could somebody please help me with setting up this scenario:
 
I selling memberships to my organization through my ViArt store. Upon successful purchase of a membership, I'd like to offer the buyer a coupon that works for a $10 discount on one specific product in my store. How would I set this up?
 
 

Do I need to be more specific with the question to get a response? Do I need to create a product in the store that is a $10 voucher, and somehow add it as an additional product when the membership is purchased? If so, how can I create a $10 voucher and add it to a perchase for free? (if that is, in fact, the best way to do this)

Paul,
 
I recommend you do either of these two things:
 
1. Set up some coupons for 10.00 discount, maybe a few dozen of them (remember you can use an Excel spreadsheet to create them quickly and upload them, and to find out how the spreadsheet looks, make one and export it!) Then, when someone purchases, your automated response can send them one of the coupon codes. Of course, this doesn't make it a dynamic thing, but people generally won't try to abuse coupons, and you can always change them.
 
2. Set up a product for purchase with a 10% discount on it, in your products section of the admin, and have the customer buy that product by sending them a link to it in the auto-response.
 
In other words, the standard way of sending the customer an email on purchase completion can be used to send them a link to the product with an inbuilt discount, or a coupon code they can use to buy the product.
 
I use a 'warranty' coupon code, and whenever someone needs a part under warranty, I have them order from the website and enter that code on checkout. It's always the same coupon code, which never expires. Nobody has ever tried to 'game it', but I have a lot of great customers from a large international brothership of people.
 
 
If you want to get really fancy, you could set up SMS and send it that way, but that's overkill and too complicated and expensive to set up.
 
There will be other ways folks will recommend based on what I've said here.
 
Let me know if this sparks any ideas.
 
And FWIW, I agree, this is not exactly a highly active forum. I've had several questions posted for over a week with no response.
 
Ed

Paul,
 
You might also want to look at adding your coupon as a 'subcomponent' of the original product. For instance, go to the product's "Options and Components" link in admin, and click 'Add Subcomponent', you will see a screen to select a product, and in that screen, select a gift certificate or coupon that you've already set up, and that will include your coupon as a part of the order so you will just need to give it an appropriate name so the customer knows how to use it and what the 'code' is...
 
And then, one FINAL alternative...when your customers purchase something, you will see an order in your SALES ORDERS screen. You can create a status that includes a message to your customers who buy the subscription, and when you set that status on the orders, they will recieeve a nice email with a coupon code in it, and in that one, you can set a different code every time.
 
I hope all this has helped some.
 
Ed
 
Ed
Also, you could just make some 'Product Coupons'

Thanks, that got me a lot further. the method that I'm working on is setting up the discount product (voucher), as a subcomponent of the membership product. I then just hide the option from the product pages and make it default so that it's added automatically to the purchase.
 
The problem I"m having now though is that if I create a voucher for a $10 discount, I can't figure out how to add it to the cart without increasing the total by $10. The subcomponent admin allows to override the price of the voucher, but if I set it to $0, then the voucher will only redeem $0. So how do I create a voucher for $10, but sell it for free?

I think that in case of using voucher as subcompent to some product you can decrease the parent product price for the price of voucher and then the total price will be as it should be.
 
Just my two pennies.