Goals and Outcomes
Points Drop is a tactical loyalty campaign that helps you drive immediate customer action. By granting bonus points to a targeted audience for a limited time, it creates urgency and encourages purchases.
Unlike always-on earning rules, Points Drop adds points to the customer's balance instantly for a limited time. Customers must use their points before the campaign ends; otherwise, the points expire. This creates a strong reason to shop within the campaign period.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create, schedule, and manage Points Drop Campaigns.
Points Drop Campaigns Overview
When a Points Drop Campaign starts, eligible customers receive bonus points instantly. If the points are not redeemed before the campaign ends, they expire automatically.
Note
Points awarded through a Points Drop Campaign do not contribute toward VIP/Loyalty tier qualification or progression.
If you’re using the legacy VIP program with points-based tiers, it’s not recommended to use Points Drop Campaigns.
Use Cases
Win back dormant customers: Reward customers who haven't purchased recently. The limited-time reward encourages them to return and make a purchase.
Reward VIP members: Offer exclusive bonus points to your most engaged loyalty members.
Drive seasonal sales: Launch a Points Drop during key shopping periods, such as Black Friday, holiday promotions, or end-of-season sales, to encourage customers to purchase within a specific timeframe.
Celebrate product launches: Generate excitement around a new collection or product release.
Drive free product redemption: Award points and drive customers to redeem free products to increase Average Order Value (AOV) and Units Per Transaction (UPT).
Reduce outstanding point liability: Encourage members to combine existing point balances with bonus points before they expire.
Creating a Points Drop Campaign
To create a Points Drop Campaign:
From your Yotpo Loyalty admin, go to Manage Program > Rewards Program.
Under Campaigns, click Create Points Drop Campaign.
Configure the campaign. Add:
Name
Name that will appear in customers’ reward history
Campaign owner email: The email address that will receive all campaign status notifications.
Reward amount in points
Schedule: The period when the campaign will run
Audience list: Upload a CSV containing up to 500, 000 customers. The file must contain a single email column.
Save the campaign when ready.
How Audience Validation Works
CSV upload: To determine who receives campaign points, you need to upload a CSV file containing the customers you want to target.
Audience validation:
Upon upload, we check whether the selected customers are eligible to receive the campaign reward before the campaign starts (only loyalty members can get points).
When the campaign starts, we review the audience again and calculate how many customers will receive points. If some customers are ineligible (e.g., deleted profiles, customers who don't meet the campaign criteria), they won't be included in the reward distribution.
As a result, the final campaign audience may differ from the original audience list you uploaded.
After the campaign successfully starts and audience validation is complete:
You’ll receive an email with the campaign status update;
You’ll be able to download the final audience that successfully received points; and
You’ll also receive a failure report listing excluded customers and the reason they weren’t included.
Campaign Email Notifications
The campaign owner will receive email notifications throughout the campaign lifecycle to help track its progress and identify any issues. The following notifications are sent automatically:
Import completed: Sent after the uploaded audience file has been successfully imported and is ready for validation.
Campaign started: Sent after the campaign begins and bonus points have been successfully allocated to eligible customers.
Campaign completed: Sent if the audience file can't be imported or if a technical issue prevents the campaign from being processed successfully.
Audience import or processing failed: Sent if the audience file can't be imported or if a technical issue prevents the campaign from being processed successfully.
Scheduling a Campaign
By default, campaign dates and times are based on the time zone configured in your Yotpo store settings. However, you can set a different time zone for each campaign.
Important
A Points Drop Campaign must run for at least 12 hours. You can’t select a shorter campaign duration.
Campaign start
The campaign start date and time determine when Yotpo starts processing the campaign and allocating points to eligible customers.
Before points are awarded, Yotpo performs a final validation of the uploaded audience. Once processing is complete, merchants can download the finalized audience list showing which customers successfully received points from the campaign.
Campaign end
The campaign end date determines when the point expiration process begins. Campaign end dates are configured by date only and do not support time selection.
It can take up to 2 hours after the campaign ends for bonus points to expire from customers' accounts.
Campaign Statuses
To review all campaigns in the Campaigns table, go to Rewards Program > Manage Campaigns.
Campaigns can appear in one of the following statuses:
Draft: The campaign has been created but has not yet been scheduled or activated.
Scheduled: The campaign is scheduled to start at a future date and time.
Active: The drop is currently being activated, and points are being distributed to customers. You can no longer edit or cancel the campaign once it’s active.
Completed: The campaign has ended. Metrics might take up to 24 hours to appear.
Campaign Performance Metrics
We collect performance metrics for each campaign to help you better understand customer engagement and purchasing behavior.
Note
Campaign metrics become available after a campaign is activated and points have been distributed to eligible members. While a campaign is active, performance metrics are refreshed once every 24 hours to reflect the latest campaign activity. After a campaign is completed, the Campaigns table shows the final campaign results.
Audience
The group of customers who received the campaign benefit.
Revenue
Total revenue generated by the audience within this timeframe.
Conversion Rate (CVR)
The percentage of customers who received campaign points and made a purchase during the campaign period.
% Redeemers
The percentage of customers who received campaign points, made a purchase, and redeemed loyalty points as part of that purchase.
All campaign details, statuses, and metrics are available in the Campaigns table.
Best Practices for Running a Points Drop Campaign
1. Start with a clear business goal.
Define what you want to achieve before launching your campaign, such as re-engaging dormant customers, increasing repeat purchases, or driving redemption ahead of a product launch.
2. Target a specific audience.
Once you've defined your goal, build an audience that aligns with it. Focus on customers who are most likely to respond to the incentive rather than sending points to your entire loyalty base.
For example, if your goal is to re-engage dormant customers, create a segment of loyalty members who haven't made a purchase in the last 180 days but have redeemed a reward at least once.
3. Create urgency.
Keep campaigns short (typically 48-72 hours) so customers feel encouraged to act before their bonus points expire.
4. Choose a meaningful reward.
Offer enough points to make redemption feel attainable. For example, help customers get closer to their next reward rather than giving an amount with little perceived value.
5. Promote the campaign across your marketing channels.
Announce your Points Drop through email, SMS, push notifications, and on-site banners. Customers are more likely to redeem points when they're aware of the limited-time opportunity.
6. Launch around meaningful business moments.
Align campaigns with seasonal promotions, new product launches, inventory events, loyalty milestones, or win-back initiatives to maximize impact.
7. Review your campaign results.
After the campaign ends, results will appear in your admin after 24 hours. Use these metrics to understand what worked and apply those learnings to future campaigns.
FAQs
Will Points Drop campaigns appear in my liability report?
Yes. Points granted through a Points Drop campaign will appear in the points_redeemed_reimbursed column of your liability report, so you may notice a temporary increase in that value after the campaign starts. If granted points are not used before the campaign expires, they will be recorded under the expired_points column once the campaign ends.