Running Promotions on Shopify Can Be an Operational Nightmare
If you’ve ever tried to run more than one discount in Shopify, you know it can be unpredictable. And unpredictable is the last thing you want when running a big promotion.
Right now, you have two options:
- You can run a single manual discount code. You can segment it and test it safely, which is great, but you’re limited to offering one discount per campaign. Plus, your customers need to manually input the code.
- Or you can run a handful of automatic discounts, stitched together with hopes and prayers. There’s no segmentation and you can’t test them in advance without pushing the sale live early. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t.
Either way, it’s a lot of work to build and monitor those setups for results that are, at best, inconsistent. And for the customer, it’s even messier: no strikethrough pricing or clear milestones. For some reason your customer has to add their gift-with-purchase items manually. Half the time, it’s hard to tell there’s even a sale running.
Yesterday’s Abra
We built Abra to solve for those challenges, and it works. Brands using Abra have seen stronger performance across the board: higher conversion, bigger carts and fewer support tickets from customers wondering why their discount didn’t apply.
Behind that performance was a simpler operational foundation. Abra makes it easy to build advanced promotions without code: multi-class tier discounts that combined free shipping, product discounts, and free gifts in a single code; multi-value discounts for those “up to X% off” sales across collections or products; and volume-based tiers that scaled automatically with spend. Promotions that used to take weeks could now go live in minutes.
Marketers could test their discounts before going live, and it showed. The customer experience was effortless: discounts appeared clearly with strikethrough pricing, free gifts dropped into the cart automatically, and on-site banners guided shoppers through each milestone.
Introducing Combinations
Abra was built to handle complex discounts. But we wanted to raise the ceiling. Then an Abra user said, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just run these three together?”
Challenge accepted.
Today, after a labour of love, we are releasing Abra Combinations. Now you can easily build multiple discounts inside a single promotion. Each one can have its own rules, triggers, and audiences, but they all work together in harmony. A single promotion can do the work of many, and it’s clean, controlled, and built for how your brand actually sells.
When a customer meets any defined condition, whether it’s where they’re shopping, how they’re buying, or what’s in their cart, the right discount activates automatically. Prices update live, banners appear, and the experience stays consistent in your online store and Tapcart app.
Every day we’re thinking up new use-cases, so here are some of our favorites:
Promotions that make sense for your markets
Brands have always had to choose between protecting margins and giving every region a consistent customer experience. With Combinations, you can finally do both.
Imagine running a global campaign where each market has its own logic. You send a single link to all of your customers, but instead of blasting them all with whatever the exchange rate is that day, you have complete control over the discounts they see: you offer $50 off $200 USD for customers in the US Market, in Canada customers are seeing $50 off $275 CAD, and in Australia your discount shows $50 off $300 AUD.
Run these campaigns on your Tapcart app too. Layer on geo-based app-exclusives to boost installs in specific countries.
These discounts are localized. Finally built for the customer. And there’s no need to lowball your offers, hoping that the money you make in one country covers the margin loss in another.
Campaign creativity without chaos
Say you’re running a major clearance event. With most tools, that one sale locks out everything else. With Combinations, it doesn’t.
Picture this: your clearance section runs up to 70% off, your new-in bundle launches with 10% off, and on select collections, you want to add a free gift. You can get them in the door with the clearance sale, but push sitewide purchases and discovery. This isn’t a clearance deal anymore, it’s a strategy. On site or in your app.
Your customer browses, adds to cart, and sees strikethrough pricing and live thresholds update as they shop. Gifts are added to the cart automatically when they qualify. Just a single, seamless journey that mirrors how people actually shop.
Gifts that play by every rule
If you work with multiple vendors or brand partners, you know the pain. Each vendor has its own rules, perks, and free gifts. A blanket 20% off discount will put you in hot water.
Combinations fixes that.
You can create vendor-specific discounts that only apply when products from that vendor are in the cart. Brand A’s collection triggers a free serum. Brand B’s collection triggers a free comb. Brand C stays full price per contract.
And, at the risk of sounding redundant, you can run this in your Tapcart app. Yes, we’re serious! Run multi-gift with purchase with ease across all of your channels.
All of your gifts coexist in one promotion. Your discount logic respects your vendor agreements and keeps your operations tight.
Promotions finally caught up to strategy
These are just some of the ways you can use Combinations. The options are endless.
Combinations doesn’t just add functionality. It changes what a promotion can be.
You no longer have to choose between protecting margins, running creative campaigns, or staying compliant with complex rules. Now you can design promotions that match your strategy while meeting your customers’ expectations, then launch them all at once.
Run your next campaign the way you actually meant to.