Subscription Coupon through Automated Marketing, is it possible?

[dogtownmia]

I am trying to create a marketing campaign for a smart group I created: clients who purchased a particular product and are new (within a week). It would be a coupon. I’ve successfully set up the smart group, but I am having an issue with the offer. I need it to be an offer on a subscription, and the offer has to expire within three days of the email being sent. I cannot figure out how to set this up or if it’s even possible.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @dogtownmia.  I first thought that you could create an online coupon that has an expiration date.  The problem there is that subscriptions are not something that coupons can be applied to, so that won’t work at all.  So, I’m making a couple of assumptions about how this is going to work, and I’ll outline those here.  If one or more of my assumptions is incorrect, let me know and I’ll try to modify my proposed solution.

For my solution, I’m assuming that (say) once a month you are sending a campaign to that smart group, and that they have three days to sign up for a subscription.  You can set up a subscription plan that optionally has a built-in discount.  However after three days you would have to deactivate that plan to stop further enrollments. This is because there is no plan expiration date at this time, only subscription expiration dates.

In order for your customers to sign up, you would need to link them to your online site where you have made subscriptions sellable.  There are links and information on this FAQ page.

One drawback to this is that you must have multiple plans even if they are all exactly the same, since once one “expires” you don’t want to reactivate it and risk “old” customers signing up by mistake.  Thankfully you can duplicate plans so that’s a not too big an issue.  Also, you have to set a reminder for yourself to remember to deactivate the current plan manually after three days.

Do you think this could work for you?

[dogtownmia]

Thanks for your response! I appreciate it, but it doesn't quite work for what we need. 

I understand we can't use discount codes with subscriptions. So, I'm trying to see how to make this work differently. 

Is there a way to make coupons expire within a certain period from when they are sent? Instead of a fixed date?

[TheRealChipA]

Unfortunately, there is not a way to do that, currently.  Honestly, I was afraid my idea was a pretty long shot.  But it is the only possibility I could come up with.  Of course, you are welcome to submit a feature request to the Square Online team requesting that they offer more flexible expiration settings for coupons — “x days after issuance,” “x weeks after issuance,” etc.  It’s a great idea.

The only other suggestion I have is for you to go to the Square App Marketplace and check out third-party coupon/discount apps that integrate with Square.  One of this might have what you need in the short term.

Regards,