Tiers, VIP & membership
How to use it
Make the tier ladder something customers want to climb:
- Set thresholds & multipliers — rename tiers, set the points needed, and the earn boost each gives. (Loyalty → Tiers)
- Pick perks per tier — free shipping, early access, birthday gift. (Loyalty → Tiers → Perks)
- Show tier status on your storefront by wiring the tier metafield into your theme for a badge. (Theme editor)
- Nudge near-tier customers with a "spend $X to reach Gold" campaign. (Sales engine → Segments)
⏱ ~15 min · 💳 Starter+ · 🎯 Customers see their tier and progress right away
The tier ladder
Tiers are ordered thresholds against a customer's lifetime points (points ever earned — never decremented by redemption or expiry). A customer always has a tier, because the ladder is guaranteed to include a 0-point base tier.
| Tier | Lifetime points | Earn multiplier | Perks (default) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 0 | 1.0× | — |
| Silver | 500 | 1.5× | Early access to sales |
| Gold | 2,000 | 2.0× | Free shipping · early access |
| Platinum | 5,000 | 3.0× | Free shipping · early access · birthday gift · priority support |
You can rename tiers, move thresholds, change multipliers, and edit perks — up to 8 tiers. The multiplier compounds all purchase earning (see Earning points), so a platinum customer earns 3× on every order — a strong reason to climb.
Perks are enforced through Shopify
Perk strings (like "Free shipping") are display text. Enforcement happens via a synced Shopify customer metafield:
The sync fires only when the tier actually changes (tier is lifetime-based, so it never fires on redeem or expiry), and it's best-effort — a sync failure never fails the underlying points transaction. Because the source of truth is a standard Shopify metafield, you enforce perks with the same tools you'd use for any customer segmentation: theme Liquid, checkout UI extensions, or a shipping/discount Shopify Function.
The free-shipping perk on gold/platinum is delivered by a Shopify Function that
reads loyalty.tier — so there's no code for the customer to forget, and it
applies automatically at checkout for qualifying tiers.
VIP nudges — the "one more order" audience
The most valuable message in loyalty is "you're 200 points from Gold." The programme surfaces tier-promotion candidates: customers within a threshold of upgrading, grouped by the tier they'd promote to. These feed the Sales Engine as a ready-made audience for a "spend $X more to unlock <tier>" campaign across WhatsApp, email, or SMS.
| Signal | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Customers 200 pts from Silver/Gold/Platinum | Targeted upgrade nudge |
| Count by promoting-to tier | Sizing the campaign and its liability |
Paid membership — the "VIP Club" Beta
Optionally sell a membership: buying a designated product grants membership for a set duration, and active members earn at at least a floor multiplier (applied even to the order that bought the membership, so it's immediately rewarding). Off by default.
| Setting | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Membership products | — | Which products grant membership when purchased |
| Duration | 365 days | How long membership lasts (0 = perpetual) |
| Multiplier floor | 2× | Members earn at least this, over their tier multiplier |
Membership stacks with tiers — a member always earns at the higher of their tier multiplier and the membership floor. It's a way to sell status directly rather than making customers earn their way up the ladder.
Best practices
✅ Keep the top tier genuinely aspirational. If most customers hit platinum, the multiplier is just a permanent discount. Set thresholds so tiers mean something.
✅ Wire the metafield into your theme on day one — a visible tier badge is what makes the ladder feel real and worth climbing.
✅ Run the VIP nudge monthly. Customers near a threshold convert far above baseline on an upgrade message.
❌ Don't over-stack membership on top of high tier multipliers unless you've checked the blended reward cost against margin.