If you have recently downloaded a Mailbeez module that supports personalized coupons, or if you are thinking about working with the Mailbeez email eco-system, this post should give you a good idea of how Mailbeez works with your store’s coupon system to create embedded, personalized coupons for its email campaigns.

As you are probably aware, Mailbeez is compatible with a lot of shopping cart systems, but what all of these different systems have in common is an inbuilt coupon admin area; a place where you may have manually created coupons for your customers in the past. This coupon admin area will be our first stop in explaining how Mailbeez links in with the store’s native coupon system.

Preparing the coupon

In order to send a Mailbeez campaign with personalised coupons, your store’s coupon area is the first place to visit. Don’t worry, you are not going to set up a thousand individual codes – Mailbeez simply requires the creation of a master template that will feed into the Mailbeez module you are using to send your email.

For the purpose of this tutorial, let’s pretend that we want to send a personalized coupon code to every customer on their birthday using the Birthday Coupon Mailbeez Module. Based on this requirement, we would follow the steps below:

1. Name your coupon ‘Birthday Beez’ or something that will remind you what it is for.
2. In the coupon code field, do not enter a code, but instead use the naming convention: template_Mailbeez_birthday’. The essential part here is the ‘template_’ text. Any coupon created with ‘template_’ written in the coupon code field will appear within the configuration area of the Mailbeez module you are using; effectively putting the coupon at Mailbeez’s disposal. For neatness, we named the rest of the coupon ‘Mailbeez_birthday’ for easy identification at a later date.
3. Do not set the valid from or expiry dates – Mailbeez will override these settings to match the email campaign configuration settings of the Mailbeez module you are using to send your campaign.
4. Enter the discount value in the discount amount field (field names might vary depending on your shopping cart).
5. Leave all other settings as they are and click update, save or create depending on your shopping cart system.

Now the coupon is set up for our campaign, again using the Birthday module as an example, we will navigate to this module in the Mailbeez dashboard, and edit its configuration details. In the field ‘Choose coupon as template’ you can now choose your newly created coupon as the coupon to use for the email campaign. Do you remember that we didn’t create a manual coupon code, instead using the ‘template’ naming structure? Well, Mailbeez will now create a personalized coupon for every recipient automatically based on this coupon master template.

For the other Mailbeez modules that support coupon code personalization, simply repeat these steps, making sure to change the coupon name, and coupon code name for easy identification later.

Viral isn’t always desirable

A personalized coupon gives you total control over your store’s discount and coupon policy, and to illustrate this, imagine if instead of using personalized coupons, you were to use the same coupon for every user. In this instance, the risk of an unwanted viral effect is enormous. Just think what would happen if that code was pasted on a forum, or shared between friends? In one fell swoop you have lost control of your store’s coupon policy, and what is worse, if you did cancel the coupon in an attempt to regain control, trustworthy customers would be penalised and would not be able to take advantage of their discount.

Safe with Mailbeez

With the personalized coupon creation ability of the Mailbeez premium modules, you not only protect your store’s discount policy, but provide a more professional image, whilst maximizing profit margins through intelligent coupon creation.