Using Gleam to Give Out Shopify Discount Codes
Run a Shopify store? Learn how you can use Gleam to give out discount codes that will drive sales and incentivise powerful actions.
If you run your own Shopify store then you know how important, and challenging, it can be to constantly attract new consumers, retain existing customers, and drive sales.
Giving out discount codes is one of the most effective ways you can incentivise purchases and drive sales from both new and existing customers.
With Gleam, you can give out Shopify discount codes in a variety of highly effective ways, allowing you to drive sales and incentivise a host of other powerful actions which will give your immediate and long-term promotional efforts a serious boost.
In this guide we'll take you through everything you need to know to give out Shopify discount codes with Gleam.
We'll cover:
Giving out discount codes for your Shopify store is a fantastic way to drive sales and incite actions which will give your promotional efforts a serious boost.
In order to give out discount codes, you first need to create them. So to help you get started with your own discount offerings we're going to take you step-by-step through the process of creating Shopify discount codes.
First up, from your Shopify admin you need to navigate to the Discounts page and click Create Discount.
When you are setting up a new Shopify discount the first thing you will need to do is create the discount code itself. There are two ways you can go about doing this.
One option is to have the code auto-generated by Shopify. You can do this by clicking the Generate code text.
Your other option is to simply create your own discount code by writing it in the text box provided. We recommend this option as it allows you to distribute a more meaningful discount code which could be relevant to your promotion.
For example, if you're offering a 15% discount you could set your discount code as 15OFFPROMO or if you're running a seasonal sale you could make it SUMMERSALE.
The name of your campaign or your company's tagline (if it's short) could go well here, too.
Once you've decided on your code, you will need to decide on the type of discount you want to offer. There are four different types of discount you can create with Shopify:
Percentage discount codes allow you to offer your customers products at a price which has been reduced by a given percentage. For instance, you could create a discount code which entitles users to 15% off the price of a purchase.
When you create a percentage discount you can choose to apply your discount to specific products, specific collections, or entire orders.
You also have the option of requiring customers to purchase a minimum number of items, or spend a minimum amount of money before they can redeem their discount code.
Fixed amount discount codes allow you to offer your customers discounts which reduce the price of their order by a fixed amount. An example of this is a discount code which gives users $10 off their next purchase.
When you create a fixed amount discount you can choose to apply your discount to specific products, specific collections, or entire orders.
You also have the option of requiring customers to purchase a minimum number of items, or spend a minimum amount of money before they can redeem their discount code.
Free shipping discount codes allow you to offer free shipping to customers who have the code.
When you create a free shipping discount you can choose to apply the discount to all countries, or only to specific ones. You can also exclude shipping rates that are over a certain amount.
You also have the option of requiring customers to purchase a minimum number of items, or spend a minimum amount of money before they can receive free shipping.
Buy X Get Y discount codes allow you to offer free or discounted products to customers who purchase a designated product.
In order to receive the free or discounted offering you can require customers to purchase a given quantity of specific products or products in specific categories of your choice.
Customers who fulfil the purchase requirements you set and provide the correct discount code will then receive a given quantity of a specific product or a product from a specific collection for free, or at a percentage discounted price of your choosing.
Once you've chosen the type of discount code you want to offer and decided on the relevant settings there are a few more parameters to set before your discount code can be activated.
You will need to decide on customer eligibility, which is essentially what customers are permitted to use your discount code.
Your choices are:
- Everyone
- Specific customers
- Specific groups of customers
Specific groups of customers you can choose from includes new customers, returning customers, email subscribers, abandoned checkouts and customers from particular countries.
You will then need to decide on usage limits. This involves determining how many times your discount code can be used in total (you don't have to set a limit) and deciding if you want to limit discount code use to once per customer.
All that will be left from this point is to set your discount's start date and optional end date.
You can then save the discount and it will become active.
Once your discount has been finalised and activated you will be ready to start distributing your discount code, and there's no better way to do this than by using Gleam's highly effective suite of apps.
Once you've created your Shopify discount codes you'll be ready to give them out to potential customers and start driving action. With Gleam, there are three main strategies you can use to give out discount codes:
If you use Gleam's Rewards app to give out your Shopify discount codes you will be able to gate your discounts behind redemption methods of your choosing. This gives you the ability to use your campaign to not only instantly give out discount codes and drive sales, but also incentivise a wide array of other powerful actions.
Take a look at this demo Rewards campaign we put together to get an idea of how you can give out Shopify coupon codes with Gleam:
With Gleam you can set the number of actions users must complete before claiming their reward, so you can choose to require users to complete any number of actions before receiving their discount code.
In addition to the actions demonstrated above, you can also use Rewards to incentivise other actions including visiting your website, watching a product video, writing a review, submitting user-generated content and more.
Check out the most effective Rewards campaigns you can run with Shopify discount codes.
If you decide to use Gleam Rewards to distribute your discount codes and promote your store then setting up a campaign is an easy and intuitive task. You just have to set some campaign parameters such as start and end dates, choose your redemption methods and add some personal touches. You can easily add your Shopify discount code into the campaign by selecting Coupon Code as the Reward Type and adding your discount code under Code/Link(s) in the Reward tab.
Giving out your Shopify discount code from within your Rewards widget isn't the only way you can use Rewards to distribute discount codes and drive sales.
You can also use a Redirect Rewards to send users right to your store with your discount code automatically applied to their cart using Shopify's shareable links.
When you create discount codes with Shopify you have the ability to generate shareable links which direct users to your store's home page or a specific product page and automatically apply your discount code to their checkout cart.
To get the shareable link to your discount, just click Promote and then select Get a shareable link.
Once you retrieve you shareable link you can easily set it as your Reward by selecting Redirect as the Reward Type and adding your shareable link under Code/Link(s) in the Reward tab.
This approach can be highly effective as you won't only be giving out discount codes, you will also be driving traffic right to your store which is a terrific way to encourage immediate sales.
Take a look at this demo Rewards campaign we put together to get a feel for how a Redirect Reward works:
This demo campaign has been setup to redirect users back to this guide, but you can use the redirect feature to send users right to your store with their discount code automatically applied to their cart.
Check out our documentation on setting up your own Rewards or get started right away!
Giving out discount codes from within your Shopify store is an outstanding way to drive immediate sales and convert website visitors into customers. Gleam's Capture app allows you to distribute discount codes from inside your store by creating smart opt-in forms which offer your discount code to users who sign up to your mailing list.
This will help you not only drive sales with a discounted offering, but also help you build a mailing list of highly relevant users which will give your email marketing, and overall promotional efforts, a serious boost.
Gleam offer in-depth customisation options so you can design your Capture to perfectly suit all your needs. To give you an idea of what your own Coupon Capture could look like take a look at this example:
Other ways you can use Capture to distribute discount codes include creating Exit Intent Coupons which are triggered when a visitor is about to leave your site:
And Abandoned Shopping Cart Coupons which offer discounts to users who are about to abandon the items in their cart and leave your store:
For more ideas on using Capture to give out Shopify discount codes check out our helpful guide.
With Gleam, setting up your own popup coupon is a breeze. You can design your own Capture with our sleek and intuitive system, add your Shopify discount codes, decide exactly when you want your coupon popups to be triggered and easily integrate your Capture with a breadth of email providers.
Check out our helpful documentation here for setup instructions or get started right away!
One of the most effective strategies for generating awareness, engaging an audience and driving powerful, relevant actions is running a contest or giveaway and offering up your own product as a prize.
With Gleam's Competitions app you can also use your contest or giveaway to give out your Shopify discount codes to all entrants. This will help you drive additional sales and make participation in your Competition all the more enticing.
When you run your campaign with Gleam, offering up a Shopify discount code to your entrants is a simple task. There are three key approaches you can take to giving out discount codes to competition participants:
One terrific approach is by creating a custom post entry email containing your Shopify Discount Code which are sent to everyone who enters your Competition.
Take a look at this demo we put together to see what your own Competition could look like with Gleam:
You can then give out your discount code to entrants with a custom post entry email like this:
Custom Post Entry Emails are available to users on Business plan and above.
Another approach you can take to give out Shopify discount codes to Competition entrants is using a Post Entry Redirect to give users who complete every action a discount and send them right to your store.
When you create discount codes with Shopify you have the ability to generate shareable links which direct users to your store's home page or a specific product page and automatically apply your discount code to their checkout cart.
To get the shareable link to your Shopify discount, just click Promote and then select Get a shareable link.
Once you've retrieved your shareable link, just apply it to your Competition. All you have to do is activate Post Entry Redirect under the Post Entry tab of your campaign and insert the shareable link.
This approach allows you to reward users with a discount code once they have completed every entry method in your Competition which is in an outstanding way to incentivise further action, maximise the effectiveness of your Competition and ultimately drive sales.
Take a look at this demo Competition we put together to get an idea of how post entry redirects work. Note that you have to complete all of the actions in order to be redirected:
This demo campaign has been setup to redirect users back to this guide, but you can use the redirect feature to send users to your store with their discount code or anywhere else.
Post Entry Redirect is available to users on Pro plan and above.
You can also use your contest or giveaway to distribute discount codes by using Gleam's Coupon and Visit actions.
Using the Coupon action is the easiest way to distribute discount codes from inside your competition.
All you need to do is select the Coupon action and add your coupon code.
You can also use the Coupon action to offer links as a reward. You can use coupon links to provide users who unlock your coupon action with your shareable link which will take them to your store with your discount code automatically applied to their cart.
Incorporating this type of coupon action into your campaign is as easy as selecting the Coupon action, selecting Link under Type and adding your shareable link as the Link URL. This approach is a great way to give out discount codes and encourage future sales while also driving additional contest entries.
With Gleam, you can lock certain actions until users have completed a designated number of other actions. You can easily do this using the Actions required option when you set up your entry methods.
This means you can lock your Coupon action (and thus your discount code) until entrants have already completed other actions. The chance to unlock your discount code will provide users with extra incentive to complete additional actions and help maximise the effectiveness of your campaign.
In addition to being an outstanding way to give out discount codes and encourage sales, contests and giveaways are also a highly effective tactic for engaging your audience and driving an array of powerful actions including email signups, social media interactions, website visits, reviews, referrals, content creation and much more.
Check out our documentation for setup instructions or start running your own giveaways now!
Once you've created your campaign to give out Shopify discount codes you will need to install it in your Shopify store.
There are several ways you can install Gleam in your Shopify store, we're going to walk you through each of the options:
Gleam has partnered up with Shopify to allow for simple and seamless integration within their platform. When installing a Competitions or Rewards campaign in your Shopify store, you will first need to visit the Shopify store to install the Gleam app. Note that the integration service is part of your plan so there are no extra charges.
You will then see the Gleam Competitions app installed inside the Shopify admin area:
Once you authorise the application you will need to create a Gleam account, we pre-populate as much of the information as we can:
Once you are inside Gleam you will see that the Shopify App is installed in your Settings/Integrations:
Once you've installed the Gleam app in Shopify you have several options for installing your Rewards or Competitions campaigns within your store:
When you run a Competitions or Rewards campaign with Gleam, you have the option of automatically creating a page inside your Shopify store with the campaign embedded automatically. You can easily do this by selecting Shopify Page under the Install Options tab of your campaign.
You can edit the content of the page in the pages area of your Shopify admin area.
This installation option allows you to quickly and easily set up a dedicated landing page for your campaign which you can drive traffic towards.
You can also manually install your Competition or Rewards campaign on an existing page on your website.
To do this you will need to select the Embed in a Page or Blog Post option under the Install Options tab of your campaign.
You can then paste the embeddable code into your Shopify page to install your campaign on any page you choose. In order to do this, you need to make sure that you select the Show HTML editor.
Manually installing a Competition or Rewards campaign in an existing page is a great way to present your campaign to users at the perfect moment and drive action.
One of the best ways you can do this is by installing a campaign on your post checkout page. This is fantastic for engaging your consumers, driving further action from highly relevant users and retaining customers.
You can drive future sales by giving out discount codes with a post checkout Rewards campaign, encourage an array of actions with a Competition or do both by running a giveaway and offering discount codes to all entrants.
Find out everything you need to know about embedding Gleam in a page on your Shopify Store.
If you are on Gleam's Business Plan or Premium Plan then you have the option of running your Rewards campaign or Competition in a popup tab on your website. This is an incredibly effective way to present your campaign to users at the perfect moment to drive sales and a whole lot of other powerful actions.
When you run a Competitions or Rewards campaign in a tab, you have many different options for when you present your campaign to users:
- When users reach a particular page such as a product information page or a post checkout page.
- When users click a button.
- When users enter a page using a hashtag trigger e.g. https://yoursite.com#coupon. This gives you the ability to share links to your website which will trigger the campaign.
- When users show exit intent.
To setup your campaign in a tab, just select Add a Tab to Your Site under the Install Options in your campaign. Then, style your tab as desired:
Finally, insert the tab code before the final body tag in your theme.liquid file on Shopify.
Find out everything you need to know about running Gleam in a tab on your Shopify Store.
Once you've created your Capture, installing it on your Shopify store is incredibly easy. In fact, all you need to do is paste a single line of Javascript into your website template.
You can find the install code by clicking the Install Code button at the top of the Captures tab. This will give you the Capture tracking code for your site as well as some instructions on how to install it.
You then need to insert the installation script before the closing head tag in your website's template or theme. If you're unsure exactly where to put the installation script here's some sample code that shows exactly where in your header to insert it.
Once this code is installed on your Shopify store you can completely control all your Capture campaigns from within the Gleam interface. This means you can test as many ideas as you want without technical help or even having to replace the script.
When you have installed your Capture on your Shopify store it will be time for you to start using Gleam's behavioural rules to determine exactly when you use Capture to present your discount codes to customers.
There are a number of powerful locations and situations you can trigger your Captures in which will help you grow your mailing list and drive a lot of sales.
Running a Capture which offers discount codes on your homepage is a terrific way to grow your mailing list and encourage visitors to consider making a purchase from the moment they enter your store.
Another great location to run your Capture is on a product page. This approach allows you to target users who have already shown a clear interest in your products and give customers that little but of extra motivation they might need to make a purchase.
Offering discount codes to customers on your post checkout page is a great way to retain customers and promote brand loyalty. By offering discounts on future purchases you will be able to sign highly relevant users up to your mailing list which will give your future promotional efforts a boost and help develop loyal customers.
Installing your Capture on a post checkout page (or any other page) is an easy task with Gleam. All you have to do is use the Current URL rule and set your Capture to trigger when a user reaches your post checkout page.
For example, if the URL of your post checkout page is https://yoursite.com/post-checkout you could set up the following behavioural rule to trigger your Capture when users have successfully made a purchase:
Find out how you can use post checkout coupons to boost customer retention and drive other actions.
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Ahron Burstin
Ahron is a Growth Marketer at Gleam. Shoot him a Tweet if you got something out of this post ☺