What’s Transactional Marketing? Transactional Strategy

As a consumer, it’s not always obvious what types of marketing you’re interacting with. Ryan Bartlett, cofounder of the T-shirt brand True Classic, says on Shopify Masters that while you might see their funny advertising out in the wild, most of their marketing strategy focuses on conversion. 

“You’d be surprised to know that 90% of our ads are still DR [direct response],” Ryan says. “Even though most of what you see is comedy and stuff out in the wild. We rely so much on just converting people on these platforms because it drives the business.” One tactic to increase conversions is to create a sense of urgency or scarcity through transactional marketing. 

Learn what transactional marketing is, how it differs from relationship marketing, and ideas for how to add transactional marketing to your strategy.

What is transactional marketing?

Transactional marketing is a marketing tactic focused on increasing short-term sales volume, often by creating a sense of urgency or scarcity. Research shows it works well in ecommerce. Salsify’s Q2 2025 Ecommerce Pulse Report found that 62% of consumers say flash sales or limited-time discounts are a top reason they make an online purchase.

Core components of transactional marketing include:

• A short time period

• A single sales goal

• Discounts or offers

• Broad messaging rather than personalization

Transactional marketing vs. relationship marketing

Transactional marketing differs from relationship marketing, which focuses on building brand loyalty and repeat business through the customer relationship rather than a single sale.

The core difference comes down to time and goals. Transactional marketing focuses on driving sales in the short term, while relationship marketing focuses on long-term relationships and customer retention.

Transactional and relationship marketing can both work together in a larger business strategy to generate more sales. A flash sale might be the event that attracts customers, while strong post-purchase support builds customer loyalty.

6 transactional marketing strategies

• Flash sales
• Discounts and promotional offers
• BOGO or free gift
• Volume and tiered discounts
• Upselling and cross-selling
• Abandoned cart email campaigns

Here are six strategies to consider for your own transactional marketing efforts:

Flash sales

A flash sale is a discount or promotion offered for a limited window of time, typically anywhere from 20% to 70% off.

Running a flash sale requires these steps:

• Decide on the purpose of your sale, like selling a specific product or an overall discount.

• Choose the right flash sale products based on your inventory.

• Keep the time period short, like a day or two.

• Promote your sale before it happens.

• Ensure you are ready for shipping.

The short time frame of a flash sale is the incentive. Shoppers who might otherwise put off a purchase decide to act rather than risk missing the deal. That can work well when you’re trying to move inventory that isn’t selling as quickly as you’d like, or when you’re trying to attract new customers with an enticing first offer.

Shopify Plus can help you build a flash sale with Shopify Launchpad. It’s a scheduling tool inside the Shopify admin that lets you schedule flash sales or product drops ahead of time.

Discounts and promotional offers

A sales promotion is a temporary marketing effort designed to create immediate demand through a discount, giving customers a reason to buy now instead of waiting. The time limit makes the offer feel valuable and urgent. Promotional offers like this are useful for driving immediate purchases, moving old or excess inventory, attracting new customers, or encouraging repeat purchases.

Magnolia Bakery, for example, has an annual banana pudding week promotion. “I wanted to test a banana-pudding-week-specific landing page, which is something that we don’t normally do,” former senior marketing manager Adam Davis said on Shopify Masters.

Rather than sending traffic straight to a product page like the brand normally does, they built a unique landing page designed around the banana pudding promotion, with interactive carousels calling out the discount. “We beat our forecasts by a ton,” Adam says. Using Shopify Analytics, Adam determined that people spent more time exploring their options on the promotional page than on the product page.

BOGO or free gift

BOGO, or buy one, get one, and free gifts are promotions where customers who purchase one product get a second item free or at a discount, usually of equal or lesser value. 

True Classic uses the free gift method to introduce their customers to new products, Ryan says. He built a gamified checkout experience to incentivise customers when they check out. “Our gift with purchase looks like a slot machine,” Ryan says. “It gets people into other products that they wouldn’t normally buy. Giving away free stuff has been really big for us.”

This kind of gift-with-purchase BOGO is useful when you want to introduce customers to products outside what they’d normally buy.

Volume and tiered discounts

Volume and tiered discounts are similar methods of offering deals to customers. Tiered pricing is often seen with subscription-based products, like software. You can offer the entry-level monthly cost and scale with more features, allowing customers to pick and choose what works best for them.

Volume discounts, on the other hand, mean you get a slight discount as you purchase more of the product. For example, one product may cost $10, but purchasing three brings the total to $20 for a per-unit discount.

Unlike sales or promotions, volume and tiered discounts are part of an evergreen pricing strategy designed to reward customers for buying more. Tiered pricing can be a good approach for products with increasingly advanced features. Volume works well for businesses that have a large inventory as well. Bulk buying can help simplify operations, invoicing, and inventory planning.

Upselling and cross-selling

Upselling means encouraging a customer to buy a higher-end or upgraded version of the item they’re already considering, with the goal of increasing the size of the sale. 

Cross-selling, on the other hand, means recommending a product that complements what they’ve already chosen. Cross-selling is the equivalent of asking, “Would you like fries with that?” Upselling is offering a larger popcorn for just a dollar more. Both tactics can increase average order value and customer lifetime value.

Magic Spoon, for example, put cross-selling directly into their checkout flow using Shopify’s checkout extensibility to reflect the impulse-buy candy section of a physical store checkout. 

After a shopper moves past their cart and into checkout, Magic Spoon surfaces “You may also like” items such as treat bars and branded bowl sets, capturing an extra sale on the path to purchase. In a Shopify case study, Digital Product Manager Ciara Lydon says it was “a small test that had a huge impact.” The checkout upsells added revenue without interfering with the pre-checkout flow.

Checkout extensibility includes the apps, branding tools, and back-end logic that allow you to customize the Shopify checkout beyond cross-sells, so you can do things like customize banners and add gift messages.

Abandoned cart email campaigns

An abandoned cart email is sent to shoppers who added items to their cart but left before completing checkout. It reminds them what they left behind and prompts them to come back, adding urgency like a reminder that free shipping or a discount code is only available for a limited time.

These campaigns can perform well because they’re reaching people who were already close to buying. Abandoned cart emails are a natural fit for customer reactivation and for any brand building out its broader email flows. Shopify Messaging allows you to set up automatic flows reminding people of their abandoned carts.