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25.7. Delivery Methods for Online Gift Certificates
Electronic Delivery
By default, online gift certificates are delivered via electronic delivery. When using electronic delivery as your delivery method, you will likely want to add some placeholders for the gift certificates to your order confirmation email template and/or set up a gift certificate email template. These email templates can be found by clicking "Templates" under the "Email" menu.
In your order confirmation email templates, we suggest something like this:
{if $gift_certificates}
Here is your gift certificate information:
{foreach $gift_certificates as $gift_certificate}
Gift Certificate:{$gift_certificate->number} {$gift_certificate->amount|format:'Currency'} {$gift_certificate->expireson|format:'Date'}
{/foreach}
{/if}
The above will only populate in the order confirmation email for a guest if online gift certificates were part of their purchase. It will provide gift certificate information for each gift certificate a guest purchased in their order.
Gift certificate placeholders can also be found in the order confirmation email template's placeholder menu.
Alternatively, if you choose to use the gift certificate email template, you can send an email directly from the "View Gift Certificate" page which can be reached from "Browse Gift Certificates" page.
The gift certificate email template can be used to send just the basic information about a specific gift certificate, i.e. the amount and the gift certificate number or it can be configured to send a "printable" gift certificate so your guest can print the certificate if they are presenting it as a gift. This latter option requires creating an email design that looks like a gift certificate (The Email chapter has helpful documentation about how to create email templates and email designs.)
Physical Delivery Options
If you have the retail module with e-commerce enabled, you will also have physical shipping options available, i.e. FedEx, USPS, etc. to send gift certificates to your guests. When e-commerce is enabled, there is an additional field that lets you choose a Shipping Classification when creating online gift certificates if you have e-commerce. The drop-down options you can select come from the shipping classifications that you set up under "Manage Shipping Classifications" of the "E-commerce" section on the “Settings” page.
In the Shipping Classification field,
you can choose how you want to send a gift certificate. Using the shipping classifications, you can designate the shipping methods the guest should be able to choose for their gift certificate purchases, as well as offer pickup or e-delivery options. If you do not want to offer physical gift certificates, you can leave this field blank and send the gift certificate by the default electronic delivery methods described above.
For more information regarding shipping classifications, see our Shipping Methods and Classifications documentation page.
With the e-commerce shipping options you can configure the e-commerce shipping confirmation email template to include gift certificate information when sending guests confirmation their orders have shipped.
This email is sent from the "View Order" page. For more information on processing e-commerce orders, see the E-Commerce Order Processing section of the documentation.