figuring I make a pretty good mark-up on the first print, I want to be able to offer the 2nd and subsequent prints at a discount. I am currently doing this (quite often) through a separate transaction outside of Smugmug because it doesn't have this feature. For example, if I offer an 8X10 for $20, I want to be able to offer a second, third or tenth copy for $10 each.

Any ideas?

Originally Posted by AnneMcBean Sorry for the trouble there. Are you out of the U.S. by chance? The calendar picker goes by your local date. However, the coupon effectiveness starts and ends at 12 midnight SmugMug time (pacific time zone). That means out here in Ohio if it's 1 am, the calendar picker would show the date as the 5th, but it won't be the 5th to SmugMug for another few hours. You can manually type in the previous day's date if you need a coupon to be effective immediately. We hope to have this resolved in a future release. -Anne SmugMug Support Hero

I indeed am outside of the US. The Netherlands to be more precise. Thanks for the clarification and the workaround.

So, I've made me a 'Three for Free!' coupon (type: Amount off) that gives people the opportunity to have the first three digital downloads at no cost. The total amount as well as the minimum purchase for the coupon is three times the price of a digital download. So far, all's good.

Now if someone decides to download exactly three photos using this coupon his total order value will be $ 0. I'd rather have them order more, but I have no real problem with this. If this customer wants to check this order out his credit card info is still mandatory. This I cannot explain to customers. Maybe it's because I'm in Europe, but people don't like to give their credit card information, especially not when it's free and there's no exchange of money at all. Besides not all people have credit cards, but that's another discussion.

Any thoughts on this?

Originally Posted by Andy We released Thursday night. Friday we get some initial feedback from folks that see release notes or just find it. We don't put the homepage news item and the opt-in email out on Fridays, because it will make for a lot of emails over the weekend We're much better able to handle them during the week, so we'll be sending that out tonight.

For those following this, we sent out news emails today.

Originally Posted by Shamguess This is great and thank so much for getting this done. I plan to try it out right away. There is a feature that I was hoping would be part of the coupon release. Please consider this for the next release: I sell mostly sports photos. I try to encourage my customers to purchase an extra copy or two of the print for friends and relatives. Figuring I make a pretty good mark-up on the first print, I want to be able to offer the 2nd and subsequent prints at a discount. I am currently doing this (quite often) through a separate transaction outside of Smugmug because it doesn't have this feature. For example, if I offer an 8X10 for $20, I want to be able to offer a second, third or tenth copy for $10 each. Any ideas?

I think what you're referring to is something Smugmug calls "packages" rather than coupons and it is rumored to be in development.

Originally Posted by Shamguess This is great and thank so much for getting this done. I plan to try it out right away. There is a feature that I was hoping would be part of the coupon release. Please consider this for the next release: I sell mostly sports photos. I try to encourage my customers to purchase an extra copy or two of the print for friends and relatives. Figuring I make a pretty good mark-up on the first print, I want to be able to offer the 2nd and subsequent prints at a discount. I am currently doing this (quite often) through a separate transaction outside of Smugmug because it doesn't have this feature. For example, if I offer an 8X10 for $20, I want to be able to offer a second, third or tenth copy for $10 each. Any ideas?

Maybe just a percentage off above a fairly low limit would work? Let us know if you figure out a good way.

No other ideas to help, just a related thought:

The coupons so far are a great step in the right direction. I also shoot some sports images and my quandary is that I want to have diminishing costs as a customer orders more. There is only so much I think anyone should/would pay for images at an event, and after they reach that amount I'd want to allow them to order more 'at cost'.

The trouble is that I want each participant on their own diminishing cost scale. Once one can order at cost, they can just order prints for the whole team.

So for a future feature, I'd like to be able to group photos (maybe by player, which I would have to set up) for the coupons. "Coupons Silos": a selection of images that a coupon works for.

And just to keep things challenging for the developers ;), I'd like to allow the coupon to work on one player's images (a silo) one way, and then on another player's images (another silo) another way. This is like a buy your images, then get a discount on images you can gift to your teammate.

Maybe that's a bit confusing, but the situation I see is that someone on the team can't afford images (and feels left out). I can set up a buy-one, get one of somebody else at cost/for free/etc. This way everyone can get a print, feel like a team, and save face.

Maybe implementation could be as simple (ha!) as a keyword based coupon.

Originally Posted by Andy We've finally unveiled a fantastic, beautiful coupons feature for our pros. Our help pages are the first line of defense against confusion, so check there for lots of great info. Got questions or problems that we didn't cover? Post right here in this thread.

Andy let me say I appreciate the work. But I have to echo that the feature is pretty dangerious. I have little option to protect my account from being drained by an accident etc. If I have very different pricing between galleries or items. You have all the protection of MY Credit card.

So I would focus on things that let the user control risk:

• $ OFF needs a Minium. EXAMPLE: $10 on $50 or more in photos
  (right now that coupon is pretty much useless if you were to lower cost items if I don't have a minium" And since I can only expire it not delete it the exposure to a mistake lasts for a day. Unless I start removing low cost options if a coupon starts being missused.
• Gallerly tying would lets us "hack" lots of protections.
• Product Tying would also be great to allow us to prmote higher margin items
• Really nice would be the single use coupon.. that we can issue as leader to sales for new customers. but i know that is a whole different coding can of worms)

I assume only one coupon at a time can be used? If not this is even more risk for me.

We know you did the work and are listening :) But the risk in the version 1 implentation is pretty high. One coupon sent to a bride who shares it and then people return and buy $5 in 5x7s with a $10 off meant for a customer looking at $200 and WHAM 20 guests cost the site owner $100+

Please let me know if I missed a way to prevent losses without removing all low priced items or only issuing $1 off coupons?

Originally Posted by Ken CCP $ OFF needs a Minium. EXAMPLE: $10 on $50 or more in photos (right now that coupon is pretty much useless if you were to lower cost items if I don't have a minium" And since I can only expire it not delete it the exposure to a mistake lasts for a day. Unless I start removing low cost options if a coupon starts being missused

I assume you mean "minimum". That capability already exists. Its the "Minimum Purchase" requirement.

Originally Posted by Ken CCP Really nice would be the single use coupon.. that we can issue as leader to sales for new customers. but i know that is a whole different coding can of worms)

That also exists. Just put 1 in the maximum use field. Its right there under Minimum Purchase.

With all the harassment given to smugmug about coupons, I'd like to say thanks for implementing these. It's been a long time waiting for them, and I have not tried them yet, but since I complained about not having them, I thought I'd say thanks for getting this done

Originally Posted by bigwebguy Just put 1 in the maximum use field. Its right there under Minimum Purchase.

I'm not sure what was intended from this particular request, but it sure feels like people want a single coupon code they can send to tons of people but only allow each person to take advantage of it a single time. Maybe tie each use to a unique email address?

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

If we want to create a bunch of gift cards to give to different people, it seems we have to come up with a different code for each one. And for the less creative among us, it can be hard to think up codes that are different and not guessable for each one. It would be nice to have a "randomize" button on the coupon code field, to create a code at random and spare us the trouble of coming up with one.

Thanks.
Moshe

Originally Posted by glasbergen So, I've made me a 'Three for Free!' coupon (type: Amount off) that gives people the opportunity to have the first three digital downloads at no cost. The total amount as well as the minimum purchase for the coupon is three times the price of a digital download. So far, all's good. Now if someone decides to download exactly three photos using this coupon his total order value will be $ 0. I'd rather have them order more, but I have no real problem with this. If this customer wants to check this order out his credit card info is still mandatory. This I cannot explain to customers. Maybe it's because I'm in Europe, but people don't like to give their credit card information, especially not when it's free and there's no exchange of money at all. Besides not all people have credit cards, but that's another discussion. Any thoughts on this?

Yeah, that's a really good point. My feeling is that if the order total comes to $0 for the customer, which it would in the case of an order comprised of only at-cost digital downloads, they shouldn't need to provide credit card information.

Thanks for the feedback! This may well be something we can change for a future release.

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

Originally Posted by AnneMcBean I'm not sure what was intended from this particular request, but it sure feels like people want a single coupon code they can send to tons of people but only allow each person to take advantage of it a single time. Maybe tie each use to a unique email address? -Anne SmugMug Support Hero

I agree with what you are saying here. This is something that would be extremely helpful for sending out (for example) $10 in free print cards and not running the risk of one person having a stack of them (when really it is more of a loss-leader type of tool for the pro).

As with other, I want to say THANKS and I'm really excited about the ease and options of these coupons.