When a subscription's order is created in Shopify, Stay AI checks to see if the subscription is eligible for any active promotions. If eligible, the promotion(s) will apply to the subscription, and if enabled, the customer will be sent the promotion email.
In this guide, you’ll discover how promotions are communicated to customers and what they look like from the customer’s perspective.
Promotion Offer Email
We've carefully crafted an email that will be sent to customers after their subscription order is completed and they've become eligible for a promotion.
For example, if you've set up a promotion for order 2, then the customer would receive the Promotion Offer Email after checking out with their initial order, as they are receiving their promotion on their second order.
Important Note:
When crafting transactional subscription emails, especially those with opt-in promotions, be sure the primary purpose remains transactional and relevant to your existing subscription relationship.
This helps maintain compliance and a positive experience for your recipients. Email laws like CASL have strict rules on commercial messages. Opt-in promos may fall under these laws.
The merge tags will render the following text for each promotion applied to the customers' subscriptions. The merge tags text cannot be edited or translated from English, but the styling can be customized to your preferences.
{{discount_promotion_block}}
"We have a special offer for you! You can add {{PRODUCT TITLE - VARIANT TITLE}} at {{SET PROMOTION PRICE}} before your next order by logging into your portal using the link below."
{{free_promotion_block}}
"As a token of our appreciation, we're including a {{PRODUCT TITLE - VARIANT TITLE}} in your next order. Enjoy!"
Discount Promotion Start/End and Free Promotion Start/End will not be displayed for customers.
They are used as markers in the code to render the merge tags correctly.
Customer Experience of Free Gift Promotions
Customers eligible for a Free Discount promotion will automatically receive the product in their subscription without taking any action.
Why a free gift?
Stay Ai’s expertise and best practice recommendations have been able to determine the success that is initiated by granting your customers free gifts.
In various case studies, we saw exponential growth and retention rates when customers received a free gift. Instead of sending free gifts to all of your customers, you are able to target those customers who need retention strategies the most!
Free Gift Promotions Email
When a Free Gift Promotion is applied to a customer's subscription, the customer will receive an email including a message about the free gift promotion.
the message included in the email will include: "As a token of our appreciation, we're including a {{PRODUCT TITLE - VARIANT TITLE}} in your next order. Enjoy!"
If the product doesn't have a variant title, then only the product title will display.
In the email builder under Promotion Offer Email, this text is created by the merge tag {{free_promotion_block}} and will render for each free promotion the customer is eligible for.
This text currently cannot be customized.
Note: Any other text outside the promotion merge tags can be customized to your liking, but the majority of the email should be transactional in nature. Merge tags in emails cannot be translated from English or edited.
This helps maintain compliance and a positive experience for your recipients. Email laws like CASL have strict rules on commercial messages. Opt-in promos may fall under these laws.
Free Gift Promotion Customer Portal Experience
When the customer visits their subscription with a free gift promotion, they will be greeted with a modal letting them know they've received a free gift and our optional promotional confetti.
The free gift promotion will show with its own special card under the one-time products section.
If the customer would like to remove the product, they can do so by clicking the three dots in the top right corner and clicking Delete.
2. If the subscription hub page is enabled, the customer will see the Free Gift promotional product added to their order with the Free Gift text and badge.
Enabling Customer Portal Confetti
In the Stay AI app, you can toggle whether or not to display a confetti animation when customers trigger the Free Gift Promotion modal or if they accept a Discount Promotion. To get started, navigate to Stay and click Customize Portal
Click Design.
Click the Confetti toggle switch to enable a confetti animation when customers trigger the Free Gift Promotion modal or if they accept a Discount Promotion.
Click Submit.
Customer experience of Discount Promotions
When a customer is eligible for a discount promotion (percentage or fixed discount), they'll be able to add the product to their subscription from the customer portal. If the promotion discounts the product to be free (100% off or a fixed value equal to or greater than the price of the product), it won't get automatically added to the customers next order like a Free Gift Promotion.
Discount Promotion Email
When a Discount Promotion is applied to a customer's subscription, the customer will receive the Promotion email including a message about the Discount Promotion.
In the promotion email, the customer will see the the following text: "We have a special offer for you! You can add {{PRODUCT TITLE - VARIANT TITLE}} at {{SET PROMOTION PRICE}} before your next order by by logging into your portal using the link below."
If the product doesn't have a variant title, then only the product title will display.
In the email builder under Promotion Offer Email, this text is created by the merge tag {{discount_promotion_block}} and will render for each discount promotion the customer eligible for.
This text currently cannot be customized.
Any other text outside the promotion merge tags can be customized to your liking, but please note that the majority of the email should be transactional in nature. Merge tags themslevs cannot be edited or translated from English.
Discount Promotion Customer Portal Experience
When the customer visits their subscription with a discount promotion, they will be able to accept the promotion offer, decline it, or decide at a later date.
If a customer clicks the Accept Special Offer button on the subscription card found under one-time products, then this model will open.
If the customer clicks Accept Special Offer, the promotion item will be added to their subscription.
If the customer clicks Decline, the promotion modal will close and the promotion card under one time products will be removed.
If the customer closes the window, they can make their decision at a later date.
2. When a subscription is eligible for a promotion, this promotion card will allow the customer to open the accept promotion modal, or the customer can remove the card by clicking the decline button.
3. Once accepted, the promotional product will display similar to that of a one-time product with additional text indicating the discount and a small badge over the top right corner of the product image.
4. If the subscription hub page is enabled, the customer will see a View Special Offers badge that they can click to be taken directly to the Discount Promotion Cards on that subscription.
Note: The opt-in cards and View Special Offers badge in the customer portal will disappear once a promotion ends or is paused, even if the customer has received an email stating they are eligible for a special offer that has now expired. If the promotion is reenabled, the opt-in cards will reappear for any opted-in subscriptions.
Customer experience of Multiple Promotions
Customers eligible for multiple promotions will receive all Free Gift Promotions and can opt into each Discount Promotion.
Multiple Promotions Email
Information about all promotions will be included in one email. The merge tags will be rendered for each Free Gift and Discount Promotion.
Multiple Promotions Customer Portal Experience
Each promotion card will be rendered under the one-time products for both Free and Discount promotions.
On the subscription hub page (if enabled), the Free Promotion Products will be added, and the View Special Offers badge will be displayed.
Syncing Promotions (Beta)
At this time, this feature is only available by request. Please reach out through the customer support chat to enable this feature.
There may be situations in which customers are eligible for a promotion, but it hasn't been applied to their subscription - since promotions trigger when a subscription successfully completes an order.
For example, you may have just created a promotion that triggers for subscriptions that have reached their second order, but customers who recently checked before that promotion was created will not have it applied yet.
Now, you can sync any active promotion, causing it to apply to all subscriptions that would have previously qualified on their last order using the Sync function on the View My Promotions page.
All orders, one per subscription: Syncing this promotion will apply to the promotion one your customers' subscriptions.
All orders, customers can be entered more than once: Syncing this promotion will apply to the promotion all of your customers' subscriptions.
Order number: Syncing this promotion will apply to your customers' subscriptions that match that upcoming order number.
Syncing only applies the promotion to Active and Paused subscriptions.
Syncing does not cause the promotion email to trigger.
Klaviyo and Promotions
We've added a metric to Klaviyo called Retextion - Promotion Applied, which you can use to trigger Klaviyo flows. These flows can replace our out-of-the-box emails, and if you don't mark them as transactional, you can create copy that is more promotional that customers can opt out of.
Tag | Definition |
free_promotion | A true/false value |
free_promotion_count | The number of free promotions |
free_promotion_itemNames | The product titles of the free promotion(s) in an array |
free_promotion_items | An array for each title containing the product ID, product name, quantity, item price, image, and more. |
opt_in_promotion | A true/false value |
opt_in_promotion_count | The number of paid promotions |
opt_in_promotion_types | The type of discount (Percent or Flat) |
opt_in_promotion_discount_values | The numerical value of the discount |
opt_in_promotion_itemNames | The product titles of the paid promotion(s) in an array |
opt_in_promotion_items | An array for each title containing the product ID, product name, quantity, item price, image, and more. |
opt_in_promotion_prices | The price of the promotion products(s) |
opt_in_promotion_links | Links that you can embed to take the customer directly to the portal to opt-in or opt-out |
What next?
Want to know how to create a promotion with ExperienceEngine?
Want to know how to manage the promotions you've created?
Click here to read our Managing Promotions article.
Have more questions?
Click here to review our ExperiencEngine FAQ article.
Looking for inspiration for building promotions?
Check out these blog articles from the Stay Ai team: