Automatic Single-Use Coupons Creation & Sending
Imagine a world where:
- You have a user/customer whose free/paid plan is about to end.
- You want to offer them an incentive to upgrade to a paid plan/renew a paid plan (when you intentionally didn't set up auto-renewal in the first place).
- You automatically send them an email X days before the end of their plan, with a coupon that can be time-limited, single-use, only available to them, and subject to a minimum spend (the latter being relevant for stores).
But for this scenario to work:
1/ FluentCart would need to create coupons programmatically.
Example use cases:
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X days before the end of a specific free or paid plan.
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X days after the user created their WordPress account (this could also be used for a welcome coupon on day 0).
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X days after the user's last purchase (relevant for stores).
@Fluent Community members: feel free to share your own use cases!
2/ Integration with FluentCRM would make it possible to automatically send the email containing the coupon.
3/ FluentCRM's tagging feature could also be leveraged to narrow down which users receive the coupon, if desired.
4/ The coupon should be available as a shortcode, so it can be displayed in the user dashboard (for example, in a promotional banner, possibly with a countdown timer).
Would the FluentCart team make this dream scenario possible?
First, I wonder why someone would do that? If you want to give them a discount for being a loyal member, do so - no coupon needed. For software subscriptions I like the model where you pay 100% for ths first year and get 20% discount on updates. That honors loyalty instead of coupons usually just honor new clients. That’d be a use case I am after.
Second, I bet that automatically creating coupons would already work with some lines of PHP. But we cannot create a coupon for a specific person, i.e., which only works in conjunction with a given email address. It would prevent sharing coupons on the internet.
Third, I fully agree to the other use-cases (sending a coupon for upsells to existing clients).
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Andre Daus
- "Why someone would do that?" It's persuasion marketing. Studies have shown that this works better than an automatic discount because the user has to take a micro-action to claim the offer. This psychological trigger often increases conversion rates.
- "If you want to give them a discount for being a loyal member, do so - no coupon needed." I'm curious: how do you automate a personalized discount in FluentCart at the end of a plan without using a coupon? If there’s a built-in way, I’d really like to know.
- "For software subscriptions I like the model where you pay 100% for the first year and get 20% discount on updates. That honors loyalty instead of coupons usually just honor new clients. That’d be a use case I am after." That’s actually a great additional use case to keep in mind.
- "I bet that automatically creating coupons would already work with some lines of PHP. But we cannot create a coupon for a specific person, i.e., which only works in conjunction with a given email address." That's why I made this feature suggestion — a no-code solution offered directly by FluentCart. Most users wouldn't know how to do so using PHP (even with AI).
- "It would prevent sharing coupons on the internet." Yes, that’s precisely the goal: a loyalty coupon that only works for this specific customer because we value their relationship.
Laurent Fa Many businesses focus heavily on attracting new clients — often through bonuses or coupons. It’s almost an obsession. But what if the real opportunity lies in appreciating existing clients instead of chasing new ones?
When a company constantly needs discounts to bring people in, it usually points to a deeper issue — either the offer doesn’t resonate as intended, or the pricing is off. Early adopter discounts make sense, but ongoing discounts can train customers to expect them, which weakens both trust and perceived value.
I once bought a premium plugin with a WordCamp discount (30% off). Later, when I renewed at full price, I saw the same discount offered again — but only for new customers. That kind of pricing logic sends a clear message: loyalty doesn’t matter. Even though it was a great plugin, I never renewed again.
Discounts honor non-clients. Loyalty pricing honors existing ones. If a product only sells with discounts, the pricing strategy — or the relationship with customers — needs a rethink. We should focus less on conversions and more on creating clients who advocate for our products.
On another note: I’m not a fan of the “no-code-everything” trend. Plugins shouldn’t aim to do everything for everyone. Instead, they should be built for extensibility — let developers or advanced users extend functionality through extensions or code. That’s how we avoid feature bloat and still give users exactly what they need.
Features serve a few users. Extensibility serves all.
My client wants this feature as well. It's very common. For example, a new email subscriber receives an offer of a discount that is only available to them for 14 days as a new subscriber. For urgency.
So this would need to track with their sign-up date. ie: an offer that counts down from a trigger date, then is invalid after the deadline.