Automate your loyalty program and grow faster than ever

There’s a new playing field for Shopify’s most ambitious brands.

It involves faster loyalty decision-making, quicker campaign deployment, and the most impactful comms your brand has ever produced.

Sound like too much for your time-strapped and lean team? 

Think again. 

All of these competitive loyalty actions can be automated in minutes using your existing loyalty data. All you have to do is press a few buttons.

Let’s discuss how top ecommerce brands are leveraging automation in their loyalty program to drive their best results yet – and how you can too.

Use proven activity rules to keep customers engaging

Points-earning rules are a must-have automation for any modern loyalty program.

Set them up once, and customers will engage time and time again, with exponential impact.

The simplest rule is points for purchase – spend money, and you earn points that can be redeemed on a future purchase. 

Automatically nudge customers to take key actions

Automate other rules, and your customers will regularly take actions that help you cut through the noise and grow faster as a brand. How about points for social follows, signups to your newsletter, or written reviews?

But go a step further, and the best loyalty activity automations give you unmissable data and insights that help you grow faster – while remaining appealing to customers. Think points for:

• Viewing certain product pages or shopping collections you want to push
• Visiting your store, and doing in-store activities like recycling packaging
• Purchasing your product where it’s stocked in another retailer’s site or store
• Quizzes, consumer panels, or birthday info, giving you heaps of information to improve your products, or surprise customers at special moments

How Darn Tough’s loyalty automation makes their product better

Darn Tough Vermont automates rules that help gather customer data and feedback.

They give points for participation in their Sock Quiz and for joining their consumer panel.

They simply set these up as custom rules within LoyaltyLion. Simply visit the rules section of the LoyaltyLion app, select Custom action, and fill in the details to create. You stay in control of tracking and awarding points, either manually via a customer’s profile or through the API.

Darn Tough’s ecommerce experience manager, Kevin Dean, says that “LoyaltyLion’s ease of use and automation mean we can drive real momentum,” without it taking over his full-time job.

By learning what customers really want, they’ve iterated some sock designs over 30 times! Overall, their smart approach helps Darn Tough’s loyalty program power 13% of the brand’s total revenue – and makes their product market-leading.

If you’re worried customers won’t want to earn points by engaging in these ways, don’t be. 

Our new research shows that 72% of shoppers would complete a quiz in exchange for points, while 65% would sign up for a newsletter. 64% of Gen Z would complete a photo review for points, and 59% would make a video. 

Rules automations are vital for loyalty in 2026: over half (52%) of consumers would stop participating in a program if there aren’t enough ways to earn points besides purchasing. 

The good news? Set up these rules today, and the data shows customers will engage.

Automate loyalty messages to send at the perfect time

A perfectly-timed, personalized loyalty message is one of the most powerful comms a brand can send in 2026.

In fact, leading Shopify brands P.Louise and The INKEY List both say that loyalty flows are their most effective emails. These comms have the highest conversion rates and drive the most revenue. And with 1.5 million loyalty program members between these two brands, automation is the only way to achieve that impactful level of personalization. 

This means triggering your Klaviyo, Attentive, or Bloomreach flows based on each customer’s personal loyalty activity, in real time. The more activities you can automate, the more tailored your messaging will be.

Here’s how top brands automate loyalty comms

• Automate a Welcome Email the second a customer enrols in the program, showing their points balance, how to use the program, and what they could earn
• Nudge customers to return to the site at key moments before their points expire
• Automate birthday emails, which can stand out further by including an AI-personalized Birthday Bundle of rewards. More on that below.

There’s a huge amount of data you can pull through and turn into automations: points balance, VIP tier, birthdays, points expiration, progress to the next tier. When that real-time information flows seamlessly into prebuilt flows and templates, you’ll maximize open rates and conversions – all without bombarding your customers.

And it’s not just email. This same, real-time data can help personalize SMS through Attentive, subscription messaging through ReCharge, helpdesk data in Gorgias, and update seamlessly in a Loyalty Pass found in Apple & Google Wallet. 

How P. Louise used automation to win Best Loyalty Program Comms

From TikTok beginnings to a serious beauty contender, P.Louise’s dynamic, always-personalized email comms help them drive 30% of total revenue. 

Jo Guise, P.Louise’s CRM Manager, shared that customers originally didn’t know they were members. She says, “LoyaltyLion’s platform and integrations make awareness easy – and increase our repeat purchase rate.”

Their loyalty data flows from LoyaltyLion into Klaviyo, fueling personalized comms around real member moments:

• Tier-graduation triggers fire the moment a customer unlocks a new tier
• Reward-available events encourage customers to come back to the website the moment they earn a gift
• Points balance in every email header keeps the program front of mind

With these real-time, personalized loyalty comms, it’s no wonder they have a 6.7x higher lifetime value from redeeming members, and over 600k members enrolled in their program.

Let AI automate your loyalty campaign decision-making

Those running loyalty programs often tell us that they’re super excited by the tech, but worry about finding the time to plan great loyalty campaigns. 

There’s great news – AI automation now makes loyalty program decision-making easier and faster. Now, you can:

• Know exactly what birthday rewards power the best conversion rates
• See what dates are statistically best for a points multiplier event to uplift slower periods, and what multiplier would work best for each VIP Tier
• Seamlessly identify and nudge shoppers who are just out of reach of a reward to make an urgent repeat purchase

LoyaltyLion AI has learned from millions of loyalty program actions to feed you these answers. Now, it’s increasingly being used by Shopify brands to get ahead.

Use AI to automate your loyalty program decision-making and campaign set-up, helping you launch quicker and maximize the revenue growth driven by retained customers.

How Pashion Footwear set up better loyalty campaigns, three times faster

Convertible heel brand Pashion Footwear used LoyaltyLion AI to remove the guesswork and time commitment from setting up a points multiplier campaign. 

The AI automated handle the analytics and setup, getting it done in a third of the time:

• AI recommended the optimal week to run the campaign
• It calibrated different bonuses for each tier proven to optimize cart size and conversion. In this case, it was 2x for Bronze/ Silver and 3x for Gold.
• LoyaltyLion AI set up the campaign in an editable format, and enabled one-click scheduling
• The results were automatically captured in a dashboard

The results were a vast improvement on Pashion’s usual campaigns: a 28% conversion rate, 13% higher AOV, and 7x more points earned than a normal week.

The future of loyalty program automation is here

Top brands are already driving more growth by using the latest loyalty program automations:

AI translation

Brands can now automatically translate every aspect of their loyalty program in a matter of minutes. This is a quick win for growth, because it helps them meet the expectations of international shoppers: 6 in 10 consumers say they are likely to stop participating in a loyalty program if it is not shown in their local language.

Automatically giving points for photo or video reviews

Research shows that Gen Z is 3x more likely (64% and 59%, respectively) than Boomers (22% and 20%) to give a photo or video review. Automate this using a quick integration with your loyalty program, and you drive both repeat purchases and UGC advocacy.

Automate in-store loyalty experiences

Loyalty Passes increase engagement and purchases by loyalty members in-store. A unique QR code means customers are immediately recognized as a member at checkout. They can scan it to earn points for in-store activities, and their available rewards and VIP Tier benefits are also clear to both customer and staff, enabling seamless redemption. Even better, LoyaltyLion sends automated push notifications (reward earned, expiring reward, tier change) directly to the customer’s lock screen, with no app required. 

This automation helps meet the expectations of 62% of all shoppers, who say being able to access a loyalty program in their digital wallet is important, and 85% who want loyalty programs to work in-store.

The best growth opportunities come from loyalty automation

Loyalty program automation is vital for ambitious brands. Why? Because the best growth opportunities available today are found in highly personalized loyalty comms.

The good news is that setting them up is a breeze. Don’t settle for a loyalty program that’s manual and time-consuming – automated and impactful is the way forward.

Automate your loyalty program today. Book a demo to get started.