Give Away the Cheapest Item in the Cart With WooCommerce BOGO Coupons (Free Plugin)

This blog post provides a step-by-step guide on setting up a Buy One Get One (BOGO) offer in WooCommerce, where the cheapest item in the cart is given away for free. We also cover additional use cases for giving away the cheapest item in the cart with WooCommerce BOGO offers.

WooCommerce Buy One Get One is one of the most popular marketing strategies adored by everyone, from customers to business owners. Such coupons are well received by customers, who get a product for free or at a discount. Also, the WooCommerce BOGO coupon can potentially attract more users to the store.

BOGO deals, especially when offering a free item, can attract many shoppers to your WooCommerce store. However, if not used strategically, they might reduce your profits. Let’s explore a scenario to understand this better.

When a customer adds a product to the cart (Say, product A priced at $10) and becomes eligible for the WooCommerce BOGO coupon, the coupon automatically applies to the cart and the customer will become eligible to get an item for free.

If the option to apply the cheapest item in the cart as the giveaway is disabled, the customer can claim any product as a free item, regardless of its price. This may result in giving away a product worth more than $10, potentially affecting profits.

However, with this option enabled, if the user claims a product priced above $10 (Say, product B priced at $50) as the giveaway, the customer will be charged for product B (whose worth is more), and product A will be gifted for free.

Therefore, to sum up, offering the cheapest item in the cart as a BOGO giveaway helps minimize profit loss while still driving higher cart values and increasing sales.

Since BOGO is not a default feature in WooCommerce, external tools such as plugins and extensions have to be used to get the WooCommerce BOGO feature.

We will be using the Smart Coupons for WooCommere plugin to create the WooCommerce BOGO discount that automatically converts the cheapest item in the cart as a free giveaway.

There are two main steps to creating the WooCommerce free item with BOGO discounts:

1. Creating the BOGO coupons
2. Setting the cheapest cart item as the giveaway

Let’s take a closer look at each step.

1- Steps to Configure The WooCommerce BOGO Discounts using Smart Coupons

Prerequisite: Install and Activate the WooCommerce coupon plugin from the repository. For a detailed setup guide, refer to our documentation.

1. Once activated, go to Smart Coupons > Add coupon to create a new coupon.
2. Provide a unique coupon code and add a description if required.
3. Go to the General tab in the Coupon data widget.
4. Choose the Discount type as BOGO (Buy X Get X/Y) offer.
5. Adjust the coupon configurations such as enabling free shipping, setting coupon expiry, and coupon display to your requirements.
6. Enable the Apply coupon repeatedly option to allow multiple uses of the coupon. For instance, if you have a Buy 2 Get 1 free deal and have enabled the option, the customer will receive 2 free items when they add 4 items to the cart. Otherwise, they will only receive one free giveaway.
7. Check the Apply coupon automatically option to enable WooCommerce coupon auto-apply.
8. Set up the Usage restrictions, Usage limits, Checkout options, and more based on your requirements. Take a look at creating a WooCommerce smart coupon to know more.
9. Next, go to the Giveaway products tab to configure the free products for the BOGO deal.

2- Steps to Giveaway The Cheapest Item In The Cart With BOGO Discounts

11. In the Giveaway products tab, choose the option Customer gets as Any product in store to convert the cheapest item in the cart as a giveaway.
12. Specify the Quantity as 1 if you want to offer the single product as a giveaway when the customer purchases another product from the store. If you want to offer more free items like Buy One Get Two coupon or a Buy One Get Three coupon, input the Quantity accordingly.
13. Set the Discount to the specified value. To give the giveaways for free set the discount as 100%.
14. Enable the checkbox Apply the cheapest item in the cart as giveaway. This automatically selects the lowest-priced item in the cart as the free product, regardless of when it was added.
15. Click on Publish/Update to activate the BOGO coupon. You have successfully completed the configuration for the Buy One Get The Cheapest Item In The Cart As Giveaway coupon.

Suppose you are managing a bag store and you want to run a Buy One Get One deal campaign.

If you allow your customers to select the product that they want as a giveaway, there is a possibility that they will select a product whose price is more than that of the original product. That is, a person purchasing a rucksack for $100 can claim the trolley bag worth $200 as their free giveaway.

You can counter this by automatically converting the product with the least marked price in the cart as the free BOGO giveaway. Hence, the customer will have to pay for the trolley bag and the rucksack will be automatically converted to be the giveaway.

How Will the Cheapest Item in the Cart Be Offered as Giveaway?

Let’s look at the above scenario to understand the “WooCommerce Buy One Get the Cheapest Cart Item as Giveaway” coupon better.

When the rucksack worth $180 is added to the cart, the customer is notified of the available coupon (since coupon auto-apply is enabled). Also, they are instructed to add another product to the cart to redeem the free product.

When the customer adds the trolley bag priced at $380 to the cart to redeem the offer, the plugin automatically converts the highest-priced item into the billable product and the lowest-priced product as the free giveaway.

Moreover, if the customer applies the coupon after adding two products to the cart, the one with the lowest price will be automatically considered as the giveaway. That is, the customer is responsible for paying for the highest-priced product in the cart.

In the guide mentioned above, we were offering any product in the cart as a free giveaway. Instead, you can specify the products that the customers can choose as possible giveaways.

You can do so by specifying the product categories from which the customer can select the free products. Similar to the previous case, even if the customer adds a product priced higher than the primary product as the giveaway, they will be charged for the higher-priced product.

You can achieve this with the Customer gets any product from specific category option in the Giveaway products tab. For detailed step-by-step guide, refer our article here.

Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin from WebToffee is a coupon creation and management plugin. It offers several types of coupons and discount vouchers that are necessary for store owners to create meaningful campaigns that are beneficial for both the store and the customers.

Some of the key WooCommerce smart coupon plugin features include,

• Create auto-apply coupons
• Schedule coupon start and end dates
• Configure where you want the coupons to be displayed
• Customize the coupon styles and templates
• Issue store credits and gift card coupons
• Advanced coupon usage restrictions
• Import coupons in bulk from a CSV file (Available in Pro)
• Bulk generate coupons based on a master coupon (Available in Pro)
• Set up coupon banners with coupon expiry count-down timers (Available in Pro)

Offering the cheapest item as the giveaway product in a WooCommerce BOGO offer certainly has its advantages. Such a feature helps you get control over your customer’s actions and reduces revenue drain.

The cheapest cart item BOGO giveaway in WooCommerce can be simply set up with just an additional stroke of a key using the WooCommerce Smart Coupon plugin from WebToffee. This adds to the convenience of the coupon creation process.

I hope this article has addressed your concerns! Still has concerns? Feel free to let us know of your queries in the comments below.