What is incentive decisioning?

Incentive decisioning rules define who can redeem an incentive, when they can redeem it, and under which conditions the promotion is allowed to apply. In Voucherify, these rules are the core mechanism that stops overspend, prevents misuse, protects margins, and ensures that incentives only trigger when they deliver real value.

Decisioning rules act as the runtime logic of your incentive system. Every time a customer attempts to redeem a promotion, Voucherify evaluates these rules against the customer profile, order structure, product data, budget availability, and any custom business logic. Only when all rules pass does the incentive apply.

What do incentive decisioning rules do?

Decisioning rules ensure that incentives fire only under the correct economic and behavioral conditions. They can enforce:

• Who is eligible for a promotion
• Which carts or products qualify
• How deep the discount can go
• Whether the promotion is within budget
• Whether certain customers or use cases should be excluded
• How promotions interact with each other (stacking, order of application)

In effect, they are the decision engine that makes incentives safe, targeted, and profitable.

Decisioning rules in Voucherify

Voucherify organizes incentive decisioning into several rule families, each governing a different part of the transaction:

1. Audience rules

Determine which customers can redeem an offer. They can reference static or dynamic customer segments, customer metadata, loyalty tier, region/store, or any custom attribute. These rules enforce inclusion (“only VIPs”) or exclusion (“exclude discount-abusive customers”).

2. Order structure rules

Define what needs to be in the cart for the promotion to apply. They inspect SKUs, collections, categories, quantities, and cart composition. Used for BOGO, bundles, cross-sell, up-sell, and product-specific protection.

3. Order volume rules

Set thresholds based on order value or item count. They support scenarios like “€10 off €100+” or “Free shipping above 3 items.”

4. Budget constraints

Stop promotions from overspending. They enforce limits per campaign, per customer, per SKU, per region, or per redemption window. Once limits are reached, the promotion automatically disables itself.

5. Advanced rules

Support metadata-based conditions and technical constraints like API keys or integration-specific markers. Used for context-rich decisioning such as limiting offers by marketplace, payment method, subscription state, inventory level, or internal flags.

Why incentive decisioning matters?

Without decisioning rules, promotions behave like open access systems: any customer, any cart, any context, any time. That’s how organizations accidentally discount low-margin SKUs, allow unintended stacking, or expose incentives across the wrong markets.

Decisioning rules shift incentive management from manual policing to automated enforcement, ensuring:

• Precision targeting
• Controlled spend
• Fewer edge-case failures
• Predictable unit economics
• Cleaner promotion architecture

This is essential for teams running promotions at scale or across multiple storefronts, brands, or regions.