CasperVend 2/Updates
Not for Marketing / Newsletters!
Just a friendly reminder that the "Updates" feature in CasperVend is NOT to be used for marketing.
You may use it to send important information about products your customers have purchased. You may not use it to advertise new products, releases or other unrelated things.
We will revoke access to this feature from those who abuse it.
If you want to send marketing newsletters, then we (currently) recommend a stand-alone option, such as Fred Allandale's Subscriber Kiosk system.
Edit your product
Once you've placed your updated item in your dropbox, you need to update your product to point to the new item.
You only need to do this if your new item has a different name from the old one.
- 1) If you haven't already, put your new item into your dropbox.
- 2) Log in to caspervend.com
- 3) Click the "products" tab
- 4) Find the product that you are updating (you can search if you need to), and click [Edit] on that product
- 5) Near the top, in the "Item" row, next to "Deliver an item" - click [Change Item]
- 6) Find your new item and click [Select] next to it
- 7) Scroll right to the bottom and hit [Save]
Sending Product Updates
Sending product updates to customers is really easy!
- 1) Log in to caspervend.com
- 2) Click the "updates" tab
- 3) If you are updating a product, choose:
- "Deliver to customers who have received..." and select the relevant product from the pulldown
- 4) Optionally you can choose to send it as a test delivery - to make sure everything works - or you can also send it to your affiliates.
- 5) Input your message into the next line.
- 6) The last two lines are for the items to be delivered. Maximum of 2 items. Choose the item(s) to be delivered from the pulldowns.
- 7) Click 'deliver now' and the message run will begin.
- BE CERTAIN EVERYTHING IS SELECTED PROPERLY!
- Message / attachment delivery is NOT able to be stopped once it begins!
Note: You do NOT need to stay on the updates page for updates to be sent. You can move to another page or log out and delivery will continue as normal.
How Messages Are Sent
All messages are sent out through random CasperVend items that are rezzed inworld so that they don't overload a single device.
Number Pending Is More Than Expected
This represents the number of "things" being sent - not just the product, but also any text-based messages and/or notecards that you're including in the update as well.
For example:
- 1 product + 1 notecard = 2 items
- 1 product + 1 local chat message + 1 notecard = 3 items
Can I track when updates have been sent?
Items sent via the UPDATES tab do not wait for an online check (because that would add excessive load to the servers) - so they are all sent as soon as the grid and communications allow.
You cannot depend on what customers say they did or did not receive when it comes to updates. Most people who miss it, won't get it because one of the typical three reasons:
- They don't notice the sending
- Don't watch their screens (and it times out)
- It gets lost when offline messages get capped.
Not the "Update" information you were looking for?
If this is not the update information you were looking for, see the CasperTech upgrades & updates page instead.
If you want the products to update automatically, you need CasperUpdate instead.
FAQ / Troubleshooting
- Q. I tried to send out an update but on the update page it just says "You currently have __ items pending in the update queue"
- A. Updates are sent in batches, rather than all at once. This indicates that ___ will be sent after a short period of time.
- Q. Yesterday I sent updates to a product and it correctly told me 8 products were queued. I fixed an issue and sent another update today; this time it said 16 products are queued. I haven't sold twice as many of that product today, so why did the number of updates double?
- A. The message is counted as one update, and the attached product is counted as another update. So possibly yesterday you either didn't actually send a message with the product, or didn't attach the product to the message.