Subscription reminders and messages

I'm trying to set up reminders for Subscribers to renew their subscriptions (those coming up for renewal and those that have already expired) however having a great deal of difficulty finding documentation that will help.

I have read the chapter in the CBSubs manual, but it says this task is performed on my server itself? Can you please point me to any documentation that will help with this. I'm running cPanel and presume it would be set up through this?

I think I have successfully set up the cron tasks on my server, but unsure how to go about configuring the tasks I want actioned in CBSubs?
Ideally I would like to send renewal reminds 1 month before expriry and 1 week before. Then one to let them know their subscription has expired. How/where do I go about doing this?

I have made progress... I can manually send out the reminders by clicking on the test links provided under Automation Settings and still working on automating the process using a cron job on my server.

The emails have been sent to those subscriptions that have expired and those coming up for renewal. I have set up 4 mailers..

Renewal Reminder (1 week)
Renewal Reminder (1 day)
Expiry Notice (7 days)
Expiry Notice (4 weeks)

Do the emails sent today get resent to the same users if I trigger the Automation settings again? I don't want subscriber to get the same email twice!

Finally, I have an error with one of my substitutions in the emails I'm sending. Can you please provide me with the correct substitution for a subscriptions Due Date (a list of possible substitutions would be very helpful for future reference).


Dear Peter Darwin,

Your CrewCare Membership for Member No.621 is due for renewal on [DUE DATE].

CrewCare's most significant contributors are its members, without whom it cannot acheive its vision. Your ongoing Membership helps ensure the organization can continue it's day to day operations and expand its reach and industry collateral.

Please visit crewcare.org.au and login with your username peterdarwin and password. Go to your profile view and click Renew Now.

Best wishes,
The CrewCare Team.

I have made progress... I can manually send out the reminders by clicking on the test links provided under Automation Settings and still working on automating the process using a cron job on my server.

You'll need to setup a wget or cURL CRON job on your server. We can't help with this though and you'll need to contact your host. Generally hosts are using cpanel and should be relatively easy to setup from there.

Do the emails sent today get resent to the same users if I trigger the Automation settings again? I don't want subscriber to get the same email twice!

Depends on how you've configured your mailer, but generally no it should not and you should be testing this with a test user. The easiest way to test mailers is create a test user, give them a subscription from backend, then modify their subscription within CBSubs > Subscriptions by clicking the # under the Id column and adjust their expiration date, etc.. as needed to fit within your mailer timeframe. Next in your mailer under Groups set "Users (Users ids, comma-separated if needed)" to the user id of your test user. This will allow you to test without risking spamming your users with emails.

Finally, I have an error with one of my substitutions in the emails I'm sending. Can you please provide me with the correct substitution for a subscriptions Due Date (a list of possible substitutions would be very helpful for future reference).

A list of available substitutions outside of your normal CB substitutions is under the Basic tab within your mailer. Below "Message body" parameter more specifically you'll see "Substitutions" fieldset. Due date is just the expiration date so you'd use [SUBSCRIPTION_EXPIRY_DATE].