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Work / Loyalty and email

An owned loyalty program for BigCommerce

Points, VIP tiers, rewards and referrals in a program the retailer owns, with redemptions that become working BigCommerce coupons.

90,000+

loyalty members on file

5,800+

reward coupons issued

3,000+

coupons used at checkout

The problem

A multi-brand regulated retailer ran its loyalty program on Yotpo, so points, tiers and customer history lived in Yotpo.

Its reviews plan kept hitting a monthly cap on review request emails. Lifting the cap meant an enterprise plan that bundled reviews and loyalty, which this retailer was quoted at $13,000 a year.

The marketing team also wanted to run its own points promotions and change the rewards page without waiting on a developer.

What we built

  • Points for purchases, signup, birthdays, product reviews, and photo or video reviews. Each rule can have a cap per customer.
  • VIP tiers with thresholds staff can edit, a points multiplier per tier, and an optional one-time coupon when a member reaches a tier.
  • Rewards that become real BigCommerce coupons on the spot: dollar or percent off, free products, with optional minimum spend, expiry dates and excluded products or brands.
  • Free product rewards hide themselves when the product is out of stock.
  • Promotions the marketing team runs itself: double points on chosen brands or categories for set dates, and "spend this much in these categories, get a coupon."
  • "Earn X points on this purchase" under Add to Cart, including the shopper’s own VIP multiplier.
  • A referral program: members share a link, friends get a discount, and the member is rewarded when the friend orders.
  • Every loyalty moment is sent to Omnisend as an event, so the team designs and sends loyalty emails in the tool it already uses.
  • A rewards page builder with drag and drop sections, per store.
  • A member import from Yotpo that carries over balances, lifetime points, tiers, birthdays and referral codes.

How it works

  1. Every points change is written to a ledger that can only be added to, with a unique key per event. The same order or review can never award points twice.
  2. Redeeming a reward reserves the points and creates the coupon through BigCommerce. When an order arrives with that code, the points are spent.
  3. A daily job removes expired codes from BigCommerce and settles the points they were holding.
  4. The points number a shopper sees on the product page and the points they are awarded come from the same calculation. A test checks the two always match.
  5. The Yotpo import starts with a dry run that reports what would be created or updated. The real run is safe to repeat: running it twice changes nothing the second time.

Results

  • Replaced Yotpo Loyalty on the retailer’s stores.
  • More than 90,000 loyalty members on file, more than 23,000 of them in a VIP tier.
  • More than 5,800 reward coupons issued, and more than 3,000 of them used at checkout.
  • 55 completed referrals so far.
  • Free priority shipping by VIP tier is live at checkout, through the retailer’s shipping rules app.
  • The support assistant answers points, rewards and tier questions from live loyalty data.

Could this work for your store?

Earning rules, tiers, multipliers, rewards and promotions are settings each store controls. The program works for any BigCommerce store.

What changes per store: the rewards page design, and the email platform if you are not on Omnisend.

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BuildPath is run by Ian Mason, a developer with 20 years in ecommerce and search.

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