How To Start A WooCommerce Loyalty Program (Tutorial)

This post will take you through how to set up a WooCommerce loyalty program for your store.

We’re going to cover a few things:

1. The points value settings to set up at the outset of your loyalty program
2. How to configure the messages shown on the single product, cart and checkout pages
3. The earning actions your customers can do that will earn them points

If you prefer, you can watch this tutorial here:

The Loyalty Program for WooCommerce Plugin

We’ll be using The Loyalty Program for WooCommerce for this tutorial which is a premium plugin to create a Loyalty Program on a WooCommerce store.

You can read more about the features of it here and pricing for the Loyalty Program plugin is available here. Today’s tutorial will focus just on the Loyalty Program for WooCommerce plugin but it does do a LOT more than just that.

After installing the plugin for the first time, the Loyalty Program is automatically activated. If you check on the settings at Coupons ➝ Loyalty Program ➝ Settings ➝ Points Earning, you’ll find that “Purchasing products” is enabled by default.

Determining The “Value” Of A Point In Your Loyalty Program

Next, you need to determine two important settings which will set what the “value” of a point is in your loyalty program on your WooCommerce store.

When you think about it, a loyalty program is like the promise of a discount on a future order. It’s not a real currency. What they’re buying into is the intangible value of a future discount.

Price to points earned ratio

The first setting is the price to points earned ratio which, said differently, basically means how many points your customer earns per unit of currency (eg. how many points $1 gets them).

You want to configure this so that it looks impressive.

For example, if the price to points earned ratio is set to 1, that means they’d get 1 point for every $1 spent (or 1 euro or 1 pound or whatever your currency is).

If you set it to 10, that means they’d get 10 points for every $1 spent.

The latter, to the customer, may look more impressive which in turn has flow-on effects for their “perceived value” of a point. It’s more tempting to earn 1000 points for their $100 order than it is to earn 100 points for their $100 order.

Points to price redeemed ratio

Second is the points to price redeemed ratio which basically tells the system what the “worth” of a point is.

In this setting, you’re telling the system how many points do they need to exchange in order to get 1 unit of currency.

In my screenshot above I’ve put 200 meaning to get a $1 discount, I need to give up 200 points.

Yes. There’s some math involved. But the short term pain of figuring this out is worth it to have a well-configured loyalty program.

Math Alert

Here’s how you work out the future discount based on the program:

Future discount (as %) = ( ( ( 1 / points to price redeemed ratio ) * price to points earned ratio ) * 100 )

Points name

This setting lets you determine the name of your points in your points program. This is for display purposes so that the points can be called something familiar for your customers.

Name them whatever you want, “Baby Rewards”, “Bone-us Doggie Points”, use your imagination!

Role Restrictions

The other setting here is to disallow certain user roles from participating in the loyalty program.

If you add a role here and the user logs in, they will not see anything in their My Accounts area or any of the messages throughout the site. It will be impossible for them to accumulate points.

Points Calculation

We need to talk about points calculation next.

There are three settings for setting points calculation in your loyalty program.

Points calculation options

You have the options whether you want to calculate the points including the coupon discount, tax, shipping, and fee amount or not.

Minimum threshold to earn points

The first threshold is to set at what subtotal the customer will be allowed to accumulate points for that order.

If they make an order with a subtotal over the threshold, it will grant points for the whole subtotal of the order.

It’s important to allow the granting of points for the whole subtotal because this threshold acts as a barrier or obstacle to get over in order to receive points for the order.

It gives incentive to the customer to increase their order to at least the minimum.

I suggest you calculate what your average order value is and put the threshold just on or over that value.

Order related points waiting period

In this setting you can determine the number of days for order related points to be redeemable by customers.

Redemption and Expiry

Here you can set how the customers can redeem the points and when it will expire.

Minimum points allowed for redemption

It is all about the minimum points they need to be able to redeem a for store credit.

In your loyalty program, points are exchanged for store credit which they can use toward another order.

This threshold ensures they can’t use those points at just any time. They need to have accumulated enough points as a minimum before they can redeem store credit.

Maximum points allowed for redemption

In here you can set the maximum points customers can redeem at once for store credit which can act like a safety buffer so people don’t redeem too many points at once.

Points expire after days inactivity

You can determine how many days the points will expire after being inactive. Once the point is expired, the customer cannot redeem it anymore. This information will be shown on the My Points page on their My Accounts area.

Store credits do not expire, so once points are redeemed the customer is able to use them whenever they like.

Editing The Messages Shown Throughout Your Store

There are three main places that messages about points are shown to customers.

1. The cart page
2. The checkout page
3. The single product page

You can control the message that is shown here easily and there is a template tag called {points} which gets substituted for the actual points value on display.

It also has the option to let you hide these messages for guests.

Earning Actions

Lastly, you can also control the earning actions and even give bonus points for non-purchase event activities such as when a customer registers for an account or when a customer makes their first order.

My Points Area

As a customer, when you view your My Account area there will be a new page called My Points which consists of three sections: Points Balance, Points History and Redeem Points.

This shows the customer their points balance and a form they can use to redeem points for store credits which can be used for future orders.

The My Points page also gives customers vital information about the program such as how much 1 point is worth and what the minimum and maximum is points are for redemption.

Get Started

To start a loyalty program for your store you’ll need the Loyalty Program for WooCommerce plugin which will do wonders for your store’s growth.

Click here to get the Loyalty Program plugin as well as see a full rundown of features available.