Gift Certificate with serial number?

[winning]

@all

A plugin can do the very last step (step four) listed in dlusionz’s post above – a QR code linked to the back end via smartphone, so someone can mark the gift card being used. Here is the link:

http://www.suburbanmedia.net/wordpress-plugins/wp-gift-cert

It would be very nice that all three developers (WP estore, voucherpress, and wp-gift-cert) can work together and make this a killing plugin for us We need this for a long long while… and will never mind to pay for it…

[dlusionz]

Yeah ive emailed the developer for that plugin and sent him messages on his website and his facebook and he has yet to respond, im going to ask on twitter now, I hope he checks his twitter more often than his fb/website/email…

[dlusionz]

ive also contacted mailchimp, they created a way to send QR codes in their mails, and you can specify how many times it can be used, this is controlled with their iphone/ipod touch app “Pyow!”, ive asked them if they have an api for it, explaining the context more or less, i will post their reply here, the ideal scenario here would be that mailchimp sends the email to the customer including a qrcode for the specific product and showing that it can only be redeemed once, thus the client can take the email printed or show it on their device and it can get scanned by an ios device and redeemed

more information here http://blog.mailchimp.com/pyow-mailchimps-next-iphone-app/

the blog post is from 2010, but it gives more information about how it works than the product page which is

http://www.mailchimp.com/features/pyow/

[dlusionz]

mailchimp hasnt answered me just yet ( they work mon-fri), but digging a little bit in their site makes me think its possible to do what I mentioned in the last message,

the mailchimp api 1.3 seems to allow Campaign Creation and Sending Functions

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/rtfm/

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/rtfm/campaigncreate.func.php

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/rtfm/campaignsendnow.func.php

so im thinking we could create a campaign, in mailchimp or in wp-estore and access it with wp-estore, and send it with customer and product info, and afterwards perhaps it could replicate it with different customer info, or update it and send it, whichever works best

and their mobile app takes care of the redeeming process, so if its possible, it seems it could work pretty good together

this goes without saying, but I would happily help out testing

[amin007]

Going back to your flow of events. I assumed that same flow of events too which is why I asked how will eStore know what the voucher is after it is created (so the eStore plugin can email the voucher it just created to the customer)? But it looks like the voucherpress plugin do not support this.

@dlusionz, Are you a developer?

[dlusionz]

Im not a developer, but I understand programming a little bit, however I do intend on taking some courses for php and databases, my comment for testing was more as a customer, like testing the functionality and informing of bugs and whatnot

perhaps the newer version of voucherpress with its api will be able to do it, although im starting to believe that the mailchimp method might be better since they can create a campaign, create a qr code, email it, and also redeem the qr code using their app,

what do you think ?

[dlusionz]

so ive been playing a bit with mailchimp and its QR function and I got to thinking more about the process behind the idea of integration

basically mailchimp adds the following “merge tag”/code to their email content to create a qr code:

*|QRCOUPON:MESSAGEl :#:#|*

basically it shows a message, it could be the product name, or in my case i would want the customer name and the product name, the first # is the number of times the cupon/voucher can be used, and the second # is the size of the qr code in the email, I used size 3 in my tests but 2 would probably be just fine, after all, I want it to fit on one page.

mailchimp sends a unique QR code to each email address, so in the example, every person I send the email to through mailchimp will get a unique code and be able to use the coupon the number of times that is desired, in my scenario, once

at the store/pick up point/etc, the customer brings the printed email or the email on a smartphone and it is scanned with pyow!

the pyow iphone app is linked to your mailchimp account, so you would have to sign in to the app using your mailchimp account in order to validate the coupon, it will show up as invalid if you arent on the account that created the campaign

when you scan it, the app shows the name of it, and if its valid, and if it is, you can click on “use coupon” which will mean that it can no longer be used again, in my case this is convenient since its basically proof of purchase, and since I would include their name and perhaps their email to the qr code MESSAGE part, they could prove their identity using an ID of some sort, however perhaps further down the line it would be conveinent to add the “add extra instructions for seller” as part of the qr code message as well, so the person could specify the name of the person who would be picking it up

mailchimp offers free accounts which can have up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails a month, I think this is enough for most of us, I mean if I was selling 12,000 products a month, I would not mind at all having to upgrade to another plan, the subscriber limit would be more of a limitant, but im thinking we could just delete the lists and start fresh when its starting to fill up, besides wp-estore also saves the customer info, so it wouldnt be lost

im pretty excited about this and hope it can come true!

[amin007]

Yeah I think going the mailchimp way might be better. You can tweak the eStore to send the merge variables needed to create the qr codes.

[dlusionz]

but how would we go about e-store send the purchase email through mailchimp?

[amin007]

eStore is not going to send the email through mailchimp. When eStore signs up the customer to mailchimp it can add additional merge variables for that customer indicating that this customer needs to be sent coupon codes or something (I am assuming mailchimp has an option in their API).

[dlusionz]

Im not really a developer or know what their api limitations are, but I Just asked in the google group they have for the api to see if anyone can give any useful info on this

[dlusionz]

So how could we proceed on this?, the google group people seem to think the best way would be to send the mail through mailchimp to include the order info and the qr code with the variables in it, it also seems like a good idea to me as it would include html templates which would look nicer than plain text emails, I don´t know if there are other ways of accomplishing it, but it seems like the quickest route from point a to point b, i´m also willing to pay for this customization

i´d like to know your thoughts on the whole thing

what im trying to do is basically outline here in text, pics and video, its pretty cool

http://blog.mailchimp.com/pyow-mailchimps-next-iphone-app/

but instead of sending discounts through emails i´d like to send their purchase info and redeem/validate using their iphone app which is linked to the mailchimp account in order to validate that I sent that email

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