Surprise and Delight allows you to add a free gift or discount on an order and optimize customer incentives using A/B testing. Make customers feel valued or generate interest in a specific product.

This guide provides an overview of Surprise and Delight, how to configure this template, analytics, and common questions. 

Before you start

• Recharge has created a new version of the Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience, available through Rewards. Merchants with Surprise and Delight enabled still have access to the version of Surprise and Delight outlined in this guide, however, merchants who did not have Surprise and Delight enabled and are now wanting to implement a Surprise and Delight experience must use Rewards, which is part of the Retain package.
• Ensure you do not have duplicate experiences configured with SKU swap and gifting.

Surprise and Delight overview

Send incentives to the right customer at the right time to improve retention with the Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience. A/B test gifts to determine the most effective gifts. You can even set specific criteria based on product and customer data to gather analytical insight using operational or flow analytics. 

Subscription Experiences are triggered on completed charges. If this charge fits the criteria set up in the trigger filters, the customer enters the experience and moves to the next step in the experience. For Surprise and Delight Subscription Experiences, the free gift is added to the customer’s next order and the notification is sent to the customer.

Triggers

Surprise and Delight Subscription Experiences begin with a Trigger node set to trigger after a recurring order is processed. You can set conditions within the Trigger node to narrow down what orders receive the free gift incentive. You must add at least one trigger condition when configuring the Trigger node.

To prevent customers from receiving the incentive offer after each order, Recharge recommends using either the order processed or order streak numbers as a condition.

See Understanding the Trigger node when building Subscription Experiences for additional information.

Free gift banner

Customers who fulfill the trigger and condition of an experience see a banner in their customer portal stating they received a free gift or discount with their order. At this time, previewing or editing the banner is not available.

Depending on the customer portal theme your store is using, this banner will display in different location:

• Affinity: View your next order page
• Prima: Order now side banner
• Novum: Subscriptions page

Configure a Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience

To create a Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience: 

Step 1 - Create your experience using the flows canvas 

1. Click Retain in the merchant portal and select Surprise and Delight from the dropdown.
2. Click the Create New button and select Get started.
3. Choose the Trigger filter and add conditions based on customer, order, and product data. The experience starts when these conditions are met. You can also create custom customer segments.
   

Step 2 - Build your experience

Get started building the experience after setting up your experience configuration. Use the available action nodes to build the experience to your specifications. By default, the standard Surprise and Delight template is available to get you started, in the typical sequential order.

Enhance the functionality of your experience by adding additional nodes, such as an A/B test node, or a conditional branch node. See Nodes for additional details.

1. 1. Click Configure in the Incentive offer node to select the incentive offer. Choose the type of incentive to offer and add the incentive. Note that free gifts are considered a one-time product and will not create a free subscription for a customer.
      
      Orders containing out of stock free gifts result in an insufficient inventory charge error and will not be processed. Consider setting flow limits based on your inventory levels to avoid out of stock issues, as it is not possible to swap the free product after it has been added to an order. 
2. Update the notification node, or add the Klaviyo node to send communication to customers through Klaviyo. See Using variables with the notification node for a list of available variables you can use in the body of your notifications to personalize the customer experience.
3. Confirm that your experience is configured correctly before saving and activating the experience. You can click on the vertical line menu included on a node to delete the node, or drag and drop additional nodes into the flow canvas.

Step 3 - Save and activate the Subscription Experience 

Save and activate the Subscription Experience after confirming the experience is configured correctly:

1. Click Save to save changes.
2. Click Activate Flow when you are ready to make the Subscription Experience live.
3. Select Save & activate.
4. Perform a test experience.

The Subscription Experience applies to all new orders created that match the experience criteria after activation. If you disable the expereince after activation, there may still be orders with the Surprise and Delight product. 

Perform a test

Test your Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience to ensure the experience functions as per your expectations. When you perform a test you can force a customer through an experience, as the initial trigger criteria are ignored, allowing you to evaluate the customer experience before activating the Subscription Experience. 

1. Click Retain in the merchant portal and select Surprise and Delight from the dropdown.
2. Select an existing experience or create a new experience to access the canvas. 
3. Click the kebab icon and select Test Flow. 
   
   
4. Search for the target customer using the customer's email or customer ID. Select the customer and then select Run Flow. The email notification configured in the template is sent at this time, assuming the customer has opted into marketing emails.
   
5. Click View results to navigate to the customer details page to review the results of the test.
6. Open the customer's next upcoming order to confirm that the free gift was added via the experience.

You can also test the experience from the customer's perspective:

• Check your email to preview the email notification that is sent if you're using an email address that accepts promotional marketing
• View the customer's customer portal to confirm how the free gift is displayed to customers

Considerations

Consider the following when using the Surprise and Delight template:

• Prepaid subscriptions order numbers are based on the actual prepaid charge not the free prepaid orders. The free gift is added to the next charge and is a not free order.
• Free gifts can be added to Bundles, though Customizable bundles shouldn’t be used as the free gift. Preset bundles can be a free gift.
• The free gift banner is fully supported using the Affinity customer portal theme. Stores using Prima can can see the free gift on the order now side banner and stores using Novum can see the banner on the subscriptions page. Stores using Theme Engine can customize code by following the steps outlined in Adding Subscription Experiences to the Novum Theme Engine.
• Free gifts do not appear in RechargeSMS. 
• Stores that have migrated to Recharge from another platform will not consider legacy order counts. Migrated customer order counts will start from 0.
• Inactive flows will not have updated branch metrics. If you need to refresh your metrics, contact Recharge Support. 
• You cannot swap the free gift after it has been added to an order. It is important to set your flow limits based on your inventory levels to avoid out of stock issues.
• Recharge recalculates shipping rates after the free gift is added to the order. To prevent customers from receiving additional shipping costs, create a duplicate product in your Shopify admin solely for Subscription Experiences. Assign this product its own shipping profile with free shipping enabled.
• Two experiences cannot be triggered at the same time. For example, if an Upcoming Order Cross-sell experience and Surprise and Delight experience are triggered on order number 3, then only the most recently created experience will be triggered.
• Recharge does not recommend having both the Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience and a Workflow by Recharge triggering simultaneously on the same order, as it can lead to unexpected customer issues
• The free gift can sometimes be labeled with "Subscription, Delivery every week" in the Shopify Confirmation Email. Free gifts are one-time products and will not recur. 

FAQs

Is Surprise and Delight the same as gifting? 

Yes, Surprise and Delight is gifting though it’s important to note that Surprise and Delight is gifting from the merchant to the customer on their recurring orders (excluding checkout). Customer-to-customer gifting is not a part of the Subscription Experience. 

What happens if the order with a free gift is rescheduled or skipped?

Gifts are removed from rescheduled orders. Gifts are not added back to the order if the order date reverts to the original date.

Gifts are not moved to the next order when a customer skips an order. A gift is still available if the customer unskips their order, and receives their original order as expected.

Can I include a gift on the checkout order?

No. The Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience works on all recurring orders but does not apply to the checkout order. You must work with a third-party developer to customize the experience and include a gift on the checkout order.

Note: Customizations suggested in this guide are outside Recharge's scope of support. Recharge recommends working with a Recharge Agency Partner or a developer to implement advanced customizations.

Will the free gift process when marked as out of stock?

Orders containing out of stock free gifts from the Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience result in an insufficient inventory charge error and are not processed. Consider setting flow limits based on your inventory levels to avoid out of stock issues, as it is not possible to swap the free product after it has been added to an order.

If you would like to remove the gift from upcoming orders, contact Recharge Technical Support. The support team works with a dedicated team to remove or replace the out of stock product.

Can I schedule Surprise and Delight notifications to send at a specific time?

You cannot set a specific timeframe to send out Surprise and Delight notifications. By default, notifications alerting customers about their upcoming free gift are sent immediately after the order that triggers the free gift.

To have more flexibility over when notifications about free gifts are sent, consider using Recharge's Rewards offering, which is included in the Retain suite of tools.

I discontinued a product, but that product is still included on upcoming queued orders for customers who entered the experience. How do I remove them?

Discontinued products used as the incentive in a Surprise and Delight Subscription Experience are not automatically removed from existing orders. Contact the Recharge Support team at least three days before processing the order to have the discontinued gift product removed.

When is the notification sent from Recharge regarding the customer receiving a free gift or cross-sell offer through experiences?

A notification is sent immediately after the free gift is added to the queued charge of targeted trigger and condition. These notifications will only be sent to customers who have opted into marketing emails and Recharge emails. Otherwise, they'll be skipped.

To export notification data:

1. Navigate to your existing flow. 
2. On the Notification node, click the kabob menu.
   
3. Select Export notification data. 

What analytics can I see with Surprise and Delight?

• Incentives added: The amount of incentives users have added as a result of the experience.
• Emails skipped: The amount of emails not received due to the customer not opting into marketing emails (the free gift is still added to the customer's next order).
• Emails triggered: Amount of emails sent as a result of the Surprise and Delight.
• Branch Result Metrics: The number and subtotal of successfully processed charges containing the incentive from the branch. 

These metrics include completed by charge and subtotal charge.