Remind contacts before their voucher expires

A voucher reminder is an email we send a contact a set number of days before their voucher expires, so they come back and use it. You switch it on per promotion, and from then on every voucher of that promotion gets its own reminder, timed from that voucher's own expiration date.

You don't need an automation for this. Automations can react to a voucher being created, redeemed or expired, but there's no trigger for a voucher that's about to expire. The reminder described here is the way to do it.

Setting up a reminder

Go to Loyalty → Promotions & Vouchers, open the promotion and click Reminders under Settings.
Under Expiration reminder, click Edit setting and pick one:
- Don't remind: send no reminder email to contacts about expiring vouchers for this promotion. Every promotion starts here.
- Remind contacts of expiring vouchers: then choose how many days before expiration the email goes out, from 1 to 21, and the hour, from 04:00 to 23:00. You pick a whole hour, not minutes. It starts at 3 days before expiration at 06:00. Under Voucher reminder email, pick which email this promotion sends. See The reminder email below.
Click Save changes.

The card then reads "Remind contacts about expiring vouchers", followed by when the email goes out, for example "An email will be sent 3 days before expiration at 06:00", and which voucher reminder email it uses.

A reminder needs an expiration date. If the promotion is set to Never expires, the Reminders page shows No expiration date and offers nothing to set. Pick a Static expiration date or a Dynamic expiration date on the Validity page first.

When the email goes out

The time is in your account's timezone, and the days are calendar days. With 3 days at 06:00, a voucher that expires on 20 October at 23:59 is reminded on 17 October at 06:00. Reminders go out within a few minutes of that hour.

How that works out across a promotion depends on its expiration:

Dynamic expiration date: every voucher expires on its own clock, so reminders go out a few at a time as each voucher gets close.
Static expiration date: every voucher expires at the same moment, so every reminder goes out at the same moment too.

The reminder is scheduled when the voucher is created, however it was created: an issuance, an automation, an email with a voucher attached, or codes you generated yourself. A voucher only gets one if its reminder moment is still ahead, so a voucher that expires 2 days after it's issued never gets a 3-day reminder. With a static expiration date, the settings warn you while you edit them when that moment has already passed for new vouchers. Vouchers issued earlier keep their own reminder.

Vouchers that were issued before you turned it on

Turning reminders on doesn't reach back on its own. When you save and the promotion already has vouchers without a reminder, you're asked what to do:

Only new vouchers: save, and vouchers without a reminder stay without one.
Create missing reminders: save, and schedule a reminder for every existing voucher that doesn't have one and still has enough time left. Vouchers whose reminder moment has already passed are skipped. This runs in the background and can take a few minutes.

Nothing is sent at that moment. Every reminder is scheduled for its voucher's own date.

Changing or switching off the reminder

If vouchers already have a reminder scheduled, saving a change asks about those as well.

Change the number of days or the time, and you choose between Reschedule existing reminders, which moves them to the new timing, and Keep existing reminders, which leaves them where they were. New vouchers use the new timing either way.
Switch to Don't remind, and you choose between Cancel existing reminders and Keep existing reminders. Kept reminders still go out as scheduled. New vouchers get none.

Be careful with rescheduling. Reschedule existing reminders can reopen reminders that were cancelled earlier. Turning reminders back on after Don't remind always does this for the promotion's earlier reminders, including ones you cancelled yourself, whichever option you pick when you save. Either way, contacts who already got a reminder can get a second one when the new moment is still ahead. Only do this when you're fine with that.

Setting the promotion to Never expires on the Validity page switches reminders off for the promotion, because new vouchers have no date to count back from. Vouchers already issued keep their expiration date and their reminder. If you add an expiration date back later, reminders stay off until you turn them on again on the Reminders page.

Giving one voucher a different date

Changes to a promotion's expiration only apply to new vouchers. To give one contact more time, use Change expiration on that voucher. If it has a reminder, the reminder moves with the new date, and if that reminder had already gone out and the new reminder moment is still ahead, the contact is reminded again.

Watch out: if reminders are now off for the promotion, Change expiration cancels that voucher's kept reminder. The contact won't get it.

Change expiration doesn't create a reminder for a voucher that has none. Use Edit reminder date on the voucher's Reminder tab for that: it schedules a reminder for that one voucher, on the date you pick, before the voucher expires. See Managing a single voucher: its status, tabs and actions.

Changing expiration dates through an import doesn't move reminders.

The reminder email

The email is a voucher reminder email. Each promotion picks its own under Voucher reminder email in the reminder settings. The Default email option always follows whichever voucher reminder email is marked Default in your account settings, or you can pick a specific one. Edit voucher reminder email on the Reminders page opens the email this promotion sends. That button only shows while reminders are on for the promotion.

All voucher reminder emails are listed in your account settings: click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Vouchers under Functionalities and look under Voucher reminder emails. Only admins see Vouchers there. This isn't the Settings group in a promotion's sidebar, which holds that promotion's Validity, Reminders and Limits. Use Make default to change which email is the default.

The email has to contain the voucher's expiration date and an unsubscribe link or a subscription preferences link. It can also show the contact's first name, last name and email address, the voucher's name, code, description and link, the promotion's name, your company name and social links, and a link to view the email in a browser. Reminders go out with the latest version of the email you saved, so send yourself a test from the editor before the first ones are due.

The reminder email we create for you goes to every contact of the voucher who has an email address. To send it only to contacts subscribed to a certain type, open the email, click Edit email and change Subscription type in the editor's Information step. The email's own Information page shows the subscription type but doesn't let you change it there.

While your account hasn't been approved by Leat, reminder emails aren't sent.

Seeing what was scheduled and sent

On the promotion's Reminders page, View details opens Voucher reminders. It shows how many reminders are Scheduled, Processed and Cancelled, the Upcoming reminders by send date and, once something was cancelled, the Cancellation reasons with a count for each. When some vouchers without a reminder can still get one, Vouchers without a reminder says how many would get one and how many would be skipped, with Go to settings.
Processed here is the same state that reads Sent on a voucher: the email was handed off for sending. It doesn't mean it was delivered.
On the promotion's Vouchers page, the Reminder column shows each voucher's reminder status. Hover over it to see the send date. A voucher without a reminder shows No reminder.
On a single voucher, the Reminder tab shows its status, send date and, when it was cancelled, why. That's also where you use Edit reminder date or Cancel reminder for one voucher.
On the reminder email itself, Recipients shows whether each email was delivered, opened or bounced, and Voucher reminders lists the reminders it sent.

Why a contact didn't get a reminder

A scheduled reminder is checked again at the moment it's due. It's cancelled instead of sent when:

the voucher has been redeemed, deactivated or has expired, or was deleted
the voucher isn't linked to a contact. Codes you generated in bulk get a reminder too, but it's only sent if the code has been linked to someone by the time it's due
the contact has no email address
the contact isn't subscribed to the reminder email's subscription type
your account has no voucher reminder email
your account is inactive: its open reminders are cancelled

A reminder is also cancelled when you cancel it yourself, when you choose Cancel existing reminders, when a new expiration date puts its reminder moment in the past, or when the voucher no longer has an expiration date.

For a cancelled reminder, the voucher's Reminder tab says which of these it was. The full list of reasons is in Managing a single voucher: its status, tabs and actions.

No reminder is created at all when the voucher has no expiration date, or when its reminder moment had already passed when it was issued. The Reminder tab then says the voucher never expires, or shows No reminder scheduled.