Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2022 was the biggest ever for Shopify merchants and brands, setting a record with $7.5 billion in sales, a 19% increase from the previous year.

Most of the merchants and brands that participated in BFCM weekend ran some kind of promotion, or offer to help drive sales and meet their revenue targets.

Discounting products on your store might sound like a hit to your revenue—but when discounting is done right you can unlock higher earning potentials. Research shows people are more likely to buy when there is a discount. You can also drive more traffic to your store with a well-executed sale.

If you don't like the idea of knocking your prices down, don't worry

There are other ways to excite customers with a little something extra that won't hurt your brand equity, such as free offers (that will cost you little to nothing!)

Other benefits of discounts and deals include selling off old inventory, getting rid of popular products, and retaining customers—all of which can be achieved with the suggestions below.

We've compiled a list of 5 popular Black Friday discounts you can run on your store year-round or save for BFCM 2023.

BOGO to the bank

BOGO is simply “buy one, get one.” What you offer is up to you, whether it be a free item, a second item for 50% off, or anything in between.

Since the first product will always be full price, offering a BOGO discount can mean seeing an increase in average cart size or dollars spent.

It's a good idea to make sure you word your promotion carefully—express it as a gain rather than a loss (i.e. save $X instead of get $X off).

Research also shows high-priced items should be reflected in dollars off, while low-priced items should be shown as percent-savings.

Free gift with purchase

A free gift with purchase is a great way to encourage higher spending when you set a minimum amount needed to qualify.

Also 90% of customers say a free gift with purchase increases their brand loyalty.

However, people tend to make price inferences about free items, coming up with their own conclusions about the product’s value and making it a harder sell in the future.

To reduce this, share the price of the free product you’re offering. This way, consumers will be aware of its value and know what to expect when shopping for it individually later on.

Using a "compare at" price like that is also called anchoring, and it shows customers the full value of the product and how much they're saving—in other words, what a great deal you're giving them!

Some free gift ideas to offer in your Shopify store

Samples

By offering a complimentary sample item, you're introducing your customer to a product they may not have been exposed to otherwise, which may convert them to the item later on.

Branded items

Offering a limited-time product like a branded tote bag creates excitement; and if they're being used even once, that's free advertising for you!

‍Nordstrom frequently offers free gifts with purchase.

Free shipping FTW

Over 88% of shoppers listed “'free shipping” as the number one incentive to shop online. To maintain your margins while still offering this deal, you can integrate the cost of shipping into the price of your products. It may be beneficial to add a minimum price to qualify for free shipping, too.

Women’s clothing boutique Pink Lily offers a free shipping threshold to motivate customers to raise their order value about $99. As customers add items to cart, a notification pops up to let them know how much they need to spend to reach the free shipping threshold.

Read more on How to use free shipping to boost your sales on Shopify.

Product bundles (of joy)

This type of discount can help you get rid of excess inventory, sell not-so-popular products, increase average order value, and introduce customers to new products.

With bundled discounts, products are cheaper when bought together than they would be if all purchased individually.

It’s suggested that you take a mixed bundling approach rather than just pure bundling—this gives consumers the option to buy the bundled products individually (not just as a package deal), and has been found to be more effective than only offering products in a bundle.

You can find examples of these multipack offers on Scentsy.

One-time discounts

Perhaps you want to reward your loyalist customers or encourage shoppers to visit your store, bring in new customers with a newsletter discount, or entice people to try a new product.

Whatever the reason, one-time discounts are easy to implement and can be exciting. Authors Yi and Yoo from Seoul National University found that promotional discounts elicited positive feelings towards a brand. This is a great one to use year-round!

Time to put store promotions to action

Now that we’ve covered some of the different types of promotions that you can run, let’s try putting one into action.

A great promotion to start with that works year-round is offering free shipping with a minimum purchase. The SC Sales Motivator gives your customers a progress bar so they can easily see how close they are to reaching the minimum.

You can use this to offer free shipping on orders that reach a minimum amount, or other offers like discounts, free gifts, and more.

If you’re interested in testing out SC Sales Motivator on your Shopify store, try it free today!

We bet you will be impressed with how this “set and forget” free shipping promotion increases your AOV and revenue.