Right now, Shopify’s biggest brands are using loyalty programs to drive their fastest-ever growth.
These platforms support loyalty programs with tens of millions of members, over half a million new enrollments each month, and billions of points earned and redeemed.
As well as volume of orders, enterprise scale loyalty programs must do more. They should cover POS, app, subscriptions, email, retail partners, and customers in multiple markets at once.
They must stay up during Black Friday spikes, deliver experiences a CMO can be proud of, report cleanly to multiple stakeholders, and adapt to every region you’re operating in.
Here’s the thing – many Shopify brands scale super fast, so the tech behind those programs has to be ready for that scale from day one.
This piece is for ecommerce leaders evaluating enterprise loyalty software, whether you’re migrating from an in-house program, replacing a platform that hasn’t kept up with your growth, or planning your first serious investment.
Here are the key factors enterprise brands should look for in a loyalty platform.
1. Your program needs to work across every channel
At enterprise scale, customers expect to be recognized everywhere they meet the brand – at the till in a flagship store, in the app, on the website, and increasingly, when they buy the brand at a third-party retailer.
Our new consumer research shows how much shoppers expect this:
- 85% say being able to use a loyalty program in-store is important
- 82% say the same about using it on the website
- 78% want to collect points when they buy the brand from another retailer
That last figure points to cross-store loyalty, a capability worth asking any vendor about directly.
EVEREVE: loyalty across the most POS locations of any Shopify brand
The US womenswear retailer runs more Shopify POS stations than any other brand.
When they moved from their in-house loyalty program to LoyaltyLion, hundreds of thousands of existing customers were auto-enrolled into the new program and their existing loyalty statuses were honored.
Now, the loyalty program seamlessly integrates with those shoppers’ in-store and online experiences. They’re easily identified at checkout, points and rewards are visible instantly, and sync seamlessly to their online accounts.
As CTO Tamer Selim said, “Our store managers were in our office last week and they were applauding the platform because they really love the way that it engages with the customer now.”
The impact of the shift to LoyaltyLion is striking:
- Redeeming members purchase 5.7x more often and spend 5.7x more than non-members
- Over 100k loyalty members enrolled in the first year
- 87k newsletter signups have been driven by loyalty incentives
The flexibility and adaptability of an enterprise loyalty platform is exactly what an ambitious brand like EVEREVE needed. That’s why it’s now powering over 30% of their total revenue.
2. Your platform can’t treat mobile and headless as optional
For a rapidly expanding brand, the loyalty program must work everywhere the brand is investing, like Hydrogen storefronts, or in mobile apps.
The customer demand backs this up: 77% of shoppers say being able to use a loyalty program in an app is important. Among Millennials, that figure is 84%. Loyalty members now log into their favorite programs ten times a month, so these capabilities are vital to an enterprise loyalty platform.
Oh Polly: a mobile-first loyalty program
After migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus, Oh Polly rebuilt their program with mobile at the center. A huge proportion of their Gen Z customers shop almost entirely on mobile.
Using the LoyaltyLion x Tapcart integration, members earn points and redeem rewards inside the app the same way they would on the website. The team segments push notifications by tier and behavior.
The growth speaks for itself:
- 721,000 new members in 12 months
- 18% of total revenue from loyalty
- Redeeming members worth 3x more in lifetime value, ordering 2.5x more often
- Top-tier members spending nearly 9x as much as lowest-tier members
3. One program, every market
A loyalty program can’t fall behind as you expand internationally. Your singular program must work in every market, not six programs running on different rules with different reporting.
Multilingual support, including AI-powered translation in the brand’s own tone of voice, is vital. Three in 5 shoppers would stop participating in a program that wasn’t in their language. Given that Shopify supports over 140 languages, your loyalty platform needs to do the same.
Localization must extend to currency, regional reporting, and reward availability. For instance, if you’re offering free shipping to all your loyal customers, your margins could suffer if some shoppers live far from your warehouse. Showing free shipping rewards only in certain regions protects you, without damaging customer relationships.
Waterdrop: one program, 30+ countries
The Vienna-founded hydration brand runs their Waterdrop Club program across 40 physical stores worldwide. With a million loyalty members internationally, the program operates across Shopify storefronts, their mobile app, WhatsApp communication, and Recharge subscription integration.
Despite all those different channels and international regions, and being run by a lean team mostly in their Vienna HQ, the program consistently powers top results. Redeeming members have a 70% higher lifetime value and a 4x higher repurchase rate.
Other brands show similar international success:
- Medik8’s program drives 40% of UK revenue and 27% of their US revenue, using a unified approach that accommodates regional tweaks. Shoppers in different countries may see different rewards and campaigns based on regional shopping behaviors.
- P.Louise launched a dedicated US program in just a couple of weeks, migrating 100k members over from the UK one without breaking the experience for either group.
4. Your rewards need to go beyond what smaller brands can offer
Enterprise brands often have the resources and opportunities to take rewards to the next level, which is exactly what’s needed to stand out and meet shopper expectations today.
Only 46% of Gen Z say discount-based rewards would compel a repeat purchase in 2026. Instead, 56% say founder interactions are an important loyalty perk, four times higher than the figure for Boomers.
You dream it up, and an enterprise loyalty platform can deliver it as a custom reward, tier benefit, or loyalty campaign. All the evidence shows that creative loyalty programs power higher lifetime value. Here’s one example:
The INKEY List: enterprise loyalty taking the brand to new heights
INKEY Insiders runs across four global regions, with three tiers: Insider, Star, Icon. One fourth of total revenue comes from loyalty activities. What sets the program apart is its custom rewards and perks:
- INKEY Lab gives Insiders early access to limited-edition formulas and lets the community shape what makes it to full launch
- Top products launch to Insiders first, selling out in record time and generating FOMO that boosts loyalty program enrollment
- During Insiders Week, perks including a private dinner with co-founder Colette Laxton or a win-your-order sweepstake generate more loyalty revenue than any other point in the year
The central idea is that enterprise loyalty programs offer rewards you simply cannot access in any other way, at any price, on any channel. This makes the loyalty program a defining feature of the brand identity.
5. Enterprise loyalty platforms must have resilience at scale
None of the above matters unless the platform can withstand peak periods and high order volumes.
Over Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024, brands using enterprise loyalty platform LoyaltyLion drove $60 million in revenue directly attributable to their loyalty programs. At peak, the platform handled over 1,800 orders per minute, with members earning 1.75 billion points across the period.
An enterprise loyalty platform must maintain 100% uptime throughout – with no errors. For brands operating at that volume, during the highest-traffic period of the year, reliability isn’t optional.
Enterprise brands need reporting depth, too. Teams should be able to export loyalty data by channel, and program revenue needs to be tracked even at the level of individual brick-and-mortar stores.
When your loyalty platform is built exclusively for Shopify, like LoyaltyLion is, every capability is optimized for the way Shopify brands actually operate and grow rapidly, rather than adapted from a generic architecture.
The roadmap for any enterprise loyalty platform must meet the needs of fast-growth programs. For instance, our Loyalty Pass, launching June 2026, will let members scan in-store to earn points and redeem rewards, removing friction from the physical retail experience. It’s a non-negotiable, given multi-channel loyalty is expected by almost all shoppers today.
Choose an enterprise loyalty platform built for scale
If you’re evaluating enterprise loyalty software, the questions worth asking on every vendor call come back to the same themes:
- How the program behaves across POS, web, app, and external retailers
- What headless and mobile support looks like in practice
- How one program operates consistently across markets without fragmenting
- What exciting, unique experiences can be supported, going far beyond discounts
A loyalty program is one of the most powerful growth drivers in ecommerce today.
So, the platform underneath it should be ready to support that growth from day one.
Our team can walk you through what the right setup looks like for your brand, your markets, and your customers.
Book a demo: https://loyaltylion.com/demo
