Getting started with Rewards
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 programs, implementation steps, and considerations when using Rewards.
- Shopify Checkout Integration
- Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration
Before you start
- This feature is available through Rewards. Access to Rewards depends on your plan. Check the Loyalty tab in your merchant portal to confirm whether this feature is available in your store.
- 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 through cash back options, companies 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 the overall experience. When customers receive unexpected bonuses, they feel valued and appreciated, strengthening their connection to the brand. This simple gesture encourages repeat purchases and fosters long-term relationships, thereby making it less likely that customers will seek alternatives.
- Subscription discounts: Offer them to make customers feel valued, encourage engagement, and increase 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 reward customers for specific actions:
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 who would otherwise churn.
Rewards recipient vs. non-recipient: 12-month avg lifetime revenue
Compare the average lifetime revenue of reward recipients and non-recipient customers over time since their first purchase. Lifetime revenue includes revenue of all orders customers place, including orders they place before receiving rewards.
Recharge counts customers as reward recipients only if It issues the reward through an automated Rewards strategy. Customers who receive manually issued credits or join a reward program do not qualify.
Considerations
Consider the following when using Rewards:
Consideration |
Notes |
| Customer portal |
Rewards and its offerings are completely compatible with the Affinity customer portal. Theme Engine, Prima, and Novum customer portal themes are partially compatible with rewards. |
| Discounts | Discounts from Rewards applied to orders are stacked with discounts from Cancellation Prevention flows, plus subscribe and save discounts and Tiered Discounts. |
| Shopify gift cards |
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| Free gift bulk updates | Recharge's Import tool simplifies managing free gifts added through a flow, allowing you to efficiently bulk add or remove them from upcoming subscription charges. For more details, see How to bulk add or remove free gifts using the Import tool. |
| Shopify shipping profiles | Review your Shopify shipping profiles to ensure customers do not get charged a shipping fee for free gift rewards. |
| Bulk updating subscriptions | Bulk updates remove free gifts applied to upcoming orders. |
| Line item conditions |
You can choose whether trigger conditions are evaluated on a recently processed order or an upcoming order in your Flow settings:
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| Flow priority behavior | When a customer qualifies for multiple flows with the same trigger, Recharge runs only the most recently created flow. Two flows with the same trigger can’t be active for the same customer. To run both actions for a customer, combine them into a single flow. |
| Updating existing flows |
You cannot update a flow after activating it. If you need to make changes to the flow, you must:
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Frequently asked questions
Do discounts implemented by Rewards programs affect the average order value and customer lifetime value conditions?
Yes. Recharge calculates the Average Order Value for Rewards programs by dividing total subscription spend by the number of orders. Recharge calculates the total subscription spend by summing the line item prices, subtracting any discounts, and adding taxes and shipping. Refunds are not included in this calculation.
Do Reward programs work on individual checkout orders?
No, Reward programs do not work on checkout orders even if the number of subscription orders processed or streak count for subscription orders conditions are set to 0.
Can a customer enter the same Rewards flow more than once?
Yes, customers can enter the same Rewards program more than once.
You can use the flow run count limit setting when creating a Rewards program in advanced mode to limit the number of times the program runs for all customers, as well as the number of times a flow runs for a single customer. You cannot adjust the strategy settings after activating the flow. See Flow settings for additional details.
If there are multiple order branches and the Limit number of times this Flow executes for a single customer setting is set to 1, the customer can enter only one of those branches. If you want the customer to enter multiple branches, you should not limit the program's run count.
When does a customer receive their incentive from a Rewards program?
Recharge adds a Rewards incentive to the customer's next queued order. Customers are notified via email when the incentive is added to their next queued order. See Understanding Rewards streak count.
The rewards flow cannot apply a free gift to the current order once it has been processed. Free gifts can only be applied to upcoming orders. If claimed, the gift is added to the customer's next queued order.
How can I measure the success of my Rewards programs?
You can set up cohorts or customer segments to compare the success of your Rewards programs. See Using customer segments with flows and A/B testing flows for more information.
Can Bundles be an incentive?
Bundles can be used as an incentive. However, customizable bundles shouldn't be used as incentives; only preset bundles should be used as incentives.
What happens if a customer becomes eligible for a second gift through a Rewards program?
When a customer earns multiple gift incentives through different Rewards programs, Recharge displays both gifts in the customer portal.
When a customer earns their first gift, Recharge displays it on the Rewards landing page. This page stays active until the customer accepts or declines the gift.
If the customer doesn't visit the customer portal to claim their gift, the claim page remains displayed. It does not expire automatically.
If the same customer earns a second gift from a different rewards program, Recharge displays both gifts in the customer portal:
- The first gift remains visible on the landing page until the customer accepts or declines it
- The second gift appears as a card in the portal
When the customer visits the portal, they see both gifts. After the customer accepts or declines the first gift, Recharge updates the display accordingly, while keeping the second gift card visible.
Can customers earn credits on orders paid with existing credits?
Customers cannot earn credits on the portion of an order paid with existing credits. Credits are earned only for the portion of the charge paid with a standard payment method.
For example, a recurring order totals $50, and the customer applies $20 in credits. The customer will earn credits based only on the $30 portion paid by their payment method, not the full $50.
