Getting started with Customer portal announcements
The Customer portal announcement displays announcements to your customers when they are logged into the Affinity customer portal. Use this feature to highlight discounts, customer order streaks, or to announce new products or specials.
This guide explains how to set up this feature in your store, things to consider when using this feature, and a list of use cases to highlight different ways to use Customer portal announcements.
- Shopify Checkout Integration
- Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration
Before you start
- The Customer portal announcement feature is available to stores with the Retain package enabled.
Key features
Announce offers and incentives directly in the customer portal
Motivate customers logged in to their customer portal with announcements that:
- Showcase their progress toward rewards
- Highlight new products with learn more links
- Announce upcoming discounts
The Customer portal announcement feature allows you to build creative announcements that keep you in touch with your customers when they are logged into their customer portals. These experiences can:
- Show timely announcements based on customers’ actions, such as reaching a specific order streak, or a specific spend amount
- Target customers based on their behaviors and actions, ensuring any communication with customers feels tailored to their journey
- Reflect your brand’s identity through customizations
Simple, no-code solution
Recharge provides a prebuilt template that you can quickly activate. It triggers when a customer loads their customer portal, and the announcement shows up in the portal, alerting customers of their upcoming rewards.
This template uses conditional branches to provide different experiences to customers depending on their streak count. By default, this template triggers when customers hit streak counts of 1, 2, and 3. You can add or adjust the conditional branches to set different conditions that trigger the announcement in the customer portal. See Optional—Add or update conditions for more details.
While Recharge offers a pre-built template, you can completely customize the experience and:
- Specify when customers see an announcement in the customer portal
- Set conditions to determine what customers can see
- Customize the announcement message
Personalize the experience depending on the customer's status
Use the Conditional Branch node to display different announcements to customers depending on conditions you set.
For example, you could show one announcement to customers on their fourth order, letting them know they'll receive a discount on their next order, and then show a different announcement to customers on their fifth order, letting them know they received the discount.
Use cases
Review the following use cases to understand how you can use Customer portal announcements in to communicate with your customers:
Use case |
Description |
|
Reward punch card |
The Customer portal announcement can simulate a punch card that customers would use in a brick-and-mortar store. Consider using a punch card to reward customers for:
|
|
VIP Program/tier education |
Let customers know what tier or program they’re in based on conditions you set. For example, you could tell customers that they are a Silver member if they spend at least $200, and reward Silver members with a discount of 25% off. |
|
Subscription product education |
Provide customers with information and benefits about the product they’ve purchased. For example, you can tell customers they will see the best results after 90 days of use. |
|
Offers and promotions |
Announce promotions to customers directly in the customer portal, and let customers know about:
|
| Links |
Highlight important links in the customer portal, such as links to an external customer survey, or an external sign-up page link where customers can consent to marketing. |
|
Product launch |
Announce new products in the customer portal, and provide a link to the product page on your storefront.
Tip: Consider configuring a condition that announces certain products based on the customer's previous order.
|
Set up instructions
See How to set up a Customer portal announcement for detailed set up instructions.
Considerations
Consider the following when building announcements in the customer portal:
Consideration |
Notes |
| Customer portal themes |
The Customer portal announcement only works with the Affinity customer portal theme. You cannot offer the customer portal announcement with the Prima, Novum, and custom customer portal themes, or themes built with the Theme Engine. |
| Site builder missing Affinity elements | When customizing the announcement site builder, only the announcement content appears on the preview page, and the rest is placeholder content. |
