Free Gift With Purchase Ideas Shopify Stores Can Steal

A look at how Salt & Stone, Ulta, and Marc Jacobs run GWP promos and what Shopify stores can take from their playbook.

Big brands have big budgets, big email lists, and entire marketing teams dedicated to figuring out what makes people add one more thing to their cart. But the strategies they use aren't locked behind a velvet rope. Shopify store owners can watch what the major players are doing, strip it down to the core idea, and run the same play at their own scale.

The thing is, some of those major players are Shopify stores themselves. Salt & Stone, the clean body care brand that surpassed $140 million in revenue in 2025, runs on Shopify. So when they send a beautifully crafted GWP email, that's not some untouchable corporate marketing machine at work. That's a brand that started in a studio apartment, figured out what works, and scaled it. The playbook is borrowable.

Free gift with purchase is one of the clearest examples of this. It's been a staple of retail marketing for decades and the reason it never went away is simple. It works. Shoppers spend more when there's something extra on the table, and they feel good doing it. The question isn't whether to run a GWP. It's how to do it in a way that actually moves the needle.

Two campaigns worth studying right now are Salt & Stone's Bergamot Hand Cream push and Ulta's Beauty Break flash event with Marc Jacobs. Both are doing this well, in very different ways, and both have moves that translate directly to a Shopify store of any size.

Salt & Stone Keeps It Simple and It Works

Salt & Stone surpassed $140 million in revenue in 2025, is the number one deodorant at Sephora and Amazon, and started as a one-person operation shipping orders out of a studio apartment. They built the brand on Shopify, invested obsessively in digital, and let the product quality and presentation do the heavy lifting.

Their GWP email reflects exactly that approach. It's a "just in case you missed it" reminder offering a free Bergamot Hand Cream on orders $65 or more. Three short paragraphs, one button, no noise.

What stands out is that the free item isn't random. Bergamot Hand Cream is a real product in their lineup, described as "the perfect uplifting summer essential," not a forgotten overstock item. The gift carries the brand's quality promise with it, which matters a lot more than people give it credit for. A first-time customer who gets something genuinely nice in their order is going to remember that.

The spend threshold is also working hard in the background. $65 is just high enough to nudge an order that might have stopped at $50, but not so high it feels out of reach. That sweet spot, where the number feels achievable, is one of the most important things to figure out when setting up a GWP.

Ulta x Marc Jacobs Goes All In on Urgency

Ulta takes a completely different approach. Their "Beauty Break" is a four-hour online-only window where shoppers can get a free 4-piece Marc Jacobs gift set with a $75 purchase. Coin purse, fragrance mini, body lotion, hand cream. All branded, all desirable.

The scarcity is baked in from the start. Four hours isn't a soft deadline, it's a countdown. And the gift set has real perceived value, which makes the spend threshold feel like a reasonable trade. People who are already browsing the site don't need much convincing when the math makes sense.

Flash events also give brands something that standing promotions can't. When the window closes, it's done. No ambiguity, no customers emailing asking if the offer is still running. Everyone knows the deal going in, which actually reduces friction instead of adding it.

What Both Campaigns Have in Common

On the surface these look like very different strategies. One is soft and slow, the other is loud and fast. But both are doing the same core things well.

The gift is worth wanting. Neither campaign is handing out something that feels like a consolation prize. The threshold is tied to a number that reflects where real customers are already shopping. And the offer is communicated clearly. Spend this much, get this thing. No fine print maze.

The numbers back this up. Fragrance brand WHO IS ELIJAH saw a 46% jump in average order value during Black Friday 2024 after running tiered gift-with-purchase promotions on Shopify. One well-set-up GWP, the right threshold, and the results follow.

The Part That Actually Trips People Up

Planning a GWP is one thing. Making sure it goes live at the right time and stops running before you're giving away margin you didn't intend to give away is another. Manual promotion management works fine when you're running one sale a quarter. It gets messy fast when you want to run flash windows, pre-schedule a holiday campaign, or layer multiple offers across a busy stretch.

Being able to schedule a GWP in advance and set a hard end date so it doesn't keep running accidentally is one of those things that sounds boring until you've had to manually turn off a promotion at midnight. Promo Party Pro handles that scheduling piece inside Shopify so it's one less thing to babysit.

A Few Ideas Worth Trying

You don't need a Marc Jacobs partnership or a massive email list to make GWP work.

Run a weekend-only window with a slightly lower threshold than your usual offer. The tight timeframe creates urgency without requiring a big budget. Pick a gift that naturally extends your bestsellers. If your hero product is a candle, a travel-size version of it beats something unrelated every time. And don't skip the reminder email. Salt & Stone used it for a reason. The second touchpoint often outperforms the launch email because it catches people who meant to buy and just forgot.

The brands that make a gift with purchase look effortless are usually the ones who figured out the logistics before the campaign went live, and the ones who understand why a free gift lands differently than an equivalent-value discount in the first place.