Points Expiration: Overview and Setup

We designed our points expiration functionality to allow Shopify merchants the freedom to tap into a powerful customer behavioural bias—FOMO (fear of missing out).

Rather than letting customers accumulate points forever, you can set a period by which store customers can use their points or lose them for good (unless they earn more points).

This article details how to configure our loyalty points expiration feature. It provides in-depth explanations to help you understand how to fully benefit from using it on your Shopify store.

If you need help upgrading your loyalty plan, check out our dedicated Loyalty plugin subscription and installation guide.

There are several considerations you should account for before setting up loyalty points expiry for your Shopify store’s loyalty program.

Not all loyalty-related actions or activities that you or your customers undertake will extend the expiration period.

Any earning activity that rewards points (e.g. placing orders, signing up for the newsletter, sharing on social, etc.) will be considered for extending the expiration date. These events are referred to as customer activity.

Events such as birthdays, admin adjustments, or imports won’t extend the expiration period since they’re not considered customer activity.

There’s an exception for imports that are the first event for a customer.

For example, imported points will expire according to the expiration period if a merchant imports them before customers have any loyalty event.

If the imported points are not the first event for a customer, then our system will still reset the imported points, but it won’t extend the expiration period because the import is not considered customer activity.

All loyalty points a customer has will reset at the end of the day on the expiration date, unless the customer performs at least one loyalty event considered customer activity, in which case, the expiration period will extend according to the expiration period configuration. This means that there’s a global expiration date for all the points of a given customer.

The date the points expiration feature is enabled is when the expiration mechanism starts working. That means that past earned points will still be reset, but the expiration period won't start from a date in the past.

The period unit is days, and it requires a minimum value of 30 days and a maximum of 1000 days.

For our VIP program, if the entry method is set to points, then VIP members won’t be affected by the points expiration feature.

Our points expiration mechanism won't reset a customer's points during the first X days since the expiration feature was enabled. X constitutes the expiration period.

Points will be reset at the end of the expiration period if no new customer activity occurs. If additional customer activity occurs before the expiration date, then the expiration date is recalculated. The customer's points balance will instead reset at the end of the newly recalculated expiration date.

Check out the examples below to get a better understanding of the points expiration mechanism:

Merchants can set up 2 loyalty points expiration reminders to let their customers know how long until loyalty points are reset.

The minimum period for both reminders is 1 day, and the maximum is 30 days.

The first reminder becomes available before the second one. Trying to set up the second reminder without the first one won't work.

It needs to be at least one day less than the expiration period, with a minimum of 1 day, and a maximum of 30 days.

The second reminder won’t be available until the first reminder is enabled.

The minimum required period is 1 day, and the maximum is 30 days. It needs to have at least one day less than the first reminder and at least two days less than the expiration period. 

Setting up the loyalty points expiration functionality is an easy 2-step process:

1. Configuring the expiration feature itself

2. Customizing the reminder email notifications

The dashboard can be accessed from our app’s Loyalty ➜ Program ➜ Points expiration tab.

If it’s your first time setting this up, the feature is disabled by default.

After the points expiration toggle is active, you’ll be able to enable and configure the expiration reminders.

The first reminder must be enabled for the second reminder to become available.

You’ll get access to the first reminder, and you’ll need to toggle the activation button for the reminder to work.

If it’s the first time you set it up, you’ll notice it’s prepopulated with a value.

You can modify the value next to “Send X days before expiration” with any number of days between 1 and 30 days, as long as it is 1 day less than the value set for the expiration period.

Once you set up the first reminder, the second reminder becomes available as well. It’ll need to be toggled and configured as well.

You’ll know it’s up and running without errors because of the success alert that pops up.

Now that the points expiration feature mechanism has been activated, it’s time to ensure that the email notifications are on-brand.

The email notifications can be accessed from our app’s Loyalty ➜ Emails tab.

You can opt for the “Simple” option, where you just need to fill in some input fields and make use of the available variables.

Alternatively, you can choose to add your own “HTML” email template. That gives you full control over the look and feel of the loyalty points expiration notifications.

The success alert will appear, letting you know everything was saved.

Customers’ points balances will reset if they don’t perform any loyalty events considered customer activity. However, they will keep the VIP tier, as long as they meet the tier’s requirements, as set in the VIP program.

Customers need to perform loyalty actions that are considered customer activity, such as earning points for placing orders, sharing on social media, signing up for the newsletter, etc. 

As a result, the expiration period will be extended by adding the configured expiration period to the new customer activity date.

Customers can see when their point balances are set to expire in our loyalty widgets: the loyalty floating pop-up available on every page of your store, the loyalty extension in the new customer account page, and our Customer Account widget’s dedicated loyalty tab.