Topic
Discounts and promotions on Shopify
How Shopify decides who is the same customer for a discount, and how to handle reuse, deal-only buyers and win-back offers.
By MergeGuard team
Last updated
A discount is only as accurate as the customer count behind it. A returning shopper on a new profile can look new, and a customer still buying under another profile can look like they stopped ordering.
Two kinds of discount suffer most:
- Welcome offers. Some reuse is deliberate, and much of it comes from second emails, typos and forgotten accounts. A partner or flatmate at the same address, or a gift buyer, looks similar and is a real new customer. Welcome discount reuse gives the signals worth reviewing and a way to review them that never treats a match as proof.
- Win-back offers. Customers still buying under another profile receive a “come back” discount they didn’t need. In MergeGuard’s demo store: 905 customers look like they stopped ordering → 842 really did; 63 still buy on another profile Demo store (Northsail Supply).
Counting people keeps those customers out of the offer.
Start with the guide
GuideHow Shopify identifies a customer for a discountShopify’s one-use limit checks an email or phone number. See who can be eligible for a code, why a new email can pass it, and how to design offers around it.Updated 5 min readMore in this topic
- PlaybookWelcome discount reuse: what to check before you call it abuseBefore you treat a reused welcome code as abuse, check which signals matter. Relatives, gift buyers and forgotten accounts can look the same as a repeat claim.Updated 4 min read
- PlaybookHow to spot customers who only buy with a discountDefine discount dependency as the share of a customer’s orders that used a code, count it per person across profiles, and pick your own cut line before you act.Updated 4 min read
- PlaybookWho should not get a win-back discountLeave out customers still buying under another profile and recent buyers, and judge relatives on their own orders. Clean your stopped-ordering list first.Updated 4 min read