TCommerce: Gifting

Unlock a new revenue stream by offering a Gifting option for your products.

In this article:

About This Feature

How It Works

Important Considerations

Buyer Experience

Gift Recipient Experience

Creator Experience

Promoting Gifting to Your Audience

Email Template

Refund Gift Orders

Frequently Asked Questions

About Thinkific's Gifting Feature

Thinkific's Gifting feature allows you to effortlessly sell your learning products as gifts that your audience can give to friends, family, and loved ones — helping you boost your sales with a new audience. Complete with personalized messages, email notifications, and seamless redemption — no clunky workarounds required. Because there's no better gift than the gift of knowledge.

• Boost sales and expand your audience
  When someone sends your learning product as a gift to a lucky recipient, you get exposure to a totally new audience who’ll get to experience your unique genius for the first time — and potentially share with (or gift to) their own network in the future
   
• Streamlined gift purchasing and checkout
  Our seamless checkout experience allows your audience to effortlessly purchase courses as gifts for their recipient of choice, making the process quick and hassle-free — no clunky workarounds required.
   
• Personalization
  When your learning product is purchased as a gift, the buyer can include a custom message, setting your next future student up for success.
   
• Invite URL and email notifications
  When a gift is purchased, buyers will receive email notifications to confirm their payment and recipients will receive notifications about redemption, ensuring a smooth, hassle-free gifting experience. Buyers can also get a unique invite URL to share directly with their recipient.

“My customers and I have had to spend an inordinate amount of time finding a work-around for gifting classes to fans. I receive emails daily from customers who want to gift online classes to loved ones.

This will generate far more sales and help lighten my workload. With the holidays approaching, I am dreading the emails I'll have to answer and the trickery I'll have to help perform for people to gift my classes.”

- Gesine Prado, Thinkific Creator, Baker, Author, Teacher @ Sugar Glider Kitchen

How Gifting Works

The Gifting functionality is enabled by default for creators on all qualifying TCommerce accounts on paid plans. To access the Gifting feature as well as other great TCommerce features, enable Thinkific Payments on your account: Thinkific Payments.

To verify that the feature is enabled or to disable the feature:

1. From your Admin Dashboard, select Settings
2. Select the Orders & Accounts tab
3. Select Gifting Settings
4. Check or uncheck the box to enable or disable the feature
5. Click Save

With this feature enabled, buyers can easily purchase your learning products as gifts at checkout. 

Gifting is available on:

• All product types (course, communities, bundles, etc.)
• Products with a one-time pricing option
• Payments made using any available payment methods (credit card, BNPL, bank transfer, etc)

Gifting is not available on:

• Products with recurring pricing (subscription or monthly payment)
• Products with order bumps
• Free products

Important Considerations

• Gifting is available to creators on paid plans.
• Products that have an order bump offered on them cannot be purchased as a gift. Disable the order bump on the primary product to make it giftable.
• Products priced as free, subscription, or payment plan cannot be purchased as a gift.
• Coupons can be applied to products purchased as a gift but the discount cannot be 100%
• Bulk gift purchases are not supported. Only 1 gift can be purchased at a time.
• After purchase flows will not be active on gift purchases.

Buyer Experience

When a buyer is ready to make a purchase, they can purchase your product as a gift at checkout by selecting This is a gift option. This allows them to designate a recipient by providing the recipient's information and email address while also having the option to include a personalized message.

Only one gift can be purchased per transaction.

After the product is purchased: 

• the buyer will receive a gift order receipt email 
• a gift invitation email will be sent to the designated recipient

Buying a Product a Student is Enrolled in as a Gift

Sometimes, a student who is enrolled in one of your products wants to buy as a gift. There are two possible ways this could be done.

If the student making the gift purchase is not already signed into their account they will be directed to the checkout once they have selected the product they wish to buy. At checkout, they will be asked to enter their email address and password, and once done, will be able to select the option to “buy as a gift” and can complete their purchase.

If the student making the gift purchase, is already signed in and wishes to purchase the same product as a gift for someone else, they can do so by navigating to their Order History:

1. From their Student Dashboard, click on their profile picture
2. Select My Account
3. Select Order History
4. Select the order record related to the product they want to purchase
5. Select Buy as gift

Gift Recipient Experience

The recipient will receive the gift through a gift invitation email. They will need to access their email and click on the button to create an account on your website to redeem the gift. Upon redeeming the gift, they will receive access to the product and can begin learning at their convenience. They will also receive an order receipt email notification to confirm that the gift has been claimed.

Creator Experience

The Gifting functionality is enabled by default on your site’s checkout page if you are a paying, TCommerce customer.

New Order Notifications

Once a buyer purchases a product as a gift, you will receive a new order email notification. The email notification will specify the recipient to whom the gift invitation email has been sent. After the recipient has redeemed the gift, you will receive an additional order email notification confirming their redemption of the gift. 

Transactions Tabls

The Transaction table will list Gift transactions made by buyers. You can view the receipt to see the URL link that can be shared with the buyer and gift recipient for the recipient to redeem their gift.

As gift redemption transactions are $0 purchases (students do not have to pay to redeem their gifts), they are not visible in the Transaction table.

Orders Table

The orders table tracks the sale and redemption of your gifted products and all other sales made on your site.

Orders purchased as a gift are reported as a One-time payment order. You can select the order to access the recipient information and the recipient order number within the order details. A recipient order number will only be available if the gift has been redeemed by the recipient. Redeemed gift purchases are reported as a Free order. You can select the order to access the buyer information as well as the order number of the original order within the order details.

Gift Purchase Order	Gift Redemption Order

Thinkific Analytics

Thinkific Analytics: Revenue Dashboard allows you to see how much revenue came from the Gifting feature and how many transactions were completed as a Gift Purchase or a Gift Redemption. To see this information, use the TCommerce Feature filter.

Promote Gifting to Your Audience

Your audience of learners has the opportunity to buy your learning products as gifts – so let them know! Here are 3 ways you can promote Gifting to your audience.

1. Promote Gifting on your social media channels with something like:
   "Interested in buying a course or a learning bundle for a friend or loved one? Buying as a gift is now available at checkout! Give the gift of knowledge this coming Black Friday”
   Be sure to include details on any additional sales or promotions you might be running to drive urgency and excitement!
2. Send a dedicated email or include Gifting in a newsletter to your students with more information about the feature so they can start thinking about who their lucky gift recipients are! See the email template below.
3. If you have a Thinkific Community, create and share a post about Gifting, and get your members thinking about which of their friends, family, colleagues, or loved ones they think would benefit from your expertise.

Email Template: Tell Your Students They Can Purchase Your Learning Products as Gifts

Let your students know they can purchase your learning products as gifts! You can copy/paste the email template below, customize and edit as you see fit, and email your audience, or post on your social media channels:

Subject: Give the Gift of Learning 🎁
Email:

Hi there,
 

Exciting news! You can now purchase my course as a gift for someone special.
 

If you’ve benefited from my course and know someone who would love it, this is the perfect way to pass along the knowledge.
 

Simply add the course to your cart, select the "This is a gift" checkbox at checkout, and fill out the details of the lucky recipient — including a personalized note from you!
 

Spread the gift of learning with your friends, family, or colleagues. It’s a thoughtful way to inspire someone you care about to start their learning journey.
 

If you have any questions or need help, feel free to reply to this email!
 

Best,
[Your Name]

Refund Gift Orders

Gifted products can be refunded to the buyer upon their request, with the refund process varying based on whether the gift has been redeemed or not.

You can confirm if a gifted order has been redeemed by accessing your orders table and locating the order with the order number provided by your buyer. When a gift has been redeemed, the recipient's order number will be displayed within the order details of the original order. If you don't see a recipient order number in the original order’s details, the recipient has not yet redeemed their gift.

Gift Not Redeemed	Gift Redeemed

Option 1: Refunding the buyer after the gift has been redeemed

1. Confirm that the gift has been redeemed by the gift recipient
2. Refund the order to the buyer from your Orders Table or Transactions Table
3. Unenroll the student (gift recipient) from your product

Option 2: Refunding the buyer before the gift has been redeemed

1. Confirm that the gift has yet to be redeemed by the gift recipient
2. Contact Support to request the gift invite link to be deactivated for the gift recipient
3. Wait for Support to confirm the deactivation of the gift invite link
4. Refund the order to the buyer from your Orders Table or Transactions Table

Frequently Asked Questions

More About TCommerce

TCommerce: Powered by Thinkific Payments

TCommerce: Additional Payment Methods

Thinkific Payments

Thinkific Payments Supported Countries and Transaction Fees

[back to top]