Setting up Your Loyalty & Referrals Program Eligibility

Goals and Outcomes

The program eligibility settings let you define which customers can participate in your loyalty program to earn points, refer friends, and enter VIP tiers. This allows you to differentiate between customers who choose to join your program (opted in), and those who choose not to (opted out). By configuring your program’s eligibility settings, you can:

• Enable more accurate and targeted reporting.

• Minimize liability related to point issuance.

• Create a sense of exclusivity around your brand.

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

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

Program Eligibility Overview

Your eligibility strategy defines which customers are allowed to:

• Earn loyalty points

• Join referral campaigns

• Enter VIP tiers

You can see each customer’s eligibility status in their profile on the Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals > Customer Page.

If a customer opts out and later opts back in, the most recent eligibility date will appear in their profile.

Eligibility Settings

To access your program eligibility settings, go to Yotpo Loyalty & Referrals > Settings > General Settings > Program.

You can choose from three eligibility options:

1. All customers (recommended)

2. Only members who signed up

3. Only customers opted-in via API

1. All Customers (Recommended)

All customers are automatically eligible to participate in your loyalty program. This includes any customer who takes an action that would register their email address in your eCommerce platform (e.g. sign up for your newsletter) or who interacts with your loyalty program in any way.

Customers can be enrolled in your program by:

• Making a purchase

• Referring a friend

• Participating in an earning rule

• Taking any action that would register them as a customer in your store

Note

If you’re using Shopify’s Customer Accounts and your opt-in strategy is All Customers, shoppers can still earn points before their first purchase, but they will get their New Member Reward only after completing their first purchase as a member.

2. Only Members Who Signed Up

With this setting, only customers who actively sign up for your loyalty program are eligible to earn points and enter VIP tiers.

How the signup works:

• Shopify Classic (Legacy) Accounts or other eCommerce platforms: Customers are automatically enrolled when they create an account on your store.

• Shopify Customer Accounts: Customers must:

  1. Verify their email using a 6-digit verification code sent by Shopify.

  2. Click the opt-in button (which you configure) on your Rewards page or core widgets to complete the loyalty signup and accept your program’s terms.

To learn more, visit our Customer Accounts guide or see Shopify’s help center.

Customers can join by:

• Creating a store account (for Legacy accounts).

• Purchasing a membership. Learn more about paid memberships.

• Referring a friend (default behavior). To change this setting, click here.

• Being added via import or API (import status overrides any existing status).

Important

Points and rewards will not be added retroactively. If a customer made purchases 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

This option is for brands that prefer to manage enrollment by developing a custom flow using Yotpo’s Loyalty API.

Customers can be opted in by:

• Selecting a specific checkbox on your website.

• Purchasing a membership (this will automatically opt the customer into the program).

• Referring a friend (this is the default setting, but it can be customized).

Automatically Opt In Referring Customers

Note

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

By default, customers who refer a friend are automatically enrolled in 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.

• 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 can be hidden with custom code if necessary.

Important

If a customer opts out and then opts back in again, their previous VIP status or point balance won’t be 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:

1. From your Yotpo Loyalty admin, go to Manage Program.

2. Click VIP Tiers Program.

3. Open Advanced Settings.

4. Locate the Include Actions Pre Opt-In checkbox:

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

   2. 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.

Tip

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 two ways:

1. Via CSV import

2. Via API

Via CSV import

You can manually opt customers in or out using an import file. To get started, follow the steps in our guide on Importing/Exporting Points and Customers to prepare and upload your CSV file.

Import file fields

Your import file should include two relevant fields:

1. Opt In Status (0 or 1): Designate a column in your CSV to indicate whether the customer should be opted in or out:

   1. 0 = Opt out

   2. 1 = Opt in

   Important

   The status you set in the import file will override any existing status.

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

How blank fields are handled

The outcome of your import will vary depending on your program eligibility setting and whether the opt-in status field is filled in or left blank.

If your program is set to Only Members Who Signed Up:

• New customers with a blank opt-in status will be marked as opted out and will not earn points.

• Existing customers who are already opted out and have a blank status will remain opted out and will not earn points.

• Existing customers who are already opted in and have a blank status will remain opted in and will earn points.

If your program is set to All Customers:

• Any new or existing customer with a blank opt-in status will be opted in and will earn points.

• Any customer with the opt-in status explicitly set to 0 will be opted out and will not earn points.

If your program is set to Only Customers Opted-In via API:

• New customers with a blank opt-in status will be marked as opted out and will not earn points.

• Existing customers who are opted out and have a blank status will remain opted out and will not earn points.

• Existing customers who are opted in and have a blank status will remain opted in and will earn points.

Via API

You can also 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 and parameters:

• 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

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 dates.

• Dashboards
  You can filter to only include 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