How to Setup Smart Coupons for WooCommerce

Overview

Smart Coupon for WooCommerce is an add-on plugin, tailor-made to meet varied coupon specific functionalities. The additional functionalities like issuing a Coupon with various Checkout options, Giveaway products, Bulk generation, and Import are conveniently integrated with the standard WooCommerce Coupon panel.

Installation

After purchasing the Smart Coupon Plugin For WooCommerce, the plugin will be available as a zip file in the API Downloads section of your My Account page.

1. Download the zip file from API Downloads by logging into your Webtoffee MY ACCOUNTS page.
2. Log in as the WordPress Admin of your online store.
3. Navigate to Plugins > Add New to upload the downloaded plugin.
4. Choose the plugin file to upload.
5. Finally, activate the plugin.

For detailed information about installing WebToffee plugins, read How to Download, Install, Activate & Update WooCommerce Plugin.

Getting Started with the Plugin

Once the activation is successful, you can then navigate to WooCommerce > Coupon from the WordPress dashboard.

Smart Coupon offers following features under the WooCommerce > Coupons menu:

• Additional options under Coupon data
  
• Settings
• Bulk Generate
• Import Coupons
• Store Credit

Coupons

The coupon tab consists of two sections as Add new coupon and associated Coupon data.

Add New Coupon

Create a new coupon by selecting Add Coupon. Or hover over an existing coupon for an Edit.

In order to create a new coupon, enter the following fields:

• Coupon code – Code used by the customer to apply the coupon. It must be unique as it’s used as an identifier.
• Description (optional) — Info about the coupon, e.g., Dates in effect, promotion, compensation, ticket number. Used for internal use.

Alternatively, the plugin allows you to Duplicate an existing coupon which will clone an exact copy of the chosen coupon. You may then edit only the necessary sections that need to be changed.

Coupon Data

Under Coupon Data, you will find the following sections: General, Usage Restriction, Usage Limits, Checkout Options, and Giveaway Products.

General

• Discount type – Select from the various discount types in the drop-down.
• Coupon amount – Fixed value or percentage, depending on the discount type you choose. Entered without a currency unit or a percent sign, e.g., Enter ’10’ for £10 or 10%.
• Allow free shipping – Removes shipping costs when a coupon is used. Requires Free Shipping to be enabled.
• Coupon expiry date – Set an expiry date for the coupon.
• Coupon start date: Set a start date on which the coupon should be made active.
• Apply coupon automatically: This coupon will be applied automatically if the specifications are met. The corresponding coupon description will be shown when the coupon is applied.
• Make coupons available in–  Lists options to make the coupon available in MyAccount page, Cart and/or Checkout.

Usage Restriction

• Minimum spend – Allows you to set the minimum subtotal needed to use the coupon.  Note: The sum of the cart subtotal + tax is used to determine the minimum amount.
• Maximum spend – Allows you to set the maximum subtotal allowed when using the coupon.
• Individual use only –Check this box if the coupon cannot be used in conjunction with other coupons.
• Coupons can be used with: Configure the list of coupons that can be redeemed together with the specified.
• Coupons can’t be used with: Configure the list of coupons that cannot be redeemed together with the specified.
• Exclude sale items –Check this box if the coupon should not apply to items on sale. Per-item coupons will only work if the item is not on sale. Per-cart coupons will only work if there are items in the cart that are not on sale.
• Product Condition – By default Coupon will be applicable only if any of the products from the selected list is available in the cart; all option requires that the cart contains all of the selected products.  
• Products – Products that the coupon will be applied to, or that need to be in the cart in order for the “Fixed cart discount” to be applied.
• Exclude products – Products that the coupon will not be applied to, or that cannot be in the cart in order for the “Fixed cart discount” to be applied.
• Category Condition – Coupon will be applicable only if any of the categories from the below is available In the cart; all option requires that the cart contains products from all of the listed categories.  
• Product categories – Product categories that the coupon will be applied to, or that need to be in the cart in order for the “Fixed cart discount” to be applied.
• Exclude categories – Product categories that the coupon will not be applied to, or that cannot be in the cart in order for the “Fixed cart discount” to be applied.
• Allowed Emails/Email restrictions – Whitelist of billing emails to check against when an order is placed. Separate email addresses with commas. You can also use an asterisk (*) to match parts of an email. For example “*@gmail.com” would match all Gmail addresses.
• Matching Products:
  • Minimum quantity of matching products: Minimum quantity of the products that match the given product or category restrictions. If no product or category restrictions are specified, then the total number of products is used.
  • Maximum quantity of matching products: Maximum quantity of the products that match the given product or category restrictions. If no product or category restrictions are specified, then the total number of products is used.
  • Minimum subtotal of matching products: Minimum price subtotal of the products that match the given product or category restrictions.
  • Maximum subtotal of matching products: Maximum price subtotal of the products that match the given product or category restrictions.

Usage Limits

• Usage limit per coupon – How many times a coupon can be used by all customers before being invalid.
• Usage limit per user – How many times a coupon can be used by each customer before being invalid for that customer.

Checkout Options

• Shipping Methods: The coupon will be applicable only if the shipping methods matches any of the entries selected here.
• Payment Methods: The coupon will be applicable only if the payment method applied during checkout matches any of the entries listed here.
• Applicable Roles: The coupon will be applicable if the customer belongs to any of the roles listed in this field.
• Restrict by Country: Restrict the usage of the coupon on the basis of billing address or shipping address.
• Country: Select the location from the list for restricting the coupon usage.

Giveaway Products

• Free Products: A single quantity of the specified free product/s is added to the customer cart when the coupon is applied.
• Giveaway discount: Indicates the discount percentage/value of the giveaway product. e.g, you can giveaway a cap at 10% discount upon purchase of a T-shirt
• Apply tax only on discounted value: Enable this option to calculate the tax only on the discounted value, e.g, If you are providing a discount of $10 on a $100 product, enabling this option will calculate tax only on $90, which is the product giveaway price (sale price).
  
  

Purchase History – Nth Order Coupon

Smart coupon for WooCommerce plugin helps you to generate a coupon for long term customers who have made n successful purchases in the past. The nth-order coupon can be configured from the purchase history tab of the coupon panel. You can explicitly specify to which order the coupon must be provided with options like ‘equal to’ or ‘greater than or equal to’. There are provisions to select the desired order statuses or even specify the aggregate order amount for which the coupon must be applied. The coupon redemption can be limited by checking in the exclude customer’s already rewarded checkbox.

The purchase history tab consists of the following options to configure an nth order coupon.

• Number of orders: Select an option as ‘equal to’ or ‘greater than or equal to’ along with an order count to which the coupon must be applied.

Order Status: Select the order statuses from the drop-down to which the coupon can be applied. If left blank, then the coupon will be made applicable to all the order statuses.

Total Amount: Enter the aggregate order amount to which the coupon can be applied. If left blank, then the coupon can be redeemed without any amount constraints.

Exclude customers already awarded: On checking this checkbox, the customer will be availed to redeem the coupon only ones.

Settings

The settings tab is categorized into three categories as Style, General and Coupon Banner.

Style

Choose from pre-defined coupon designs, choose background color, text & border color (as per your theme’s color scheme) included in the Select Style button. Provision to customize the style of an active coupon, used coupon and expired coupon. Alternatively, choose a style from among the pre-defined coupon styles.

General

• Coupon Visibility: Controls the visibility of the coupon types in concerned pages. It has two checkboxes:
  • Show used coupon under My Account: Tick this to show used coupon under My Account
  • Show Expired coupons under My Account: Tick this to show expired coupons under My Account
• Bulk Generate: Length of the coupon code option can be used to set the length of the coupon code that is generated automatically excluding prefix and/or suffix. The default length of the auto-generated coupon code is 12.
• Gift coupon on product purchase: The gift coupon is emailed to the recipient on the basis of selected order statuses as either completed or processing.
• URL Coupon: With URL Coupons, you can add a unique URL to any coupon in your e-commerce store. On clicking this URL, the coupon discount will be automatically applied and ensures that the underlying coupon is applied as per its respective configuration e.g. allow a discount, giveaway free product whatever the case may be. You can implement the URL coupon by using the following syntax: <site_url>/?wt_coupon=<coupon_code>
  For example, to implement a URL coupon in the cart page of a website www.webtoffee.com with the coupon code FLAT30, specify the URL coupon in the following format:https://www.webtoffee.com/cart/?wt_coupon=flat30

Smart Coupon for WooCommerce-Settings-General tab

Coupon Banner

Use the configuration panel to style your coupon banner. You can also key in the shortcode manually within your pages to display/announce the discounts likewise. Or use the option within the panel so that we can inject it into the respective pages.

You are provided with a customize panel by which each constituent of the banner can be modified to suit your needs. Toggle buttons are also integrated to enable/disable the visibility of an item from the banner.

How to use coupon banner shortcode?

You can use shortcodes to set up a coupon banner on your website. This can be done by embedding the shortcode manually into any of your pages or automatically by using the configuration option “Inject coupons”. Either way will ensure a coupon banner announcing the offer to your visitors.

To achieve this, simply place the shortcode in the prescribed format [wt_smart_coupon_banner coupon_id=xxx] within the respective page to display the default coupon banner. coupon_id is the post id of the coupon(created prior via Woocommerce->Coupons).

Alternatively, you can pass specific arguments/parameters along with the shortcode to override the default coupon banner appearance. Some of the predefined arguments that can be used along with shortcodes are defined in the list.

Example:

• Shortcode for default banner layout
  [wt_smart_coupon_banner coupon_id=2828]
  Displays the banner for the coupon id 2828 with the default coupon specifications.

• Shortcode with arguments
  [wt_smart_coupon_banner coupon_id=4545 banner_type=”widget” title=”End of Season Sale” description=”Avail 50%discount” position=”bottom_right” bg_color=”#8224e3″ ]
  

The above shortcode will set the appearance type as a widget with title, description, positioned to bottom right and background color as #8224e3 for a coupon with ID 4545.

Note: The styling will be overridden only for arguments explicitly mentioned within the shortcode, others will follow default settings.

Know more about how a custom coupon banner with countdown timer in WooCommerce is created.

Bulk Generate

A specified number of coupons are generated as per the matching criteria from the Coupon data section. The generated coupons can be: added to the store, exported as a CSV or emailed to the recipient directly.

• Add to store: Adds the generated coupons to the store.
• Export as CSV: Exports the generated coupons into a CSV file for future use.
• Email recipient: Emails the respective coupons to the recipients after adding them to the store. This works in combination with the Allowed email option available under usage restriction.

Once the settings are in place, assign a prefix and suffix for the coupon, if required. The coupon_code is a unique randomized alphanumeric character of length 12 which will be generated automatically. Click on the Generate Coupon button to issue coupons as per the pre-defined configurations.

Bulk generate with Allowed Emails option:

If email restriction is applied under allowed emails option, the application generates only enough number of coupons depending on whichever is the lowest value, either the coupon number or the number of emails.

For instance, consider the below scenario:

• Restrict to only two emails in the Allowed Email field of the User Restriction section as shown above:
• Enter 10 coupons to be generated in the Bulk Generation section:

Even though 10 coupons are given for generation, only two coupons will be generated and assigned to those restricted users. Alternatively, if you provide 2 coupons and 10 emails, only two coupons will be generated and assigned to the first two email ids.

Import Coupon

For a clean import, the CSV must include the header and adhere to the format as indicated in our sample file. Columns post_title and discount_type are mandatory for the import. Duplicate coupons will be skipped during import.

Importing steps:

1. Choose a CSV file from your system.
2. You can also email coupons to concerned recipients on import by selecting the checkbox. Any email addresses you entered will receive coupons once coupons are imported.
3. Click on the Upload file button. On uploading, you will  be redirected to the mapping window as shown below:

Click on Import button, the coupons will be imported into your store.

Store Credit

Smart coupon offers a comprehensive store credit functionality where the customers can easily purchase store credit, email it as a gift card for friends or use it for themselves. Store credits can be used in combination with other coupons even for multiple purchases until the value specified is exhausted or when the coupon’s life expires.

Alternatively, the plugin also allows the store owner to email personal store credit vouchers directly to customers using the Email Credit option.

Checkout our tutorial on Store Credit to know more on it.

Setup

The store credit setup consists of fields to specify the maximum and minimum range of store credit vouchers that can be purchased, select order status for which the vouchers have to be sent and provision to define the format of the store credit vouchers.

The setup consists of the following fields:

• Extended Store Credit: The extended model allows your customers to choose a template from the available options. If enabled the customers will get to choose a gifting template from the available options on the product page. This template will also be used for email. The store credit product preview will be as shown below:

The store credit email preview will be as shown below:

• Manage tax: Enabling this option discounts the credit prior to calculating the tax. The tax will be calculated only on discounted value instead of actual value. For eg, if the order value is $110 and you apply a store credit of value $100, the tax will be applicable only on $10(order total after discount).
• Purchase Store Credit
  • Associate a product: A zero priced product has to be selected from the available list.
  • Credit purchase options: Signifies purchase options for store credit. Predefined allows the admin to set specific amounts. Custom allows the customer to enter an amount of choice.
  • Set amount: Specify the predefined denomination values that must appear at the user end while purchasing store credit.
  • Minimum credit purchase: Enter a minimum value of the store credit that can be purchased using the associated product.
  • Maximum credit purchase: Enter the maximum value of the store credit that can be purchased using the associated product.
    While purchasing the store credit the minimum value and the maximum value by which the voucher can be purchased will be displayed at the front end of your store as seen in the preview.

• Email store credit on order status: Purchased store credit will be emailed only for the selected order status as either completed or processed.

Email Credit

Email Store Credit helps in managing the refunds for the order returns of your store. Using email credit, the store owner can directly send the store credit voucher via email to specific clients deserving special discounts.

Email credit consists of:

• Email Address: Key in the email addresses of the recipients in this field to send store credits individually.
• Credit Amount: Enter the store credit amount in this field.
• Description: Optionally a message can be included while emailing the voucher to the customer. You will also get the preview of the mail here.
• Individual use only: Make the store credit voucher to not use in conjunction with other coupons by enabling the option.

Once the above fields are filled in, click on send to mail the store credit vouchers to specified recipients.

Action Coupon

The Action Coupon tab is subdivided into two as Signup Coupon and Cart Abandonment Coupons.

Signup Coupon

A signup coupon creates and assigns coupons to customers automatically upon signup. In order to set up a signup coupon you will have to create a master coupon with required properties and then associate it to behave as a signup coupon.

The signup coupon window consists of the following options:

• Enable signup coupon: Enable the option to create and assign coupons to customers automatically upon signup.
• Associate a master coupon: The signup coupon will be created based on the underlying master coupon. The coupon configuration (discount percentage and other related rules) will be created based on the selected master coupon.
• Use the master coupon code as-is: When enabled the coupon code will be the same as the master coupon code. Upon successful signup, the email ids of the corresponding users will be added to ‘Allowed emails’ under the Usage Restriction section of the master coupon. When unchecked a new coupon code will be generated for every new signup. These coupons will follow the same configuration as the master coupon, the difference being a unique coupon code. The coupon code can be formatted as per the prefix/suffix/length options. If not specified it will take the format as per the General Settings.

On signing up successfully, the customer will be notified with an email as shown below:

Cart/Checkout Abandonment

Smart coupon for WooCommerce plugin helps you to create and assign coupons to customers automatically upon cart/checkout abandonment. After a definite idle time upon which the cart is abandoned, mail notification will be sent to the concerned customer along with the coupon.

To initiate a cart/checkout abandonment coupon, configure in the following manner;

• Enable abandonment coupon: Enable the option to create and assign coupons to customers automatically upon cart/checkout abandonment.
• Associate a master coupon: The abandonment coupon will be created based on the underlying master coupon. The coupon configuration (discount percentage and other related rules) will be created based on the selected master coupon.
• Idle time: Specify the minimum time (in mins) that the item/s should remain in cart for the customer to be eligible for the coupon.
• Email coupon interval: Specify the duration (in mins) after which the coupon will be mailed to the eligible customers.
• Use the master coupon code as-is: When enabled the coupon code will be the same as the master coupon code. The email ids of the eligible customers will be added to ‘Allowed emails’ under the Usage Restriction section of the master coupon. When unchecked a new coupon code will be generated for every eligible customer. These coupons will follow the same configuration as the master coupon, the difference being a unique coupon code. The coupon code can be formatted as per the prefix/suffix/length options. If not specified it will take the format as per the General Settings.

On abandoning the cart/checkout with the specified idle time, the customer will be notified with an email along with the coupon as shown below:

View Coupon from My Account, Cart, and Checkout

Smart Coupon gives a provision to view the currently active coupons, used, as well as expired coupons from the MyAccount, Cart and/or Checkout sections as shown below.

• Coupon view from My Account

• Coupon view from Cart

• Coupon view from Checkout

The user can simply click on an active coupon to redeem it from MyAccount, Cart or from Checkout.