Offering a free order to customers

Many merchants want to provide a free month's subscription to customers. Depending on the specific scenario, there are a number of methods to use in Recharge. This guide provides an overview of different ways to offer a free order to a customer or group of customers.

Skip an order

Using the Recharge skip function, you can simply skip the next order in a customer's subscription cycle. As this will not generate an order in your ecommerce platform, you will need to manually fulfill the order on your end.

Apply a discount code

If you would like to offer a free month and generate an order in your ecommerce platform, you can create a discount code for 100% off. If it is meant for a single order, you will want to set the number of times the discount can be used to one charge only. The discount will not apply to the shipping charges. 

Once the discount is created, you can add it to the customer account. For more information, visit Applying a discount to an existing subscription.

Add an additional shipment to an existing charge

You may have a customer that already has a recurring order and you would like to send out a free shipment prior to their next charge.

1. In the merchant portal, click Customers. 
2. Search and select the customer who requires a free order.
3. Click the Add Product button under the subscription list in the customer's address ID.
4. Choose the product that needs to be sent to the customer and click Next.
5. In the add product popout choose One-time purchase and set the price to $0.
6. Set the order date to the Custom date and input the date you would like the order to go out.
7. Click Add Product.
8. Verify in the customer's Upcoming order tab that the free product order has been added correctly.

Offer a free order in bulk

You may want to provide a promotion to your entire customer base or new customers. Depending on the scenario, review the following options:

• Consider creating a workflow if you would like to make the checkout order free or a future recurring order.
• With custom code, you can automatically apply a discount code to a checkout order. This option is only applicable to merchants using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify.
• If you have a single discount code, the Recharge support team can bulk-add the discount to the next order. For more information, visit Apply a discount to an existing order. This option is only applicable to Shopify merchants using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify or the Shopify Checkout Integration.