How can I include promotional items in drop ship and stocked orders?

[cninichuck]

So, I have some products that I have stock in and some that I drop ship. I also put some promotional items in as well ie. koozies and stickers. I want to send one order and put promotional items in if a customer orders a drop shipped item or a combination of items I keep stocked and drop ship. How would you go about doing this?

[jorden_mk]

Establish a centralized system with automated alerts for such orders. Designate a specific packing area for these orders, provide clear instructions to your fulfillment team, and ensure consistent communication with drop-shipping partners. Use customizable packing slips to indicate specific order details

[JoesIdeas]

If the promo items are stocked at your dropshipper, I think the easiest way to add them would be to make a free product in Shopify, hide that product from the website (do not publish it), and then add that product to the orders that qualify.

Then your dropshipper will know to add it, and you can sort and filter those orders later on, seeing which customers got the free products, where they came from, etc.

If you want to automate the process of adding the item to the order, you can use Order Automator app. You would probably want to set it up with rules, for example if product vendor = X then add product Y to the order. Just contact support and reference this post if you decide to go that route and want help.

[cninichuck]

Unfortunately, I keep the promotional items stocked. I started with a few products that I kept in stock and recently added in the drop shipping aspect. 

[JoesIdeas]

In that case you could either instruct your dropshipper to send certain items / orders to your house, then you ship together, or you could ask them if they would allow you to send some items and they include those with certain orders.

I've worked with dropshippers that would say, "ya sure", and others that would say "haha no way". Just depends on your relationship and their system flow.