Loyalty points your customers actually spend.
The first reward is close enough to be worth chasing, and every balance is shown in real money, so nobody has to work out what 500 points means.
Customer account
1,240 points
≈ $12.40 off your next order
Checkout
Automatic email · sent today
You’ve got $12.40 waiting. It expires in 14 days
What loyalty points are
Loyalty points only work when the reward is close enough to reach.
Loyalty points are a shop's own currency: customers earn them by buying, and often for other things too (signing up, leaving a review, having a birthday), then spend them on rewards like money off, free shipping or a free product. The shop decides how many points each action is worth and what each reward costs.
That part is easy. Making people care is the hard part, and it's where most programs fall over. Plenty of them want 10,000 points for $5 off. A shopper does that maths once, works out it would take a year, and never thinks about it again.
That isn't a hunch. Researchers followed a café's loyalty cards across roughly 10,000 purchases and found customers bought 20% faster as they got closer to the free coffee. In another study, a car wash handed out two cards needing the same eight purchases, but one looked already underway, with two of ten stamps pre-filled. That one was redeemed 34% of the time, against 19%. Same work either way; what changed was how close it felt.
Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng (2006) and Nunes & Drèze (2006). Both are research on loyalty programs in general, not Essential-specific results.
Ways to earn
Fourteen ways to earn, on every plan
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Buying
Every order, plus a bigger bonus on their first one.
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Signing up
Joining the program, subscribing to email.
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Coming back
A daily visit.
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Birthdays
A yearly gift that sends itself.
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Reviews
Points for a published review, through Judge.me.
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Social
Following or sharing on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X, or visiting a link you choose.
Unlimited ways to earn with Shopify Flow
The built-in actions cover what most stores need. When you want something specific, Shopify Flow can hand out points for anything it can detect in your store: double points over $100, a bonus for one collection, a top-up for customers you've tagged, a bonus that only runs during a sale week. No code, and nothing extra to buy. Some loyalty apps charge for this: one gates Flow support at $100/month, another at $29.
What points are worth
Customers always know what their points are worth
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Shown in real money, everywhere
"500 points" means nothing on its own. The real value appears on product pages, in the cart and in their account: no arithmetic, no guessing.
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Spend it how they like
Money off, a percentage off, free shipping, a free product, or their own amount on a slider.
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Or take store credit
Lands in their account and applies itself at checkout.
Store credit -
Earn faster as they climb
VIP tiers multiply every point a customer earns.
VIP tiers
FAQ
Questions merchants actually ask
Anything else? The support team answers every message, on every plan, including free.
- A store's own currency, earned by shopping and spent on rewards. A customer might earn points on every order, then swap them for money off, free shipping or a free product. Loyalty points only work when the first reward is close enough that people bother, and when they can tell what the points are worth.
- However you decide. Every order earns by default, usually with a bigger bonus on a first order, and you can also give points for signing up, subscribing, leaving a review, a birthday, a daily visit, or following you on social. With Shopify Flow you can add rules of your own on top.
- Whatever you decide. You pick how generous to be when you set up (3%, 5% or 8% back), and that sets both how fast points build and what a reward costs. Customers always see the value in real money wherever points appear.
- You set the rate, so you decide what it costs. Reachable isn't the same as cheap: it means a first-time buyer can see a reward they'd actually get, rather than one that reads as impossible.
- Not unless you want them to. Expiry is off by default, and on the Essential plan and above you can set a window of 6 to 24 months.
- The points come back off their balance automatically, in proportion to what was refunded, and refunded spend stops counting toward their VIP tier.
Give points a real payoff.
Install free: 14 ways to earn are on from day one.