---
updatedAt: 2026-05-25T04:12:08.000Z
agentTools:
  projectIndex: https://docs.deducto.io/llms.txt
---

# Promotion Best Practices

When creating promotions in Deducto, following these best practices will help ensure your promotional campaigns run smoothly and effectively.

### Naming

* Choose a clear and concise naming convention. Promotion names are shown to customers in the cart and at checkout, so write them the way you want shoppers to read them.

### Priority and ordering

* Use round numbers with deliberate gaps (10, 20, 30 rather than 1, 2, 3). This makes it easy to insert a new promotion between two existing ones without renumbering everything.
* Higher-priority promotions run first, so put your most important or most restrictive promotions at the top.

### After Processing action

* Use `Continue` (the default) when this promotion can coexist with others. This is the right choice for most promotions.
* Use `Stop` when this promotion should be the ceiling: once it applies, no further non-Final promotions run. Good for scenarios like a loyalty-tier discount that should not stack with anything else.
* Use `Exclusive` when you have a set of competing promotions where only one should ever apply. All Exclusive promotions are evaluated first; as soon as one applies, the rest are skipped. Use this for competing welcome-offer variants where you want Deducto to pick the best fit, not stack them.

### Locking items

* Enable Lock Affected Items on Item Group promotions when the discounted items shouldn't also receive a Whole Cart discount. Without locking, a cart could receive an item-level discount and then a Whole Cart percentage off on top.
* Leave it disabled when stacking is intentional, for example a group-level bundle price alongside a site-wide free shipping offer.

### Choosing a promotion type

* Use Item Group when the discount targets specific products (a brand sale, a buy-2-get-1, a bundle price).
* Use Whole Cart for blanket discounts on the full order, free shipping over a threshold, or gift items.
* Use Whole Cart (Final) specifically for free shipping and promotional gift items that should run on top of all other discounts.

### Trigger conditions

* Use product collections or categories instead of individual products where possible. Targeting by category means new products are picked up automatically as your catalogue grows.
* Set minimum purchase requirements to protect margins.
* Avoid overlapping conflicting promotions.

### Testing & validation

* Test in a non-production environment before launching.
* Test promotions with various cart combinations, including edge cases like carts that are just under or just over a threshold.
* Check promotion stacking behaviour, especially when using Stop or Exclusive actions.
* Review all customer-facing messages.
* Monitor promotion usage after launch and watch for unusual redemption patterns.

### Maintenance

* Regularly review active promotions and disable or delete those that are no longer needed.
* Before deleting a promotion, export its usage data and coupon codes if you need to keep a record.
* Update product lists and categories as your inventory changes.

### Communication

* Make promotions easy for customers to find.
* Use consistent messaging across channels.
* Provide clear instructions for coupon redemption.