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 24 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).
Creating your very first campaign? Clicking any template - or Start from scratch - starts the guided setup - a step-by-step walkthrough that covers everything below one screen at a time, with a review at the end. It's the easiest path, and you can follow it instead of this article. To use the full editor this walkthrough describes, click Open full editor on the template card instead.
Pick the closest match to what you want to run, or use 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. Automatic discount is pre-selected - the right choice for a free-gift campaign, so for this walkthrough you can leave it as is. With Automatic discount, Valotrix Cart Rewards creates a Shopify discount that targets only the gift line it adds, with the rule's configured percentage applied (100% by default, fully configurable). Only pick Full price deliberately: it means no discount at all, and the gift is added at its full listed price. 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.