Discount subscription now before the launch of my newsletter

[FCurrie]

Hi There,

I am starting a new daily newsletter on 1st July. From then on, every subscription will have 7 day trial for a minimum fee, before the main subscription starts.

I want to start recruiting subscribers now, and plan to offer them an ‘early bird’ 25% discount for subscribing via paypal before the service starts.

Ho do I set this up in WP eStore?

My assumption is that I should set up the discounted newsletter as separate product, but I can’t figure out how to set the future start date of the service.

As ever I would appreciate your help on the best way to make this work.

Regards,

F.

[admin]

Hi, You probably should collect the only email addresses (the early recruiters) at the moment. You can create a new product and use the squeeze form and collect the users who are interested to join early or something like that.

Then a few days (lets 10 days before) before you start the newsletter, you can send an email to all these early recruiters and give them a link to a page where there is a subscription button with a special price. Or you can give them a discount coupon.

[FCurrie]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Sorry I wasn’t clear. What I really need help with, is how to technically set up a subscription for a future start date – for example, exactly the situation you describe in your second paragraph.

I want them to be able to use paypal to subscribe – for example – for 10 days before the service starts, and then to have a trial period, before the subscription defaults to their regular price.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

F.

[admin]

PayPal doesn’t allow you to create a subscription that starts on a specific date by default. Here is what you can do:

Add the extra days as trial period for the early bird subscription (this is how PayPal recommends you to do it). So for example, lets say you have a subscription product that will be offered to your *special customers* 10 day before the other one. So make this subscription product to have a 17 day trial period.

Does that make sense?

[FCurrie]

Thanks for the reply.

I understand the principle, so how do I achieve this scenario (points 3 & 4):

– the early bird period starts 10 days before the official launch (which itself includes a 7 day trial)

– if an early bird subscribes 10 days before launch, then the eStore product details are set so that they have a 17 day trial period

– if an early bird subscribes 5 days before launch, then I want them to have a 12 day trial period, so that all early bird trial period finish 7 days after launch. (Of course I really want people to be able to subscribe at any point during the early bird period)

Does this mean I have to change the trial period every day in the Product Details, or is there an automated/better way to achieve this?

Cheers,

F.

[admin]

Changing it every day for those few days is one way to do it but I don’t like it since it requires manual intervention. I could custom develop an addon plugin that can do this automatically. Let me think about this.

[FCurrie]

If the manual intervention works then at least I have an option, but an automated ‘countdown’ version would be easier and more elegant.

It would also allow you to offer a good workaround for the ‘paypal doesn’t allow future events’ challenge, as I know other people have faced similar challenges.

My launch is pretty imminent, but I’d be interested to hear more about your addon idea if there is time.

Cheers,

F.

[Author]

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