Buy 2 and get 1 free

This article explains how to setup a simple buy 2 and get 1 free discount. Technically, when a user adds 3 of a particular product to their cart, a 100% discount is applied to 1 of those items.

In this example we will setup the discount for a specific product, but it's easy to apply it to a range of products or categories of products.

Setting up the Discount

1. Click on Add Product Bundle to begin.
2. There are 3 main fields, or sections, you need to complete for this type of discount:
   • Name: When this discount is applied to a user's cart the Name of the discount will appear there along with the appropriate discount. You should enter a short, succinct name that explains the discount to the user. For this type of discount something along the lines of Buy X Get X Free works well, and if it only applies to a specific category or type of product you should include that too.
   • Discount Qualifier: For this type of discount, this is where you set whether the highest or lowest value of the 3 products is given the 100% discount. Lowest Value is the typical option to choose here, but if the applicable products are of similar pricing and you wish to maximise value for the customer you can consider the Highest Value option.
   • Product Bundle Selection: Here we specify when the bundle is applicable and what happens when the bundle is applied. It can be broken up into the following 3 sections:
     1. What quantity of products must be purchased to trigger this discount?
        For our example we need to set the Selection Operation to Multiples Of, the Selection Quantity to 3 and the Select Quantifer to Of Any Items. The effect of this is: for each set of any 3 products the discount will be applied.
     2. Which products will this discount apply to?
        Using the Selection Predicate field you can specify which categories of products, or which specific products, this discount will apply to. Click the appropriate option, search for the relevant categories or products, and select those which the discount should apply to. When multiples of 3 products from the list of chosen products or categories are added to the user's cart, the discount will be applied.
     3. What discount should be applied?
        Now you need to set just how much of a discount is given to your customers. For our example we want to give the customer 3 products for the price of 2, so you need to set the Discount Amount to 100, the Discount Operation to Percent, and the Discount Quantifer to 1. The effect of this is: for each set of applicable products, discount 1 product by 100%.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click the Save button and the discount is now in effect.

Discount Explanation

In this section you will find a more in depth explanation of the relationship between the Product Bundle Selection fields and the end result of the discount.

To explore this discount in detail, we must first establish what products the discount is being applied to. For this explanation, pretend the discount is being applied to a category of products called "Tops", and it could be called Buy 2 Tops Get 1 Top Free. Further to this, it is not limited to a single use, customers may purchase 20 Tops and get 10 free if they wish.

The first step is to understand what is actually occuring. The user does not add 2 items to their cart and receive a 3rd item for free, that would involve a guess regarding what item the customer wanted. Instead, like in a retail store, the user chooses 3 specific items they want and 1 of 3 items, generally the cheapest, is provided for free. To summarise, for every set of 3 items added to the cart, 1 item is provided for free, or in other words, 1 is provided with a 100% discount. If 30 items are added to the cart, 10 receive a 100% discount.

1. What quantity of products must be purchased to trigger this discount?
   As established above, this discount applies when sets of 3 items are added to the cart. This part of the setup is broken up as follows:
   1. Selection Operation
      Multiples Of is chosen here which allows the discount to be applied multiple times. For our example the discount applies to multiples of 3 products (it applies when 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 etc. products are added to the cart), and for each multiple of 3 products added to the cart the discount will be applied once.
      
      If you wanted this discount to only apply to the first 3 products added to the customers cart, and not be applied for subsequent sets of 3 products, you could instead choose Greater Than Or Equal To. This would trigger a discount one time only when the 3 products are added to the cart, and any additional products do not trigger further discounts.
   2. Selection Quantity
      3 is entered here because we want the discount to apply to multiples of 3 products. If this discount was Buy 3 Get 1 Free, the Selection Quantity would be set to 4 because the 100% discount on 1 item is applied only after 4 items are in the cart.
   3. Selection Quantifier
      This field is used to set whether or not the customer must buy multiples of the same product to receive a discount (Of the same items), or if they can purchase different applicable products and receive the discount (Of any items).
2. Which products will this discount apply to?
   As per our example above, this discount applies when sets of 3 items from the "Tops" category are added to the cart. This part of the setup only involves a single field, Selection Predicate, which is where you select the categories of products, or the specific products, which the user must add to their cart to trigger the discount. For our example, the Categories option would be selected and from there the "Tops" category would be chosen, resulting in the discount applying to products within the "Tops" category.
   
   You can select both categories and specific products for this discount to apply though, you are not limted to one or the other.
3. What discount should be applied?
   To conclude our example, 1 in every 3 products from the "Tops" category added to our cart must receive a 100% discount. In this section we setup the 100% discount so it applies to only 1 of the 3 products, and is broken up as follows:
   1. Discount Operation
      Though this is actually the second field but it will make this explanation easier to cover it first. The discount applied can either be a percentage of the targeted product/s, or a specific dollar value. For our example we want to provide a 100% discount, so Percent is chosen from this drop down menu.
   2. Discount Amount
      As above, the discount to be applied is 100%, so we enter 100 into this field.
   3. Discount Quantifier
      Lastly, this is where we specify how many of the Selection Quantity is eligible for the specified discount. For example, our Selection Quantity is 3 because the discount applies when 3, or rather multiples of 3, are added to the cart. The Discount Quantifier is set to 1 for this discount because 1 in every 3 products should receive the 100% discount.

Other Discount Types

If this isn't the exact discount you were after you can feel free to customise the settings, or you can review one of the other common discount types:

• Buy 5 and get 10% off
  If a customer buys 5 or more of a specific product they'll receive a 10% discount on those items.
• Buy product A and B for $XX
  If a customer buys a specific combination of products they will receive a dollar or percentage based discount. This is an excellent discount for promoting the purchase of product accessories.
• Buy product A and get product B free
  If a customer buys a specific product, another product will be added to their cart automatically at no cost.
• 10% off all products
  This discount applies a 10% discount to all products.
• Coupon code for $20 off
  This discount applies a $20 discount if the user enters the coupon code during the checkout