What does everyone think about this? Do you get more traction from giving a gift, or from a straight percentage discount?
To kick it off, I wanted to share our customer story that my team at BOGOS: Free Gift Bundle Upsell app recently interviewed.
It’s about LEVEL8, a premium luggage brand out of New York. Their answer? Combining both!
1. Set A Threshold to Give Away A Branded Gift
Instead of relying on percentage discounts (which weaken brand value and train customers to wait for the next sale), LEVEL8 rewarded shoppers who hit a $500 threshold with a branded gift - a custom luggage tag that was both memorable and functional.
The $500 mark was deliberate: it’s roughly the cost of a full set (check-in + carry-on), matching what their core travelers actually buy.
Branded gift brings both memorable and functional value
2. 20% Off Bestsellers with Strategic Upsells
They paired the gift with a targeted 20% discount on bestsellers - not sitewide - to drive traffic while protecting margins. Once shoppers engaged with those popular products, LEVEL8 introduced complementary accessories people don’t seek out but feel they need once they see them.
LEVEL8 strategically combined add-ons with the main item
The result: by end of October these 2 offers generated $351K+ in sales, with October alone up 200% vs. their prior three-month average.
The takeaway for me was that a well-chosen gift can outperform a discount on higher-ticket items - it adds value without devaluing the brand. (They used our BOGOS app to handle the gift + discount stacking, which seems to be what made combining the two actually workable.)
So, back to the question - for you, what’s won out: gifts or discounts?
For my store, gifts have won out - but it took me a while to get there. I used to run straight percentage discounts every season, and it worked, until I noticed customers just waiting for the next sale before buying anything. Margins kept shrinking and the urgency was gone.
Switching to a spend-threshold gift changed that. People still feel rewarded, but it doesn’t cheapen the brand the way constant % off does, and the threshold actually pushes my AOV up instead of dragging it down. The LEVEL8 approach of pairing it with a small targeted discount on bestsellers (not sitewide) makes sense to me too - you get the traffic pull of a discount without training everyone to wait.
That said, I don’t think it’s fully either/or. For lower-ticket impulse buys a discount probably still wins. Gifts seem to shine most on higher-ticket items where people are researching anyway.
I’d lean toward a free gift for most premium brands. It adds perceived value without conditioning customers to wait for sales, while a targeted discount still works well for faster-moving, lower-priced products.
For higher-ticket products, a gift often feels more valuable than an extra 10-20% off because it preserves the brand’s perceived value. For lower-priced products, though, a straightforward discount is usually easier for customers to understand and act on.
I’ve also seen good results from combining both strategically. For example, a spending threshold that unlocks a gift, with targeted discounts on selected products rather than sitewide. That tends to increase AOV without relying on constant blanket discounts.
