Skip to main content
Program participation settings allow you to control which customers can participate in your loyalty program. By default, all customers can participate, including guest customers. This helps expand the reach of your loyalty program by allowing more customers to earn points, refer friends, and engage with VIP incentives from their first purchase. Customers can also receive loyalty emails tied to these program activities, depending on which program features and earning rules are live. To learn more about how Smile defines members and guest customers, review our guide to understanding customer types.
Feature availability: Program participation settings are available for merchants on Shopify only. On BigCommerce, only customers with a store account can participate in your loyalty program. This setting is not configurable.
Note: Program participation settings only apply to your online loyalty program, these settings do not apply to Shopify POS. To learn about Shopify POS you can review our article on understanding in store settings.

​
How participation works when all customers can participate

When all customers can participate in your loyalty program, guest customers can engage with points, referral links, and VIP incentives. Guest customers will need to log in to their customer account to redeem points and access loyalty features available through the Smile panel.

​
Points

All customers on your store earn points on eligible orders. Guest customers will need to log in to their customer account to redeem points and earn additional points that are only available through the Smile panel. Points earned by guest customers are associated with their purchases and become available once they log in to their customer account. Guest customers can also receive points earned emails for orders and points expiry emails, as long as those emails are enabled and the related earning rules are live.

​
Referrals

All customers on your store receive a unique referral link that they can share with friends. If a guest customer does not have a customer account to log in and view their referral link, they will receive an on-site message on the order thank you page with their referral link to share. Guest customers can also receive referral emails for completed referrals, as long as those emails are enabled and the referral program is live.

​
VIP

Feature availability: VIP is available on Growth, Plus, and Enterprise plans.
Guest customers will be placed into tiers alongside customers who have customer accounts. As customers move up tiers, they earn entry rewards and receive any enabled VIP emails.

​
Integrations

Third-party integrations with earning rules apply to guest customers. For example, if your store uses an integration with a review platform such as Judge.me, guest customers can earn points for leaving reviews.

​
Restrict participation to customers with store accounts (members only)

By default, all customers can participate in your loyalty program. If you prefer, you can limit participation to only customers who have a store account (members). To change your program participation setting:
  1. In Smile Admin, navigate to Settings > Program Participants.
  2. Select All customers or Only customers who have a store account.
  3. Click Save.

​
Impact of restricting participation

When you switch from All customers to Only customers who have a store account:
  • Guest customers will no longer earn points on orders.
  • Guest customer referral links will no longer work and will redirect visitors to your store homepage.
  • Any pending referrals will still be rewarded when the referred friend completes a qualifying order.
  • Guest customers will be removed from VIP tiers. This process can take up to 24 hours to complete.
  • Any previously earned points and rewards will remain associated with the customer.
  • If a guest customer later becomes a member, they will begin earning toward VIP milestones from that point forward. Activity completed before becoming a member is not tracked retroactively toward VIP tiers.