Flex Incentives gives you the most flexible way to reward your subscribers, from a simple discount on every order to a free gift at a loyalty milestone. This recipe book walks you through the promotions merchants build most often, one recipe at a time.
For a full reference of every condition and incentive type available, see Flex Incentive Builder. This recipe book builds on that overview and focuses on the how-to.
How the Incentive Builder works
The Flex Incentive Builder is in your Ordergroove Admin, under Subscriptions > Flex Incentives. Every incentive you build is made of two pieces:
- A condition — what a subscriber has to do to earn the reward, such as reaching a certain order or subscribing to a product in a specific group.
- An incentive — what they get, such as a percentage or dollar discount, free or reduced shipping, or a free gift.
A recipe is simply a condition paired with an incentive. Some recipes use no condition at all — those rewards apply to every subscription order.
The builder gives you two kinds of automatic incentives:
- Your Default Incentive is the baseline reward every subscriber receives on each subscription order — no conditions required.
- Conditional Incentives are targeted rewards that apply only when the conditions you set are met.
To create a targeted reward, you add a condition and then choose the incentive it unlocks. To build a tier — different rewards for different groups or milestones — you add another condition with its own reward, and repeat. Most recipes need only one condition; you can combine two for finer targeting (see Combine conditions for finer targeting).
Note: Conditions almost always apply to recurring subscription orders rather than the very first order. Unless a recipe says otherwise, assume the reward kicks in on ongoing orders.
Recommended first recipe: Give gift on X order
What it's for: A free gift is a powerful way to sweeten a milestone or a qualifying order. Gifts work best layered on top of a discount — as an added reward, not the whole offer.
How to build it:
- Open up Ordergroove and go to Subscriptions > Flex Incentives > Creative Incentive
- Click Create Incentive > Automatic Incentive
- Give your new incentive a Name, keep it relevant to the incentive you're building. Ex: 3rd Order GWP (gift with purchase)
- Optional — Modify the Initial and Recurring Incentives, the default is 10% off items
- Click Add Incentive
- Set the condition, reward customers based on… Nth Order Subscription
- Based on: Specified Nth Order
- Applies when: Equal to Nth Order
- Nth Order: 3
- Set the incentive, reward customers with: Gift with Purchase
- Select the product(s) you want to include as a gift, and click Save Incentive
- The Incentive is now saved, you can Publish to make it live or leave the page and resume later
Note: Gifts land best on a milestone order rather than on a segment or product line, and they work best layered onto an existing discount rather than offered on their own.
Useful Incentives
What it's for: The simplest and most common incentive: a flat discount applied to every recurring subscription order. It's the baseline reason customers subscribe, and stay subscribed.
Setup
- Condition: None
- Incentive: % discount, item level
Notes
- Discounts apply to the product price, not to shipping or tax.
- If your store is on Shopify, you can set a different reward for the initial order (your Initial Order Incentive) than for recurring orders — useful for a stronger welcome offer that settles into a steady subscriber rate.
What it's for: Keep subscribers going by rewarding them as they reach new order milestones — a larger discount at their next milestone, or a reward on a repeating cycle of orders.
Setup
- Condition: Nth Order — Subscriber or Subscription
- Incentive: Item Discount
Build a ladder: To reward subscribers at several milestones, add another Nth Order condition for the next milestone with its own, larger reward, and repeat for each rung. This “one row per milestone” approach is how most merchants build loyalty tiers.
Variation — every Nth order: Instead of a one-time milestone, you can repeat the reward on a cycle — every set number of orders — to keep rewarding ongoing loyalty.
Note: A loyalty milestone is also the most popular place to give a gift instead of a discount — see Add a gift to any recipe.
What it's for: Apply a discount only to certain products — a category you want to grow, a bundle, or a hero line.
Setup
- Condition: Product Group
- Incentive: Item Discount
Note: Build around Product Groups rather than listing individual products one by one — it's faster to manage and easy to update as your catalog changes.
What it's for: Give a distinct rate to a specific group of customers — wholesale, employees, influencers, veterans, or any VIP segment.
Setup
- Condition: Customer Group
- Incentive: Item Discount
Note: Customers are assigned to their group outside the Incentive Builder, make sure the segment exists before you build the recipe. See Customer Groups for setup.
What it's for: Reward customers who prepay for a set number of deliveries up front — a strong way to lock in commitment and reduce churn.
Setup
- Condition: Prepaid
- Incentive: Item Discount
Note: Unlike most recipes, a prepaid reward can apply from the very first order. Often the real draw is the commitment itself — more guaranteed orders — rather than a steeper discount, so you may want to keep the same discount rate across different time frames.
What it's for: Encourage bigger orders by offering free or reduced shipping once a subscriber's order reaches a minimum value. One of the most popular promotions merchants run.
Setup
- Condition: Order Threshold
- Incentive: Shipping Incentive
Note: You can also offer free shipping on every order with no threshold. And if a product goes out of stock and drops an order below the threshold, you can choose to honor free shipping anyway.
Combine conditions for finer targeting
Each condition works on its own, but you can combine two to target a reward precisely — the equivalent of mixing two ingredients to make something new. When you add more than one condition to a single reward, all of them must be true for the reward to apply.
Common combinations:
- Product Group + Nth Order — reward loyalty on a specific product line, so a milestone reward applies only to your hero category.
- Customer Group + Product Group — give a segment a special rate on a particular line: VIP pricing, but only for certain products.
- Product Group + Quantity — the classic “buy more, save more”: a larger discount as a subscriber orders more of a product line.
Combination Best Practices
- Keep it simple. Most rewards need only one condition, and combinations rarely need more than two. If you find yourself stacking many conditions, consider whether a single Product Group or Customer Group could do the same job more cleanly.
- Building a “buy more, save more” ladder. Use a Quantity condition and add another tier for each quantity break, each with a larger reward.
Need something not covered here?
Some incentives aren't available self-serve in the Incentive Builder yet. If you have a promotion in mind that you can't build, reach out to your Ordergroove CSM or email help@ordergroove.com — we're happy to help you find the right approach.
Further reading
- Flex Incentive Builder — the full reference of conditions and incentive types
- Incentives Overview
- Customer Groups
- How do I test my program incentives?