How Discount Incentives Work
Adding a discount to a reminder step is an effective way to recover lost sales by providing a final incentive for customers to complete their purchase. You can set this up by defining a dollar or percentage amount within the step editor and including the specific discount merge fields in your email body. Once a reminder is sent, the system automatically generates a unique, single-use Shopify discount code tied to that specific customer and quote, ensuring it cannot be stacked with other offers. As a best practice, reserve these discounts for the final step of a sequence to allow customers multiple opportunities to buy at full price before receiving an incentive.
Overview
You can attach a discount offer to any reminder step. This is a powerful way to recover sales that would otherwise be lost — by offering a small incentive on a later reminder, you give the customer a reason to come back and complete their purchase.
Setting Up a Discount
- Open the step editor by clicking Show steps on the Saved or Finalized track.
- On the step where you want to offer a discount, enter an amount in the Discount field.
- Choose the Discount type: dollar amount ($) or percentage (%).
- In your email body, include the merge fields:
- discount_code
- discount_description
- discount_expiry
- Click Save.
How the Discount Code Is Created
When a reminder with a discount is sent, the system automatically creates a unique Shopify discount code for that customer and quote. You do not need to create the discount code yourself.
All discount codes created by marketing automation are in the format: CFG-XXXX where 'XXXX' is the reference code for the quote.
Discount Code Rules- Single-use: Each code can only be used once.
- Customer-specific: The code is tied to the customer who received it.
- Cannot be combined: The code cannot be stacked with other discount codes at checkout.
- Expiration: For finalized quotes, the discount expires when the quote expires. For saved quotes, the discount expires based on the track timing (at least 7 days).
Best Practice
Most merchants offer a discount only on the last step of a reminder sequence — for example, Step 4 of a 4-step saved quote track. This gives the customer multiple chances to buy at full price before the incentive is offered. The default best-practice templates follow this approach: no discount on Steps 1-3, and a 5% discount on Step 4.