Introduction
Your customers become increasingly valuable as they shop and engage with your brand. A VIP program allows you to strengthen connections with your top customers through increasing rewards, statuses, and perks. Push your customers to reach the next tier with milestones that are challenging but achievable
Overview
✅ This feature is available on the Growth plan and up.
VIP tier milestones
Before you enable your VIP program, you’ll need to set up your program milestones. Milestones are used to set what a customer has to do before they can join a specific tier of your rewards program.
There are two milestones you’ll need to set in your Smile Admin before you launch your program:
Milestone type
Milestone period
Choosing your milestone type
Milestone type is what your program will use to calculate your customers’ VIP tiers.
There are 2 milestone types to choose from:
Revenue
A revenue-based milestone will use the total money a customer has spent with your store in a given time period to your calculate your customer’s tier.
This milestone type is a great way to ensure a customer has spent a fixed amount of money before they can access VIP tier benefits. A revenue-based milestone also makes it very easy for your customers to understand how they can move to your next tier.
📋 Note: The revenue milestone types takes into account the Grand Total of each order made by your customers that is marked as Paid, excluding any discounts used. This includes any shipping fees and taxes.
Points
A points-based milestone will use the total points a customer has earned with your store in a given time period to calculate your customers’ tier.
This milestone type is a great way to ensure that points awarded for orders, program signup, referrals and social sharing contribute to your customer’s VIP tier.
When these actions count towards your customer’s tier, they’ll see more value in each engagement they have with your program. When they see this value, you'll build stronger relationships with them over time.
Choosing your milestone period
Once you’ve selected your milestone type, you’ll need to determine the time period that a customer has to achieve their VIP tier.
There are 2 milestone periods to choose from:
Since program start date
Selecting the since program start date VIP milestone means that a program member will never lose or drop a tier once it has been achieved.
This type of milestone period is great when:
Your customers place larger orders that are spread out over longer periods of time
You want to build a long-term relationship with customers whose purchasing patterns are more spread out
As an example, say your store sells luxury handbags. Once a customer purchases a handbag from your store, they may not look to purchase another handbag until next year. Offering your customer VIP program benefits will provide that extra bit of motivation for your customer to make that next purchase with your store.
Calendar year
A calendar year milestone will use all of your customer’s activities within one calendar year to determine their VIP tier for that year and the following calendar year.
If you’ve chosen to set your VIP program up with a calendar year milestone, your program expiry would behave like this:
If a customer earns enough points to reach your gold tier in November of 2023, they will enjoy the benefits of your gold tier for the rest of 2023 and all of 2024.
Then, during the calendar year of 2024, they’ll have to earn enough points to re-qualify for your gold tier in 2025. If they do not, their VIP tier will be recalculated based on the points that they did earn in that calendar year.
This type of VIP tier milestone period is great when:
Your customers make more than 1-2 purchases a year
You want to increase your repeat purchase rate
You want to decrease the time between repeat purchases
You want to increase your average order value
📋 Note: If you chose the Calendar year method - the start date setting will only work for you if you choose a date from the current calendar year.
For example -
if it's currently March 2023, and you set your start date as November 1, 2022 - then the actual program start date is going to be Jan 1, 2023.
If it's currently March 2023, and you set your start date as February 1, 2023 - then the actual program start date will be February 1, 2023.
What's next?
VIP perks
Learn more