Creating an Anniversary Earning Rule on Shopify
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Creating an Anniversary Earning Rule on Shopify
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The Anniversary Reward earning rule (previously known as a campaign) allows you to give shoppers a special gift for their anniversary or for celebrating the date they joined the loyalty program.
It's a great way to make your loyalty program a more personal experience for your shoppers.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create the earning rule and how to customize every aspect of it.
Is this article for me?
If you're using a different eCommerce platform, refer to this article.
How it works
The earning rule allows you to reward your customers for an anniversary of your choice. It could be the anniversary of them creating an account with your shop, or it could be a more personal anniversary - marriage, pet’s birthday/adoption day, child’s birthday, etc.
The account creation anniversary will register the account creation date as the date for the anniversary by default and reward the customer a year later.
If you let your customers add their own personal anniversary, they will be rewarded when that date comes along.
You can choose whether the reward is points or a discount and you can create several Anniversary Reward earning rules for different customer segments.
Click here to learn more about how the reward-giving logic works when there are multiple anniversary earning rules.
Multiple earning rules reward logic
When a customer is supposed to receive a reward, our system goes through all the existing anniversary earning rules.
The existing earning rules are reviewed in the following order:
Rules that are restricted to VIP tiers.
Rules applied to specific customer segments
Rules that apply to all customers
Each customer can receive only one reward for this earning rule. This means that if you have an earning rule that is restricted to VIP tiers and one that applies to all customers, a customer with the relevant VIP tier status will receive only one reward on their anniversary.
Creating the earning rule
In the Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals main menu, go to Set Up Program > Rewards Program.
Click Create earning rule.
Under Account select Anniversary Reward, then click Next.
Now you can go ahead and configure the earning rule settings.
Setting up the earning rule
Anniversary date types
Important:
You can have only one anniversary type per loyalty program. This means that all the Anniversary Reward rules you create will either have the account creation date or a personalized date. Creating multiple earning rules with different settings will cause unexpected behavior.
You can choose between two different anniversary types for when to reward your customers:
Account creation anniversary - choose this option to celebrate the customer's account creation anniversary. This anniversary date is automatically registered based on when they created their account.
Please note:
When choosing to reward the customers based on account creation day, customers will receive a reward only 1 year after their account was created.
To reward customers on the account creation day, you can use the New Member Reward Earning Rule.
Personalized anniversary - similar to our birthday reward earning rule functionality, the customer will input the date of their anniversary into the Rewards Page or Earning Points Module and will be given a reward on that date.
Tip:
When choosing "Personalized date", you can edit or remove the customer's anniversary date from the Customer's page. Additional information can be found here.
Fraud prevention
The fraud prevention feature is available only for the Personalized anniversary setting.
The fraud prevention setting prevents customers from trying to get the reward sooner than their true anniversary, for example, during high-traffic times such as holidays.
You can update the success and fraud prevention texts for this earning rule, within the Rewards Page Builder.
Tip:
After a customer submits a date, it's impossible for them to change it. They can only change it by contacting customer support.
To learn how to manually update a customer's submitted anniversary date in Yotpo, check out our Customer Management Actions article.
Turning on fraud prevention
To activate fraud prevention, turn on the toggle.
One reward per calendar year
The system will allow customers to receive only one anniversary gift per calendar year.
Regardless of whether fraud prevention is turned off or on, and regardless of how many times you update a customer's anniversary, the system will not grant more than one gift per calendar year.
30-day waiting period
Fraud prevention ensures all customers have a waiting period of at least 30 days, from the day they input their anniversary date into the earning rule.
If the customer signs up and sets their anniversary to more than 30 days in the future, there is no issue. They will receive the reward on their anniversary
If the customer signs up and sets their anniversary to less than 30 days in the future, they will need to fulfill a waiting period of 30 days from the date they signed up for the earning rule
For example, if the customer signed up for the earning rule on January 5 and claims their anniversary is January 6, the reward will only be granted on February 5 [January 6 + 29 days], ensuring each customer waits a minimum of 30 days for their reward.
Turning off fraud prevention
Fraud prevention is optional. If you do not wish to use it, turn off the toggle.
Please note:
Each time you manually turn off fraud prevention, the system triggers an action that sends a reward to all customers whose anniversary passed but were still in the 30-day waiting period.
Fraud prevention FAQs
I changed the customer's anniversary date in the admin. What will happen now?
If you change a customer’s anniversary date in Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals after the customer has already received a gift this year, the customer will not receive a second gift in the same year. They will receive their next reward on the new date in the upcoming calendar year.
For example, if a customer received an anniversary reward in March 2020 and then contacted the store to ask and change their anniversary date to April 2020, the customer will receive another anniversary reward only in April 2021.
I decided to turn off fraud prevention. Who will get a gift now?
Every time you turn off fraud prevention, it triggers a backfill action that automatically sends an anniversary gift to all customers who had an anniversary but their reward was delayed due to fraud prevention.
These customers will automatically receive their reward immediately.
I changed my fraud prevention settings several times - How do I know who is getting a gift and when?
The system runs one daily check at 11 a.m. UTC and checks who is supposed to receive an anniversary perk today.
It makes no difference how many times fraud prevention settings were changed prior to this daily check. The system only sees the current status (on or off) during the daily check.
For example:
If during the daily check fraud prevention is turned off, the customer will receive a reward on that day (their anniversary.)
If during the daily check fraud prevention is turned on, the system also checks if the 30-day waiting period has passed. If the waiting period has passed, they will receive a reward on that day.
What time of day are the rewards sent out?
All of the anniversary rewards are sent out every day at 11 a.m. UTC.
Does re-enabling fraud prevention reset the 30-day waiting period for customers?
No matter how many times you turn on fraud prevention, customers will still wait 30 days from the day they signed up.
Unless of course, you turn off fraud prevention exactly on the customer's anniversary day, or their anniversary has already passed. In that case, a gift is sent out right away to these customers.
However, the system still will only allow 1 gift per calendar year per customer.
Examples:
The customer signed up for the Anniversary Reward earning rule when fraud prevention was off. Their anniversary is next week. Tomorrow you decide to turn on fraud prevention. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: 30 days from the date when the customer signed up for the earning rule
The customer signed up for the Anniversary Reward earning rule when fraud prevention was turned on. Their anniversary is next week. Tomorrow you decide to turn it off. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: On the day of their anniversaryThe customer signed up for the Anniversary Reward earning rule when fraud prevention was turned on. Their anniversary was today. In 2 weeks you decide to turn off fraud prevention. When will the customer get the reward?
Answer: On the date that you decide to turn off fraud prevention.
I have multiple Anniversary Reward earning rules. What if one has Fraud Prevention and the others don't?
If even one Anniversary Reward earning rule does not have fraud prevention, this will take precedence and will cancel fraud prevention on all your Anniversary Reward earning rules.
For this reason, it's important to make sure all fraud prevention settings are the same across your different Anniversary Reward earning rules.
Reward type
You can choose to reward customers with points or with a discount. Points can be collected and later redeemed for redeemable rewards, while a discount reward can be used as soon as their next purchase.
Points reward
To offer customers a points reward on their birthday, select Points under Reward type, then enter the number of points you want to offer.
Discount reward
To offer customers a discount reward on their birthday, do the following:
Under Reward type, select Discount.
From the drop-down menu, select the type of discount you want to offer whether it’s a Fixed amount or a Percentage discount.
Depending on the type you selected, enter the discount amount.
Please note:
When entering the discount amount, make sure to use a whole, positive number
In the case of a percentage discount, you can use an amount between 1% and 100%
Under Code prefix, you can add a prefix that will help you identify and differentiate between reward codes more easily
Discount settings
Different discount settings are available if you want to promote specific products or collections, as well as specify who can use this discount and when.
To view and edit these settings, click Discount settings under the Discount reward option.
Apply discount to
Choose to apply the discount to any product, specific products, or specific collections.
Any product - Use this if you want this discount to apply to all of your products
Specific products - Use this to limit which products this discount can apply to, for example, if you want to promote specific products
In the Apply this discount to drop-down select Specific products.
In the Product IDs field, enter your product IDs separated by a comma. Learn more about finding product IDs in Shopify
In the Variant IDs field, enter your variant IDs. Learn more about finding variant IDs in Shopify
Specific collections - Use this to limit which collections this discount can apply to if you want to promote specific collections, groups or categories of products
In the Apply this discount to drop-down select Specific collections.
In the Collection IDs field, enter your collection IDs separated by a comma. Learn more about collections in Shopify
Minimum spend
Set a minimum amount customers must spend on their purchase to be eligible to receive this discount. Note that if you selected a specific product or specific collection to apply your reward to, the minimum spend amount is the amount customers need to spend on that specific product or collection.
Discount only applies to these Shopify segment IDs
Use this if you want to make this discount available only to specific segments using Shopify Customer Segments
To find your Shopify segment:
Go to the Customers page in your Shopify admin.
From the Customer segment dropdown, choose the customer segment you want to use.
Your segment ID is the set of numbers found at the end of this page URL.
Discount code expiration
Select a reward expiration if you want the discount to only be valid for a certain amount of time. Use this to increase redemption rate and purchase frequency.
Who can use this discount code?
Use this option if you want to limit the use of this discount only to the customer that originally received it.
Anyone - use this if you don’t want to set a limit
Only the customer who originally received this reward and is logged in to their account - You can require the customer trying to use this discount code to log in to their account to verify that it’s the same customer who originally received it
Advanced settings
Additional advanced settings are available to add target audiences and VIP tiers.
Available for:
Advanced settings including Yotpo Lists & Segments and VIP Tiers are available for Premium and Enterprise plans
Target audience - Add Lists & Segments to target this earning rule at specific audiences. For example, target those who have not made a purchase in over 90 days.
Apply this rule to - Use the drop-down menu to include the relevant lists and/or segments of customers you’d like to target.
Do not apply this rule to - You also have the option to exclude lists and/or segments. For example, if you want to apply a Points for Purchases rule to all customers except for those who consistently spend a lot of money in your store. In this case you would select Apply this rule to - All customers, and Do not apply this rule to - Top spenders.
VIP Tiers - Use the drop-down menu to select which VIP tiers this earning rule will apply to. Create more than one birthday rule to gift customers even more for being part of your tiers program.
Rewards history text
If you choose to reward your customers with a discount, they will see the reward they earned in their Rewards History when they receive it on their anniversary, together with an explanation of why they received it.
Action text
The default Action text is set to ‘Annivesary reward’. To change it, click in the Action text field and type in the text you want to appear in your customer’s Rewards History
Reward text
The Reward text field has an automatic value that will dynamically present customers with the chosen discount amount.
Please note:
It’s only possible to change the reward text if you chose the Discount option under Reward type
For points rewards, your customers will just see the number of points they earned in the same line as the Action text
Important:
Make sure you do not leave this field empty. If you accidentally delete the preset text, just type in {{reward}} off.
Changing the name of your earning rule
You can change the name of this earning rule by clicking the edit icon next to it. In the case that you have more than one birthday reward rule, you can change its name to help you differentiate between them.
Please note:
The way you choose to name your earning rule here is only for internal management purposes. Your customers will not see this.
You can manage the way your earning rule is displayed to customers from the Rewards Page Builder module and Earning Points module
Finding your rule ID
Use the Copy rule ID option if you need to share it with 3rd party partners that Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals doesn't directly integrate with.
To find the earning rule ID, click the ellipses icon next to the Save button.
Managing the rule status
The rule status that’s located next to the rule name tells you whether the rule is active on your site or not. If active, this means that the rule is running and customers are earning rewards.
You can deactivate the rule if you want to. If you choose to deactivate the earning rule, it will no longer be visible to customers, and they won't be able to earn rewards from it.
Next steps
Setting up email notifications - The anniversary reward email can be sent through an integrated Email Service Provider (ESP).
Click the ESP relevant to you to integrate it and configure the Happy Anniversary trigger:
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