Setting up Your Loyalty & Referrals Program Eligibility

The program eligibility allows you to define which customers are eligible to earn points and enter VIP tiers. The mechanism allows you to differentiate between customers who choose to participate in your loyalty program and those who have not (opted out). This creates targeted reporting, decreases liability, and promotes brand exclusivity.

Additionally, all eligible customers will automatically be enrolled into your base tier.

In this article, you’ll learn about the different program eligibility strategies and how to choose the one most suited to your needs.

How it works

Your program eligibility strategy defines which customers can participate in your loyalty, referrals, and VIP tier programs.

You can see a customer’s loyalty eligibility when viewing their profile in your Yotpo Loyalty & Referral Customer Page.

If the customer has opted out and back in again, their most recent eligibility date will be shown in their profile.

Eligibility settings

You can find these settings in your Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals main menu by going to Settings > General Settings > Program.

There are three options you can choose from:

1. All customers (Recommended)

All customers are eligible to participate in your loyalty program. This means customers who take any action that would register their email address in your eCommerce platform, or if they interact with your Loyalty & Referrals program in any way.  

Customers can join by:

• Making a purchase

• Referring a friend

• Participating in an earning rule

• Any action that would register them as a customer in your eCommerce platform

2. Only members who signed up

Customers must sign up as members of your loyalty program to earn points and enter VIP tiers.

• Shopify Classic accounts or any other eCommerce platform - customers sign up automatically when creating an account with your store.

• Shopify new customer accounts - coming soon.

To learn more about Shopify customer accounts, see Shopify’s help center.

Customers can join:

• By creating an account with your site.

• When purchasing a membership. To learn more about paid membership, see Setting up a Loyalty & Referrals Membership Program.

• By referring a friend - this is the default setting. To learn how to change the setting, click here.

• Via import or API - When importing a customer, the opt-in status in the import file overrides any existing status.

Please note:

Points and rewards will not be added retroactively. This means that if a customer shopped with your brand before creating an account, the rewards from those actions will not be added to their account. Rewards will only be added to their account after they become members.

3. Only customers opted-in via API

Allow customers to opt into your programs by developing a custom flow using Yotpo’s Loyalty API.

Customers can join by:

• Selecting a specific checkbox on your site

• Purchasing a membership will automatically opt the customer into the program. To learn more about paid membership, see Setting up a Loyalty & Referrals Membership Program

• Referring a friend. This is the default setting, however, this setting can be customized.

Automatically opt in referring customers to your program

Please note:

This setting will appear if your program eligibility setting is Only members who signed up or Only customers opted-in via API.

By default, customers who refer a friend become members of your program. To change this setting:

1. In the Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals main menu, go to Settings > General Settings.

2. Uncheck the Automatically opt in referring customers to your program checkbox.

What happens when a customer opts out?

When a customer chooses to opt out of your program, or you opt them out via API, import, or customer tags, the following will happen:

• Their points balance is annulled

• Manual actions such as adjusting their point balance, giving a reward, or adding custom actions will not be available to you

• The customer is dropped out of any VIP tier to no tier, including paid membership. To learn more about paid membership, see Setting up a Loyalty & Referrals Membership Program.

• Delayed rewards are canceled

• In-progress rewards, such as Goal spend or Punch card earning rules, are canceled

• They will not see the Shopify Checkout Extension on your checkout page, but they will see all other Loyalty widgets. These be hidden with custom code if necessary.

Important

If a customer opts out and back in again, they will not get their previous VIP status or point balance restored.

Eligible (opted-in) vs. not eligible (opted-out) customers

This table describes the actions available to customers eligible to participate in your program compared to those who aren’t eligible.

VIP tier settings

You can choose to count purchases made before the opt-in date towards entering a spend-based VIP tier (tiers with "amount spent" or "purchases made" thresholds.) once a customer opts in.

To locate the setting open the Loyalty & Referrals Programs tab

1. Click VIP Tiers.

2. Open Advanced Settings.

3. Locate "Include Actions Pre Opt-In" checkbox.

Choose between two options:

• Checked Box - Count all purchases the customer made starting from the tier period start date, regardless of the customer's opt-in date

• Unchecked Box - Only start counting purchases towards entering spend-based campaigns after the customer's opt-in date

Example

If you have an amount spent VIP tier with a threshold of 100$, and a customer who submitted 150$ worth of purchases as a guest checkout decided to opt in -

• When the box is checked, the customer will be pushed immediately into the tier (even though the relevant purchases were submitted pre-opt-in)

• When the box is unchecked, the purchases will not count toward tiers, and the customer will now start to earn toward their VIP tier eligibility

Opt-In and Paid VIP tiers

A customer who is opted out cannot earn a VIP tier. However, a customer who is opted out still has the option to purchase a paid VIP tier, because this action automatically opts them in.

Changing the program eligibility setting

If you update your program eligibility setting, your existing customers will not be affected. The update will only be applied to customers who join after the change is made.

Please note:

To get expert advice and assistance before changing your program eligibility setting, we recommend reaching out to your CSM or Yotpo support.

To change the program eligibility setting:

1. In your Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals main menu, go to Settings > General Settings.

2. Scroll down to Program.

3. Select the new setting from the menu.

4. Click Save.

Changing a customer’s eligibility status

You can change a customer’s program membership status in one of the following ways:

Via CSV import

You can manually opt customers in or out using an import file. To learn how to create the file, Importing/Exporting Points and Customers, and follow the instructions for uploading a CSV file.

The import file has 2 fields that are relevant:

• Opt In Status Field (0 or 1)

  Designate a column in your CSV to indicate the customer's Opt-In status. It is a binary field that can read either 0 or 1.

  0 = Opt out

  1 = Opt in

Important:

The status you set will override any existing status.

Opt-In Date Field (iso8601): The date you want to appear as the customer's opt-in date in this format: YYYY-MM-DD

If the Opt-In status field is left blank, your program eligibility setting will determine the outcome.

Opt In Status Field: Platform Account (Default)

When importing new customers with a blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will be set to "opted out." They will not earn points due to this import.  

When importing existing customers that are opted out with blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will stay opted out and will not earn any points due to the import.

When importing existing customers that are opted in with blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will stay opted in and will earn points due to the impo

Opt In Status Field: All Customers

Importing new or existing customers with blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will be opted in. Points will be added due to import.  

Importing new or existing customers with Opt in status field set to false (0):

• The customers will be opted out and will not earn points due to import.

Opt In Status Field: Only customers opted-in via API

When importing new customers with a blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will be set to "opted out." They will not earn points due to this import.  

When importing existing customers that are opted out with blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will stay opted out and will not earn any points due to the import.

When importing existing customers that are opted in with blank Opt in status field:

• Customers will stay opted in and will earn points due to the import

Via API

You may choose to use the API to opt customers in or out, regardless of your program eligibility setting.

You can update a customer's opt-in status with these endpoints:

• Create/Update customer records

  Relevant Parameters:

  • has_account (boolean)

  • opted_in (boolean)

  • opted_in_at (date)

When you send Yotpo a new customer via API, you can also indicate whether this customer should be opted in with opted_in = true

• Create order

  When you send Yotpo a new order via API, you can also indicate whether this customer should be opted in

You can check a customer's opt-in status with this call:

• Fetch customer details

  This endpoint returns a customer record with the parameter opt_in

Setting up customer communication

Customers will NOT be automatically notified if they are members of your program.

We recommend setting up an email notification on your ESP to notify them.

You’ll need to add the following properties to an email flow:

Events

Use these events if you want to send an email only once to welcome someone to the program or to notify them that they have opted out.

• Loyalty_opt_in

• Loyalty_opt_out  

Attributes

• Loyalty_opt_in_date

  Use this if you only want to email members who have been a part of your program for a certain amount of time, for example, either very new loyalty members or long-time members.

• Loyalty_opt_in

  If you want to send an email to loyalty members only, use the attribute: Loyalty_opt_in = yes

Please note:

Opted-out customers will not receive loyalty-related emails, such as birthday, point reminder, or redemption reminder emails.

Reports

Use your Loyalty Reports to gather the most relevant data about your business. The below dashboards include opt-in/opt-out date.

• Dashboards
  You can filter to only include only customers who are opted in by using the filter: Only Loyalty Members = Is Yes. This filter is available on the following dashboards:

  • ROI dashboard

  • VIP Tiers dashboard

  • Loyalty Performance dashboard

  • Referral performance

FAQ