Which free sample convinced a Shopify customer to buy the full size?

You have 2,000 fragrance samples and three places to put them: orders from your own store, a retailer's beauty bags, or a paid discovery kit. The kit comes with an order number. The beauty bag comes with a shipment receipt for a carton of vials. At the next inventory meeting the kit looks like the obvious winner because its trail is easiest to follow. Is that a good enough reason to give it the whole batch?

Ask the full-size buyer what they actually tried

For a period covering the sample drop and a reasonable trial window, ask buyers of the full-size fragrance “Before ordering this bottle, where did you first try this scent?” Name the actual product if you run more than one scent. Give the buyer short options they can recognize.

• Sample included with an online order
• Sample or tester at a retail store
• A discovery kit I bought
• Someone else's bottle or sample
• I hadn't tried it before ordering
• Somewhere else or I don't remember

If several scents come in one order, nominate one product for the test. The question “Where did you try your purchase?” makes little sense when a buyer replenished one bottle and bought another blind. A shopper who ordered the product for someone else may also need a “Buying for someone else” option. Check the survey targeting guide when setting up the eligible audience.

Keep the sample batch and the answer on different rows

Give the operations sheet one row per distribution batch. Record the scent, partner, dates, units sent, units confirmed distributed, unit cost, and any placement fee. Record which outlets also sold the full-size product. In the buyer response sheet, count distinct answering orders by sample source. If several retailers carried the same vial, ask for the shop name optionally or keep the result at the retail level.

Imagine 90 full-size buyers answer over six weeks. Eighteen recall an online-order insert, 12 remember a retail sample, and nine name a paid kit. For the insert run you can confirm 600 distinct households received the scent. Dividing 18 by 600 produces 3%, but the sources measure different groups unless you match those 18 to recipients in that exact batch. Someone may have tried an insert months earlier, bought a different size, or received the vial from a friend.

Where you can match recipients and later orders consistently, report a clearly labeled matched repurchase rate. Where you only know a store accepted 600 vials, report units shipped and buyer mentions separately. Ask the retailer how many vials left its shelves and whether the full-size bottle sold out there. Successful sampling can generate a retail sale that will never appear in your Shopify thank-you page survey.

Choose what goes in the next box

If buyers repeatedly describe discovering the scent through a friend, a second shareable vial in a small test batch might deserve a trial. If people remember the retailer but struggle to identify the fragrance, print the same scent name and size on the vial, card, and product page before buying more impressions. For a kit with a redeemable credit, review credit use next to survey mentions, since the person receiving the kit as a gift may never see its code.

Add the full-size question with OrderSurvey on the Shopify App Store. Use the retail discovery worksheet for a stockist conversation, or the direct-mail holdout example if you can randomly assign eligible outgoing orders to receive an insert.

Frequently asked questions