A VIP program is a great way to reward your most loyal customers for repeat purchases at your store. In this article we'll cover 5 steps to building the best VIP program for rewarding those customers.
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✅ This feature is available on the Growth plan and up.

Tier entry based on dollars or points
​How many tiers should a program have
​Set tier entry Milestones
​Choose rewards and perks
​Name your tiers

VIP programs are built around the idea that customers need to move through a number of different levels based on either how many points they’ve earned or how much money they’ve spent over a certain period of time.

📝Smile Pro Tip: Running a points program? Points is the way to go.
Running a stand-alone VIP program? Revenue’s the answer.

The other factor you need to consider is time. How long do your customers have to earn points or make purchases in order to join each of your tiers? You can choose never to have your member's tiers expire, or you can choose to have these expire with the calendar year.

You can’t have a VIP program without tiers, and the number you use can make a big impact on your customer experience.

📝 Smile Pro Tip: When it comes to tiers, our magic number is 3.
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This structure allows you to effectively bridge the gap between entry level shoppers and your best customers, making their movement through the program easy to see and understand.
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In order to run an effective VIP program, you need to offer at least 2 tiers but never more than 5. When you begin organizing customers into so many groups, your program becomes confusing and much too difficult to communicate to your customers. This will severely impact your participation and engagement rates and could have a negative effect on your ROI.

Now that you’ve decided whether your program is structured around revenue or points earned, you need to decide what customers have to achieve in order to enter each tier. Your top tier should have no more than 5% of your customers. Since a VIP program is largely based on status, your top tier should always have the fewest customers.

This will keep the exclusivity of your top tier in tact while motivating customers in your bottom two tiers to engage with your brand more in order to join that elite group. The best way to motivate your customers is by making your tiers achievable but challenging. Customers shouldn’t be able to enter your second tier immediately - it should instead be designed to encourage people to be better than average.

As a starting point, set your tier entry milestones based on multiples of your store’s average order value. This makes each successive tier more aspirational and tougher to achieve the more your customers engage in the program, pushing them to work harder to achieve each goal.

Rewards and perks make your tiers valuable for each of your different customer groups.

To get the most out of your VIP program, it’s important to understand the difference between a perk and reward.

Rewards

Rewards are issued through Smile and can include things like discount coupons, free shipping, and bonus points.

Perks

Perks are not issued through Smile and can include things like early access to sales, free products, and special events.

Since every customer starts in tier 1, this type of reward should not be given to members when they enter your first tier. This would give your customers too much too fast, making your program less valuable. Offer shoppers something like dollars off coupons, bonus points, and free shipping only for moving into your upper tiers.

📝 Smile Pro Tip: Only offer entry rewards in tier 2 and higher.

Last but not least, you want to give your program some flair. The best way to do this is by naming each of your tiers.

Puns, alliteration, and product names are all great ways to connect your tiers to the rest of your brand.

📝Smile Pro Tip: Use names that relate back to your brand and the products you sell.

What's next?

VIP program overview
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​Learn more

Add VIP perks

Add VIP tiers