Free gifts are used by many online stores to drive conversions and AOV. Although setting up these promotional offers can be challenging for many store owners and eCommerce managers.

Free Gift With Purchase (FGWP) promotions are among the most reliable and powerful methods to boost conversion rates, increase the average value of orders, and make shopping an unforgettable experience for the shoppers. Customers love to be rewarded. A carefully crafted complementary offer can bring joy to the customers, along with guiding them towards their desired buying behaviors. Shopify provides merchants with many ways to build a free gift offer, from simple discounts to more advanced solutions through Shopify Scripts.

In this guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know about running a successful FGWP promotion on Shopify.

What Is a Free Gift With Purchase on Shopify?

FGWP is among the most effective promotional strategies used by sellers on online stores. In this, customers receive a product at no extra cost when they make a purchase, meeting certain conditions like:

• Minimum spending amount

• Minimum number of products

• Specific collection

• A certain customer journey

A Free Gift with Purchase is a way of incentivizing and complementing the customer’s purchase, providing them with some value, like a full-sized product, a sample, or a set of testers.

Some examples of common FGWP offered by brands:

• But 3 shirts, and get a belt free.

• But products worth $100, and get a lotion free.

• Buy a pack of 6-pack of Soft drinks, and get a sparkling water free.

Why Offer a Free Gift With Purchase on Shopify?

It is becoming very challenging in today’s competitive marketing to stand out as a brand. In this competitive market, FGWP remains the most effective way to create a unique and memorable shopping experience. It easily captures the attention of customers and drives more conversions. Brands can easily differentiate themselves from their competitors by adding an unexpected bonus to the customer’s shopping journey.

FGWP encourages customers to spend more than what they’ve originally planned so that they can qualify for the reward, along with elevating the perceived value of the transaction. This helps directly boost the average value of the order. It also helps strengthen the lifetime value (LTV) of the customer. This happens as FGWP creates a sense of appreciation and delight in the minds of customers, which in turn encourages repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.

FGWP is a low-risk way of introducing your customers to a new product that will lead to potential sales in the future.

You can also reduce the abandonment of the cart by offering a complementary gift to the customers, tempting them to follow through with their purchases rather than leaving the site.

2 Ways to Add a Free Gift on Shopify

1. Using Shopify Discount Rules

Shopify’s native discount feature offers merchants a simple, quick, and cost-free solution to boost their sales. FGWP using Shopify’s native feature can be easily set up without any coding or technical expertise. It is ideal for beginners or small businesses.

There are some basic conditions, like a minimum spend or purchase of specific products. If there is a promotion like Buy X Get Y, this promotion can assign a free product without relying on any third-party apps.
Suppose you want to set up a free gift with purchase on Shopify by using the built-in discount features on Shopify. In that case, you have to navigate to Discounts, then choose Create Discount, then choose Buy X Get Y offer, and eventually set it as an Automatic discount. Configure your criteria under “Customer buys”, for example, a minimum spend or specific product requirement, and then assign the free gift under “Customer gets.”

Note:

There’s a limitation on native Shopify’s discounts. To activate the promotion, customers have to manually add the gift item to their cart.

Why you should choose this:

• Beginner-friendly

• Easy to set up

2. Using Shopify Apps

In Shopify’s built-in Buy X Get Y discount, customers have to manually add the gift to their cart. In this, there is a chance they may forget to skip adding the gift to the cart. Shopify third-party apps help automatically detect when the qualifying conditions are met and add the gift in real-time. They offer flexibility, supporting tiered gifts, product- or collection-specific promotions, dynamic progress bars, and customer choice for free items.

This helps:

• Reduce confusion at checkout

• Improves average order value

• Boost conversions

• Improve shopping experience

Third-party Shopify Free Gift apps like Monk Free Gift, provide detailed reporting and analytics. This helps track redemption and campaign performance. These apps also offer features that are lacking in Shopify’s native discounts. This makes them a preferred solution for brands that want to maximize the impact of their FGWP promotions. These apps are far more effective than Shopify’s native discount. This is because these apps provide a seamless, automatic, and conversion-friendly experience.

Why you should choose Monk Free Gift App:

• Beginner-friendly

• Easy to set up

• Highly customizable

• No coding expertise required

• Allows custom fixes

How to Add a Free Gift With a Specific Product Purchase

A targeted promotional strategy offers customers free gifts with the purchase of a specific product or upon spending a minimum amount. In this strategy, brands not only give their customers incentives but also highlight their specific products. Businesses can influence the purchasing behavior of customers by directly linking a gift to a product. They also introduce customers to complementary or new products, increasing the perceived value of the transaction.

1. Install and Enable the Monk App

   • Install Monk from the Shopify App Store.

   • Ensure the Monk widget is active.

To activate the Monk widget on your store:

• In Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes > Customize.

• On the left sidebar, click App embeds.

• Locate the Monk widget and enable it. This ensures the widget functions correctly across your store.

2. Create a New Offer in Monk

• Go to the Monk Dashboard.

• Click Create a New Offer.

• You can either browse pre-made offer templates or make your own.

• Under the Free Gift tab, select “Get a gift when a specific item is purchased”.

3. Choose How the Gift is Added

With Monk, you can choose how to add the gift to the basket.

• Auto-Add: Ideal for gifts without variations, automatically adds the gift when the conditions are met.

• Manual Select: Ideal for gifts that have size, colour options, i.e, variants, a selection widget lets buyers select the gift.

The auto-add option automatically adds the free gift to your basket. You can also add the manual selection widget to the cart, checkout (Shopify Plus), the product page, or even as a pop-up. The manual selection widget is fully customizable and integrates seamlessly with the store’s theme.

4. Setting up the Free Gift with Purchase Offer

Naming your offer is crucial, as it’s not only for ease of identification, but the name also appears as a discount when the offer is applied.
After setting up the name, there are 2 parts to creating an offer inside Monk:

1. Rules and Placement:

• Choose where the offer appears: the cart or the checkout.

• With Monk, you can choose whether to show the offer details in a banner on the product page, the cart, or the checkout (Shopify Plus).

• Under the rule section, 'show offer if' -> 'specific product' -> 'contains any' -> click on the search bar saying 'select product' to select the product that will trigger the gift when added to the cart, or your primary product.

• Given Monk's powerful eligibility engine, you can combine more conditions into a single offer to make the offer more precise, for example, get a free conditioner with shampoo above $20, a specific product, and a cart value range.

• Under 'Gift products', choose the product you want to give as a gift, and select the desired quantity. You can also combine it with other active Free gift offers on your store.

2. Text & Customization:

Monk is a highly customizable third-party app that helps cater to your store requirements, brand guidelines, and any ongoing campaigns. It also allows customization of the text content, font, size, style, color, and media. It also offers whether or not to show the price of the free product.
Monk supports customization for different layouts, such as desktop and mobile. This makes purchase flow more personal, relevant, and frictionless for buyers. This eventually leads to higher trust and better conversion rates.

Best Free Gift Apps on Shopify

Monk Free Gift+BOGO+CartUpsell

Monk stands out as a reliable all-in-one tool for running Free Gift With Purchase promotions on Shopify. It’s designed to make gifting feel effortless, both for merchants and for the customers, while enhancing the shopping experience and pushing AOV.

What makes Monk great for Free Gift With Purchase:

• You can set up both auto-added gifts and “choose your gift” experiences depending on what feels right for your store.

• Due to Monk’s powerful eligibility engine, gifts can be triggered by cart value, specific items, collections, customer tags, location, and even language, giving you a lot of control over

• Using Monk, you can construct tiered gifting to gamify your cart, so customers can unlock better gifts as they spend more.

• Monk lets you display gift prompts across all the crucial and decision-making points of the store, product pages, cart, cart drawer, checkout (Shopify Plus), and even via pop-ups.

• You can customize all the gifting widgets and banners using Monk, from colors to copy, so it blends naturally with the rest of your store.

• Monk gives you the choice to keep the cart clean by removing the gift if the shopper no longer qualifies, and letting the customer remove the gift if they wish to.

• Requires no prior coding knowledge, with 24*5 support available with custom fixes if required.

• Monk seamlessly integrates with Shopify’s native themes, providing a clean buying experience for the customers.

EG Auto Add to Cart Free Gift

EasyGift makes it simple to add free gifts or upsells to the cart automatically.

Key features:

• Auto-add gifts when the cart reaches a certain total or contains specific products.

• Run BOGO and Buy X Get Y promotions.

• Schedule offers to activate at specific times.

• Offer free gifts based on product collections or specific items.

• Set up cart-based upsells and product add-ons through an intuitive interface.

SP: Free gift with purchase

Salepify helps increase average order value with features, such as free gifts, cart upsells, and volume discounts.
Salepify automatically adds or removes the free gifts from the cart based on the seller’s conditions. This will promote your new products, clear your inventory, or offer your samples to the customers. Cart upsells provide customers with rewards.

Key features:

• Free gifts based on purchase quantity, order value, or specific products.

• Cart upsell with a progress bar that offers rewards, such as gifts, free shipping, or order discounts.

• Allows customers to manually select the rewards with auto-add or auto-remove.

• Volume discounts on the purchase of multiple products.

• Customizable gift displays including icons, text, and animations.

Corner Cart Upsell+Free Gift

CornerCart is a lightweight, high-speed slide cart drawer. This gift app is designed to help stores lift AOV without affecting the shopping experience. It supports free gifts with purchase, cart upsells, timers, free shipping bars, and auto add to cart using real inventory, so merchants never have to create placeholder $0 products. It is built for peak-season stability. This tool is popular during BFCM, where fast performance directly impacts conversions.

Key features:

• Give a real inventory product as a free gift.

• Multi-tier progress bars help unlock gifts based on cart value.

• Smart in-cart upsells provide recommendations for items that are frequently bought together.

• One-click upsells for add-on services.

• Provides additional conversion tools.

Monster Cart Drawer & Free Gift

Monster Cart transforms the cart into a customizable, reward-driven experience, boosting the revenue. It supports native-feeling promotions such as gifts, BOGO, tiered discounts, and related product recommendations. All of these promotions are presented inside a branded slide cart. It helps shoppers feel rewarded with progress bars, urgency elements, and value-adding upsells.

Key features:

• Fully customizable slide cart drawer.

• Progress bars that unlock free gifts, discounts, promotions, or free shipping.

• One-click upsells for shipping protection, warranties, and priority processing.

• BOGO and Buy More Save More tiered discounts.

• Recommendations on Frequently Bought Together products.

Tips for Running a Successful Free Gift Campaign on Shopify

You may feel it’s simple to create these campaigns, but a poorly planned FGWP promotion can undermine your strategy and waste your efforts. You must keep the following things in mind while making your FGWP offers:

Strategize the offer:

• Choose a relevant, complementary, and appealing gift to increase perceived value.

• Ensure the gift matches your product’s use case.

• The thresholds must be reasonable to encourage the customers to buy more.

• Decide whether the gift should be added manually or automatically.

• Place the gift offer strategically, on product pages, in the cart, and during checkout.

Test, Optimize, and Maintain a clean purchase flow:

• Test different gifts, thresholds, and placements. This helps identify what drives the highest customer engagement and conversion.

• Keep the eligibility rules clear and precise.

• Regularly monitoring inventory, to ensure the gift product doesn’t go out of stock.

• Review performance data regularly. This will help you regularly adjust your strategy.

How to Promote Your Free Gift Offer

Successfully running a FGWP promotion about choosing the appropriate gift and also about placing the ads so that the customers have the knowledge about your promotional gifts. If these promotions are done effectively, then they’ll help increase visibility, boost engagement, and maximize conversions. You must announce the promotional offers across your main communication channels. This helps build customer anticipation even before the promotion goes live. You can create urgency by highlighting the:

• Gift value

• Eligibility criteria

• Limited nature of the offer

You must place eye-catching notices on your website in the areas that may create a high impact on customers, such as:

• Announcement bars

• Homepage hero banner

• Welcome pop-ups

• Product pages

• Cart drawer

These placements make sure that even if your customers land on the product page, they don’t miss your message. To properly communicate your offer, you must use clear visuals and consistent messaging. If you’re using paid ads, you must incorporate a Free Gift into your creative assets. This helps attract value-driven customers and increase click-through rates.
You must keep reminding your customers about your campaign through:

• Retargeting ads

• Abandoned cart emails

• On-site pop-ups

Scarcity elements, such as low-stock notices and countdown timers, should be used very carefully. This prevents customers from being overwhelmed, encouraging timely purchases. You must maintain consistent, well-timed communication with your customer. This will increase your brand value and exclusivity of the offer. This makes customers feel compelled to buy before the offer ends.

Conclusion

To make Free Gift with Purchase promotions a powerful booster, they must be executed with integration, clarity, and the right tools. The success of the campaign depends on strategic alignment, the choice of the right gift, setting clear conditions, and effective promotions. FGWP should be combined with proper execution and ongoing optimization to increase conversions, average order value, and build long-term.
The right setup and continuous reinforcement can make your gift program more than a promotion. It will enhance the customer experience and strengthen the brand's value at every step of the customer’s purchase journey.