Recharge’s Rewards add-on helps you better understand your customers and their retention patterns, empowering you to create targeted strategies that drive engagement and long-term loyalty.

This article explains the available Rewards strategies, implementation steps, and things to consider when using Rewards. 

Before you start

• Speak with your CSM, or navigate to the Rewards page under Loyalty in the Recharge merchant portal to express your interest in Rewards. You must add the Retain package to your Pro or Custom plan to access Rewards.
• Stores using custom-built solutions can work with Recharge to confirm if Rewards is compatible with their setup.

How it works

Mix and match rewards like account credits, free gifts, and discounts into a program built just for your customers. Rewards offer several tools to elevate your business, and keep customers from churning:

• Credits: Offer fixed cash value or percentage cash back options to customers as post-purchase incentives. Credits reward customers for their purchases, encouraging them to return and make additional buys. By providing tangible value, cash back options enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, creating a strong incentive for repeat business. 
• Free gifts: Free gifts can effectively prevent customer churn by reinforcing loyalty and enhancing their overall experience. When customers receive unexpected bonuses, it makes them feel valued and appreciated, strengthening their connection to the brand. This simple gesture encourages repeat purchases and fosters long-term relationships, making it less likely for customers to seek alternatives.
• Subscription discounts: Offer subscription discounts to make customers feel valued, encouraging them to stay engaged and leading to increased retention. Celebrating milestones in a customer journey helps to drives repeat purchases, boosting the lifetime value of the customer for your business.

Accessing Rewards in Recharge

Click on Loyalty in the Recharge merchant portal and select Rewards to access the Rewards tab and review your Rewards programs, as well as key subscriber data:

Rewards strategies

Use Recharge's prebuilt templates to build your Reward offerings:

• Make any subscription purchase: Offer rewards to customers each time they purchase a product on a recurring frequency.
• Make any one-time purchase: Offer rewards to customers each time they purchase a one-time product.
• Milestone subscription purchase: Reward customers for reaching order milestones with a one-time gift or store credit. 
• Free gifts in the customer portal: Update free gift-related messaging in the customer portal.

• Credits in the customer portal: Update credits-related messaging in the customer portal.

• Punch card banner: Encourage customers to reach order milestones and unlock rewards with punch cards in the customer portal that display their progress.

• Cancellation prevention with credit balance: Remind customers of their available credit balance or upcoming free gifts to reduce customer churn.

• Win Backs with credit balance: Remind customers of their available credit balance or upcoming free gifts to encourage reactivation.

• Credits at checkout: Update how Recharge displays credits on your Shopify checkout.

• Send free gift reminder: Remind customers about their upcoming free gifts.

• Send credit expiration reminder: Update the notification customers receive when their credit is about to expire. 

Performance

On the Rewards tab, click Performance to review customer retention by cohort and understand when customers typically cancel their subscriptions. 

Use this data to determine where to add incentives and keep customers engaged where they would typically churn. 

Rewards recipient vs. non-recipient: 12-month avg lifetime revenue

Compare the average lifetime revenue of reward recipient and non-recipient customers based on the time since their first purchase. Lifetime revenue includes revenue of all orders customers place, including orders they place before receiving rewards.

Recharge only counts customers as reward recipients if Recharge issues the reward through an automated Rewards strategy. Customers who receive manually issued credits or join a reward program do not qualify.

Claimable Free Gift node 

The Free Gift node provides the ability for customers to manually claim a gift and select a variant based on their preference. Customers can manually claim their free gift directly in the customer portal. 

Customer experience

If a customer triggers a flow with a Free gift node, they will see the free gift landing page display in their customer portal upon login where they can choose to claim or decline the gift. If claimed, the free gift is added to the next queued order. 

Considerations