Newsletter Discount

Newsletter Discount is a Zen Cart™ discounting module which allows you to offer reduced prices for newsletter subscribers. It can be configured to work with the native Zen Cart newsletter facility or with MailChimp.

Relevance: Zen Cart™ 1.3.0 and forward

Cost: Free, but donation appreciated

Location: Zen Cart Downloads page, under Pricing Tools.

Download: Newsletter Discount on Zen Cart Downloads Page

Current Version: 1.0

Support Thread: Newsletter Discount Support Thread

Overview:

Newsletter Discount allows you to offer a percentage discount on purchases made by someone who has signed up for your newsletter.

Newsletter Discount is an order total module; it only shows up on the second page of checkout.

Payment Page displaying Newsletter Discount

Installation Instructions:

1. Back up everything! Try this in a test environment prior to installing it on a live shop.
2. Copy the contents of the unzipped folder to the root directory of your shop.
3. Login to admin and in Modules->Order Total you will see 'Newsletter Discount' listed along with all the other modules available.
4. Click on 'Newsletter Discount' to highlight the module and click on 'Install'
5. Set the parameters according to your discounting plan.
6. If you wish, follow the guidelines in marketing to advertise your discounts.

MailChimp

MailChimp is an Email Service Provider; their business is managing commercial email. They have a very reasonable per-email cost model (unlike firms like Constant Contact, which charge per month irrespective of how little mail you send). You can integrate MailChimp into your Zen Cart using the MailChimp Newsletter contribution.

The Newsletter Discount contribution uses the MailChimp API to communicate with MailChimp and determine whether the customer is a newsletter subscriber.

Configuration of Newsletter Discounts when using MailChimp:

• You must set the Newsletter Type to mailchimp and fill in the MailChimp Userid and MailChimp Password.
• By default, all MailChimp lists you have set up are scanned. If you want to use one list only, look for the line

               $id = $lists[$i]['id'];
  

  and change it to

               if ($lists[$i]['name'] != 'Your-Newsletter-List-Name') continue;
               $id = $lists[$i]['id'];
  

  Change Your-Newsletter-List-Name to the actual name of your list

Marketing

A discounting plan reaches maximum effectiveness through advertising.

Customize the tpl_product_info_display.php file to advertise your discounts. Put the file

includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php

into includes/templates/<Your Template>/templates, and add this block of code to the page:

<?php 
  $value = "ot_newsletter_discount.php";
  include_once(zen_get_file_directory(DIR_WS_LANGUAGES . $_SESSION['language'] .
          '/modules/order_total/', $value, 'false'));
  include_once(DIR_WS_MODULES . "order_total/" . $value);
  $discount = new ot_newsletter_discount();
  echo '<div class="content" id="discountPolicy">';
  $resp = $discount->get_html_policy(); 
  echo $resp;
  echo '</div>';
  echo '<br class="clearBoth" />'; 
?>

The placement of this code is a matter of personal preference; try placing it below the product description and adjust to your tastes.

You can put this code whereever you'd like. For example, here I have placed it in tpl_modules_create_account.php so that new signups see the policy when making their newsletter choice:

Files

(new)includes/languages/english/modules/order_total/ot_newsletter_discount.php
(new)includes/modules/order_total/ot_newsletter_discount.php
(new)includes/classes/MCAPI.class.php

Learning More about Newsletters

MailChimp provides some excellent resources to help you learn about newsletters, whether or not you use their service. Start with their 65 Page Email Marketing Guide. Then take a look at their Resource Center.

To learn more about the value proposition of the MailChimp service, go to their features and benefits page.

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