Membership allows merchants to assign registered members to different membership tiers and creates exclusive benefits for members. This serves as an incentive for customers to engage in membership campaigns and helps to acquire new customers. It also helps to retain existing customers by providing special offers, hence increasing customer loyalty.
This article will cover the following:
- Create membership tiers
- Activate the membership upgrade check
- How does auto-upgrade/downgrade/extension work?
1. Create membership tiers
*Note: Premium plan merchants can set up at most 3 membership tiers; O2O/ Enterprise plan merchants can set up at most 5 membership tiers.
Step 1. Go to membership tiers settings
In the SHOPLINE Admin, go to [Customers Management] > [Membership Tier]. Click Add to create a new membership tier.
Step 2. Fill in the membership tier name
First, please type in your desired names for the membership tier, e.g., Bronze Membership.
Step 3. Set membership upgrade condition
You can set up a condition for customers to fulfil in order to be upgraded to the membership tier.
Upgrade conditions include:
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Single purchase with the total spent a certain amount. e.g., Upgrade to bronze membership with a single purchase of $1000 or more.
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Purchase within a specific period with a certain amount. e.g., Upgrade to bronze membership with a total spend of $1000 or more within 3 months.
Step 4. Set membership valid period and extension settings
Membership valid period can be set as Never Expires or Set valid period (1-month minimum).
e.g., Membership has one-year validity, i.e., 12 months.
If the membership valid period is set as "Never Expires," it is not required to set a membership extension condition.
If there is a valid period, you will need to set up the extension condition. The extension condition offered is the same as membership upgrade settings: by single purchase or total spend during the membership valid period.
*Notes:
- The order amount for upgrading the membership will not be calculated into the spend amount for the membership extension. In other words, the required amount of extension will be calculated from 0 after being upgraded to a member tier.
- After the membership is extended, the previous spending on the day for extending the membership cannot be included in the accumulated spend amount for the next membership tier upgrade. That is, the cumulative total spend starts from 0 after the extension.
Step 5. Set membership offer for membership tier
Merchants can set an exclusive storewide discount for the membership tier. (Basic members are not entitled to storewide discount settings).
For example, bronze members are entitled to 10%OFF storewide.
*Notes:
- This discount will be automatically applied at checkout after the member logins into their account.
- When an order can meet the conditions of 1) an order-level promotion + 2) a membership offer at the same time, you can select whether to allow customers to apply discounts in a stack. Please refer to Order-Level Discount Settings for more details.
Step 6. Set up birthday credit, order reward credit, and earn points
*Note: This feature is only available for merchants with both "CRM - Membership" and "CRM - Credits" modules.
Merchants can set exclusive store credits and point rules for the membership tier.
A. Birthday credit
Switch on the toggle button to enable the feature. You can set the amount and validity period of the birthday credit. Click here to learn more about birthday credits.
B. Order reward credit
Switch on the toggle button to enable the feature. You can set the purchase condition, amount, and validity period of the order reward credit. Click here to learn more about birthday credits.
C. Earn points
Switch on the toggle button to enable the feature. You can set the rule of the earn points. For instance, earn 1 point per $10. The member will earn 100 points when they purchase $1000. Click here to learn more about the shop-wide earn points feature.
Remember to click Add to save the changes.
*Key takeaways:
- Customers have to register for a basic membership account in order to level up to different membership tiers.
- Registered members that don't have a tier will be considered basic members, and there is no exclusive membership offer set up for basic members.
- The system will only check if the order status is not "Cancelled" and the payment status is "Paid." If a member requests to cancel the order after placing the order and therefore is not eligible for the upgrade, the merchant will have to adjust the membership tier for the customer manually.
- When setting the membership tier, please make sure that the sequence of the membership tier is correct.
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The system will approve the customers in the list according to the membership tier you set and then proceed to the next level. For more details, please refer to Edit and Reassign Membership Tier
2. Activate the membership upgrade check
After you have completed adding a new membership tier, you will have to activate a membership upgrade check for all customers and select whether or not to include the customer's current total spend in the upgrade condition.
If you select to include it in the upgrade condition, the system will determine the current total spend of all members and the upgrade condition set before and upgrade the eligible members directly; if not, the total spend of all members will start to accrue from the orders placed after the activation until the member qualifies for the upgrade.
Go to the SHOPLINE Admin > [Customer Management] > [Membership tier] and click the Activate button.
After verifying the membership tier information, click Confirm and choose whether to include the current customer total spend in the calculation of the upgrade condition.
*Notes:
- After completing the activation, you can go to [Report & Analytics] > [Bulk Action Process] to check the working progress.
- This feature will only be visible to merchants that have created membership tiers after 27 August 2020.
- This step is necessary and can only be implemented once. Please make sure the settings of the membership tier are correct before running the check.
- After implementing the activation, the system will automatically check for members who have reached the upgrade threshold in the early hours of the day.
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If you haven't set your membership tier yet, you will not be able to activate the "Customers can view membership upgrade reminder" feature (from [Settings] > [Customer Settings]), so please set your membership tier first, and then go to [Customer Settings] to enable the feature.
- Execution rights are limited to administrators who are authorized to add and edit the membership tier.
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When the membership upgrade check is executed for the first time, and if you choose to "INCLUDE" current total spend when calculating eligibility for a new membership tier, members will be auto-upgraded upon meeting the upgrade conditions. Also, you can choose whether to send an email/ SMS notification to members at the time of the upgrade. In the future, the system will automatically perform the check every early morning, and notifications will be sent to members every day at 09:00 AM (UTC + 8).
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Sending an SMS message will incur a monthly charge, max. of 160 English characters, or a mix of 70 English and Chinese characters are allowed per SMS.
- You can go to [Settings] > [Custom Notification] > [Membership Upgrade Notification] to customize any time point (i.e. 00:00, 01:00, 02:00, etc.) between 00:00-23:00 (UTC + 8) as the notification sending time. The setup will take effect the next day after you save them.
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The following image shows the prompt which will appear when the membership upgrade check is executed for the first time.
3. How does auto-upgrade/ downgrade/ extension work?
The system automatically updates your membership list during the early morning hours (GMT+8) according to your membership tier settings to determine upgrades/ downgrades/ renewals (extensions) for members.
- Whether a member meets the conditions for an upgrade: The system only examines the order amount with the payment status as "Paid" and order status as "Not cancelled." If a member meets the amount set for upgrade/ extension criteria, the membership will be upgraded/ renewed accordingly.
- Suppose a membership expires and the member does not meet the extension requirements for the current level, in that case, the system will sequentially check the "upgrade conditions" for the next lower level of the membership until it finds a matching membership level or downgrades to a regular member.
🔔 Example:
Shopping over $1,000 within 3 months qualifies for Silver Membership, while over
$500 qualifies for Bronze Membership. Memberships are valid for one year.Time Membership status 15 April 2023 Customers A and B upgrade to Silver Membership by accumulating purchases totaling $1,000. 15 April 2024 - Customer A, accumulating purchases of $900, does not meet the requirements for a Silver Membership extension; however, they qualify for a Bronze Membership upgrade, thus they are downgraded to Bronze Membership.
- Customer B, accumulating purchases of $400, does not meet the requirements for a Silver Membership extension, nor do they qualify for a Bronze Membership upgrade. Therefore, they are downgraded to a regular member.
*Notes:
- Supports manual input members' store spending mount on Smart OMO. The membership will be upgraded or extended if the amount reaches the amount set in the upgrade/extension conditions. Please refer to this article for details.
- [Coming Soon] If you have the "Membership Auto-Downgrade" feature, please read this article for details on the changes in the system logic.
i. Upgrade condition calculation time
A. Membership Upgrade Condition: Purchase within a specific period
When the payment status of the customer's order is updated to "Paid", the system will capture the order within the specified period (N~N-1 days) to determine whether the amount meets the upgrade condition.
For example, if you set "Spend $3000 in 12 months" for the upgrade condition. If the member created an order and paid on 25 August 2020, in the early morning of 26 August, the system would back-calculate to check the spend amount from 26 August 2019 to 25 August 2020 to confirm whether the member has met the upgrade condition. If the condition is met, the system will upgrade the membership in the early morning of 26 August 2020.
B. Membership Upgrade Condition: Single purchase
When the payment status of a customer's order is updated to "Paid," the system determines whether the upgrade condition is met according to the customer's single "Paid + non-cancelled" order amount. However, if that order has already been used for a membership upgrade, it cannot be used repeatedly.
For example, if you set "Spend $3000 in Single Purchase" for the upgrade condition. If the member created an order and paid on 25 August 2020, in the early morning of 26 August, the system would confirm whether the total amount of the order reaches the upgrade condition ($3,000). If the condition is met, the system will upgrade the membership in the early morning of 26 August 2020.
ii. Extension condition calculation time
It is calculated according to the month set by the merchant, and the date for back-calculate to is N~N-1 days.
For example, you set "Spending over $2,000 in 12 months" to extend the membership. Assuming that the customer membership expired on 10 October 2020, in the early morning of 11 October 2020, the system would back-calculate to check if the spent amount from 11 October 2019 to 10 October 2020 has met the condition for the extension.
iii. Membership expiration time
It is calculated according to the month set by the merchant, and the expiration is N~N-1 days.
For example, you set a membership period of 12 months, and the member upgrades in the early morning of 1 Jan. 2020. The membership period will be from 1 Jan. 2020 - 31 December 2020. The system will check again in the early morning of 1 Jan. 2021 to see if the member has reached the extension condition and determine if their membership should be renewed or downgraded. Assuming the member is upgraded on 15 May 2020, the membership period will be from 15 May 2020 to 14 May 2021.
Read more
- Edit and Reassign Membership Tier
- Birthday Credits
- Order Reward Credits
- Member Points
- Order-Level Discount Settings
Please refer to the following a to set member discounts:
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