Create your first campaign in 5 minutes
A campaign is one promotion: a trigger (e.g. cart subtotal ≥ $50) and a reward (e.g. add a free tote bag). You can have many campaigns active at once. We'll start with the simplest possible one - the spend-threshold free gift.
Step 1 - Open the campaign form
From the Valotrix Cart Rewards dashboard, click Create campaign (top-right). You'll land on the template gallery - Valotrix Cart Rewards ships 23 templates covering the most common recipes (Spend threshold gift, Buy X get Y free, Tiered Spend, VIP Exclusive, Holiday Promo, Geo-Targeted, Bulk Buy, Subscription Starter, and many more). Pick the closest match to what you want to run, or click Start from scratch for a blank canvas. We'll use Spend threshold gift for this walkthrough. Name it "Spend $50, get a free tote bag." This name is private to you; customers don't see it.
Step 2 - Pick the trigger
In the Trigger tab (the rule editor's first tab), add a condition: Cart subtotal ≥ $50.
That's the entire trigger. Valotrix Cart Rewards supports 17 conditions and AND/OR/NOT combinators (see Trigger conditions: 17 building blocks), but for a first campaign one condition is enough.
Step 3 - Pick the gift
In the Rewards tab, click Add gift and select a product (e.g. a tote bag). Choose a specific variant if it has multiple sizes/colors.
Step 4 - Choose the discount method
Switch to the Delivery tab. You'll see three option cards side by side - Full price, Automatic discount, and Discount code. The cards default to Full price (no discount), so for a free-gift campaign you must explicitly pick Automatic discount before saving. If you save with Full price selected, the gift is added to the cart at its full listed price - the merchant gets a free-gift CX nightmare in production. With Automatic discount picked: Valotrix Cart Rewards creates a Shopify discount that targets only the gift line Valotrix Cart Rewards adds, with the rule's configured percentage applied (100% by default, fully configurable). This is the recommended method for free-gift campaigns. See How free gifts get a $0 cart line for the two alternatives: Discount code (the discount is delivered as a Shopify discount code attached to the customer's session) and Full price (no discount at all - used for soft auto-add upsells where the gift is intended to be added at its listed price).
Step 5 - Save as draft, then preview
Set Status to Draft and save. The campaign is created but not live yet. Open the Simulator from the admin sidebar to test it on a fake cart, or use the Preview button on the campaign edit page (Step 4 in the next article) to test it on your real storefront via a signed URL.
What happens at checkout
When a customer's cart hits $50, Valotrix Cart Rewards's storefront script notices, the gift line auto-adds (with a "FREE GIFT" badge), and the discount engine applies the rule's discount only to that gift line at checkout - 100% by default, so the customer pays $0.00 for it. The other items in their cart are charged normally.