Send free gift cards to customers

Many store owners like to send gift cards to customers for incentives or contests.

Unfortunately, the Shopify gift card system isn't built to let you design and send a gift card out using one of our digital gift card designs through the backend, but there's a pretty easy way around this:

1. First, be sure you've created a gift card product and it's live on your site.
2. First, log in to your Shopify store's backend.
3. Click "Discounts."
4. Click "Add discount code" in the upper right.
5. We strongly recommend using the "Generate code" feature so that a random code is generated so that you're limiting who has access to creating free gift cards. Make a note of this code.
6. Under "Conditions," select "% Discount" and enter "100" as the amount. By doing this, you're creating a 100% discount (so the product will be free).
7. Then, select "Product" from the next dropdown.
8. A new menu, "Select a product," will appear. Use this to search or select your gift card product. If you have more than one gift card product, you'll need to repeat this process for each one.
9. We recommend leaving the "Usage limits" to "Unlimited" and disabling the "1 use only" option a well as not setting an expiration date.
10. Now, go to your store as if you were a customer. Find your gift card product and select the amount you'd like to issue. Select a design and add a personal note.
11. Then, start the checkout process. If necessary, log in using your own name and email address (note that the email address you enter here should be one you have access to and should NOT be the customer's).
12. On the payment screen, enter the discount code you created in Step 5.
13. Once you've applied the discount, the cart will update and let you know there is no payment required because of the cart is $0. Click the confirmation button to submit your order.
14. The order will then appear to come through your normal notification channels as a customer order.
15. Depending on your store settings, you may need to "fulfill" the order to trigger the gift card issuance.
16. Within a few minutes, you should receive an email with the subject line Your (store name) gift card is ready! You can now either forward this email to your customer or click the link and then copy and paste the full URL (it will start with https://checkout.shopify.com/gift_cards/ and be followed by random numbers and letters.
17. It's important to remember to keep the order open and marked as fulfilled. Otherwise, the gift card associated with it will be voided. Once the customer has used the gift card, you can safely delete the order if desired.

It's important to note that you can also use the "Issue gift card" feature under Products > Gift Cards to send our free gift cards, but you won't be able to design it or add a personal note. Gift cards send this way will, however, appear on this design and still feature the animation, be mobile friendly and printable.

At this time, there is no way to create a large number of gift cards in a row without placing multiple orders or a single order with multiple gift cards in it. You will need to customize each gift card individually, however.