Promotion Manager for Free Products

[dcox]

Hello everyone,

I have some products that I would like to offer a promotion for that would allow the customer to choose a "free gift" if the product is purchased. The trick is, I would like the customer to choose which gift they would like. So, they buy product A, then they have the choice of ONE of product B, C, or D...

I have been playing with my promotion manager and figured out how to give them a free gift, but they do not get to choose what that gift is (I choose that when setting up the promotion). I have 3-4 "gifts" of basically the same value that I would like to offer.

Is there a promotion that would allow me to setup 3dCart such that IF product A is purchased, choose Product B, C, OR D for free?

Thanks!

[cekman]

When I was having trouble with promotions support told me I could not have any free products with ANY options. In fact they said it was best to set up a separate product record just for that type. My problems seemed to be less frequent when I only used products that didn't have options.

So - that would make it very hard to let the user select what they wanted.

Check with support to make sure this is still true.

[Luxlife]

Have you considered setting up the free products as options? They purchase the product and must choose the free product from one of the selections.

[dcox]

Thanks for the input. I will experiment with it a little more today. I have not considered setting them up as options with a price of 0.00. As long as that option could not be purchased alone, I would be fine. This would be particularly easy in this case because I am not tracking inventory of these products (they are shipped direct from the manufacturer)

Another option I thought of, which would be more cumbersome for the customer, would be to list the products they could choose and have a coupon code assigned to each one. They would decide which they wanted and manually input that code at checkout. I can see that being a nightmare though. It was the best I could come up with, but I like the options idea lux came up with.

I'll work on it more today and submit a ticket if needed. Let me know if you think of anything else. I'll let you know what I come up with.

Thanks!

[Mark]

Maybe use the Comments section, or a checkout question.
But, I like the "options" idea.
You could make the options be:

Product A with Free B
Product A with Free C
Product A with Free D

Then, the products wouldn't actually be products at all. Just a reference on the invoice of what to ship out.

[dcox]

Getting Close (I think)

Let me know what you guys think about this:

Options Example

It turns out I was able to offer more options than I had originally planned, but this seems to work. All of these options will be offered by themselves for purchase, so, I added a "FG" to the free gift ID so that it distinguishes the free gift from an actual item for sale. As I mentioned earlier, I am not tracking stock of these parts, so this works. I suppose if I was tracking stock, it could be more difficult.

This is my first attempt at options, so I am not very familiar with them. One thing I have noticed that I do not care for is the part number. It strings the main product part number together with the option part number. For instance, the Sport Basic G3 (ID: TOTRTR5321100) in the example with "Square Buckle Black Hardware Collar Strap (Black) (ID:TOFG1244611) gives the ID:

TOTRTR5321100TOFG1244611

I think I'll change the option id to "-FG1244611" to it outputs TOTRTR5321100-FG1244611. I can distinguish the numbers better that way. Do you guys with more experience with options have a better suggestion?

Thanks!

[Luxlife]

Mark's suggestion is exactly what I had in mind.