How to Create a Promotional Plan for Your Store

A promotional plan (or promo plan) is a written schedule of the promotions a business will run: what each one offers, to whom, when it starts and ends, and how you will know it worked. For a Shopify store it turns a year of sales into decisions made in one sitting, instead of a new discount every time sales dip.

Why plan promotions ahead?

Because the busy weeks leave little time to think. Shopify stores using Discounty started about three times as many campaigns in November 2025 as in a typical month. A plan made in September means November's campaigns are built and checked before the rush.

A plan also sets how deep each discount goes, and for whom. In three field tests with a mail-order catalog retailer, Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester found that deeper discounts led new customers to buy more later and established customers to buy less (Marketing Science, 2004). A plan lets you keep the deepest offers for winning first orders.

What goes into a promotional plan?

1. Goal. One per promotion: clear stock, win first orders, raise the average order, bring back lapsed customers. Make it measurable: "sell 300 units of last season's jackets by 31 January".
2. Audience. Everyone, new visitors, your email list, repeat customers, wholesale buyers.
3. Offer. The type and depth: percentage off, a quantity break, a spend threshold, a gift, free shipping. See types of discounts.
4. Products. Which collections or products are included, and which never are.
5. Dates. Start and end for each promotion, plus when you announce it.
6. Combinations. Which offers may apply to the same order. If you leave it out, two offers can land on the same order and cut deeper than either was meant to. See Shopify discount combinations.
7. Channels and budget. Email, social, ads, creators; what each costs.
8. How you will measure it. Profit, not only revenue, compared with a normal week or a group of products at full price. See how to test a discount strategy.

How do you write a promotional plan?

1. Mark the fixed dates on a calendar. Black Friday and Cyber Monday, holidays in your markets, your store's anniversary, end of season.
2. Choose a few anchor promotions. For most stores, three to five big moments a year is enough to plan well.
3. Give each one a goal, an offer and dates, using the eight parts above.
4. Leave gaps between them. Full-price weeks between sales keep customers from waiting for the next one.
5. Build the campaigns ahead of time, with start and end dates, so they run on schedule.
6. Review each one after it ends, and adjust the next.

Promotional plan example

A year for a clothing store:

Promotional plan template

Copy this for each promotion:

How do you put the plan on Shopify?

In Discounty, each promotion is one campaign with a Start date and, if you tick Set end date, an end date. You can build them weeks ahead; each starts and ends by itself.

• A sale across a collection: Bulk price editor, on every plan. It puts the original prices back when it ends.
• Buy more, save more: Quantity discount or Cart goal, on every plan; more than one tier needs the Essential plan or above.
• A code for your list: Advanced discount code, on the Essential plan and up. Limiting the code to a customer segment, such as lapsed customers, needs the Discounty plan; emailing it to that group does not.
• Allowing offers to combine: Campaign combinations, on the Discounty plan and up. Leave it off unless the plan says otherwise.

To end a promotion early, deactivate the campaign. It shows as Reverting while Discounty removes the discount.

How we counted

The November multiple compares campaigns that started in November 2025 with the median month of 2025, excluding the holiday months. It is read from our own records in September 2026. It is a multiple across campaigns; no single store can be identified from it.

Questions

What is a promotional plan?

A written schedule of the promotions a business will run, with the goal, audience, offer, dates and measure for each one.

How do you write a promotional plan?

Mark the fixed dates, choose a few main promotions, give each a goal, offer and dates, leave full-price gaps between them, and build the campaigns ahead of time.

What should a promotional plan include?

Goal, audience, offer, products, dates, which offers may combine, channels and budget, and how you will measure the result.

How far ahead should you plan promotions?

Far enough to build the busy season's campaigns before it starts. For Black Friday, that means September or October.

How many promotions should a store run in a year?

It depends on your season, but three to five main promotions, with full-price weeks in between, is a workable start for most stores.