How to set up a Surprise & Delight rule

Learn more about how Surprise & Delight rules work in our guide here.

Step 1: Navigate to Surprise & Delight

In the lefthand menu of your Skio Dashboard, go to Retain > Surprise & Delight

Step 2: Create a new reward rule

Click + New rule in the upper right corner
Enter a descriptive Rule name (e.g., "Order 3 Free gift" or "Order 5 Give customer 20% off")
Optionally enable A/B testing to test reward effectiveness and select the percentage of customers who should receive the reward

Step 3: Set your trigger

The trigger determines when the reward is applied.

Specific order count

Under Trigger > Specific order count, enter the Order number that should trigger the reward (e.g., 3 for the customer's third order).

Customer-level Surprise & Delight

Optionally, toggle on Apply per customer to enable customer-level Surprise & Delight eligibility. When enabled, the order count is based on the customer's total subscription orders across all subscriptions, and each customer will only receive the gift once.

For example, if you have a customer with two active subscriptions and your trigger is set to order 3, here's how each setting behaves:

Apply per customer off (subscription-level): Each subscription is counted separately. The customer receives the gift on their 3rd order from subscription A, and again on their 3rd order from subscription B.
Apply per customer on (customer-level): All orders across both subscriptions are counted together. The customer receives the gift once their combined order count reaches 3, regardless of which subscription it came from.

Toggle on **Apply per customer** to enable customer-level Surprise & Delight eligibility.

Customer-level Surprise & Delight has two key limitations to keep in mind before enabling it:

Limited customer-based conditions: With customer-level Surprise & Delight turned on, you can only use Customer Tag, Credit Balance, and Loyalty as customer-based conditions. Any other customer-based conditions on your rule won't be deleted, but they'll be disabled until you turn this setting back off.
Not compatible with every-order gifting: If a rule's order type is set to "every order" rather than "total order," you can't use customer-level Surprise & Delight on that rule at the same time. Note: Every-order gifting is available only upon request and isn't publicly available to all merchants.

Specific streak count

Under Trigger > Specific streak count, enter the streak count number that should trigger the reward (e.g., 3 to reward customers who have placed 3 consecutive orders without skipping or cancelling).

Step 4: Choose your reward product

Under Reward product, choose from the following options.

Click Add discount (fixed amount or percentage) to apply a percentage or fixed amount discount
Click Add free gift and select the gift product of your choice to automatically include a product at no charge
- Toggle on Enable gift swapping for customers to allow subscribers to choose an alternative gift if they prefer a different option. Select which products customers can swap to from the available gift options.
- You can include a combination of both a discount and free gifts in a single rule, but you can only add one discount per rule. You can add multiple free gifts to the same reward.

Surprise & Delight free gift products do not need to be added to a selling plan. If a free gift product is added to a selling plan, customers may be able to add that product to their subscription from the Customer Portal (for example, by swapping their existing product), which may allow them to claim the free gift outside of the Surprise & Delight rule.

Step 5: Set conditions (optional)

Conditions let you refine who receives the reward based on subscription status.

Customer-based conditions

Customer tag: Filter by whether a customer has or does not have a specified tag.
Credit balance: Filter customers based on their available store or subscription credit balance.
In Tier: Target customers who are currently in specific loyalty tiers.
Distance to tier: Target customers based on how close they are to reaching their next loyalty tier (measured by order count, LTV, or product count) and their current tier level.
Tier at risk: Target customers whose current tier is at risk of being lost due to tier expiry rules.

Subscription-based conditions

Order number: Filter by the current order number (for example, a subscription with 3 orders would have order number = 3).
Total quantity: Filter by total quantity of products in the subscription (for example, 1 × Product A and 1 × Product B = quantity of 2).
Total value: Filter by total dollar value of the subscription (sum of each product's subscription price × quantity).
Subscription creation date: Filter by when the subscription was created.
Day of week: Filter subscriptions with a specific charge day of the week.
Discount code: Filter subscriptions that contain specific discount codes.
Is prepaid renewing: Filter prepaid subscriptions by whether they are set to renew (continue into another term) or end after the current prepaid cycle.
Migrated from another platform: Identify subscriptions migrated from another platform (only captures the migrated subscription, not new subscriptions created by the same customer).
Next billing date: Filter subscriptions where the next billing date falls on, before, or after a selected date.
Shipping interval: Filter by how often the subscription ships (for example, every week, every 2 weeks, monthly).
Subscription country: Filter by shipping address country (supports multiple selections). Condition can be set to is or is not to include or exclude customers in the selected countries.
Subscription ID: Enter specific subscription IDs to target with the operation.
Subscription note: Filter subscriptions based on keywords or text stored in the internal subscription note.
Subscription status: Filter by status (Active, cancelled, failed, under review, paused).

Product-based conditions

Contains products: Identify subscriptions that include a specific product.
Contains dynamic boxes: Filter subscriptions that include a specific dynamic build-a-box product.
Contains static boxes: Filter subscriptions that include a specific static build-a-box product.
Does not contain dynamic boxes: Filter subscriptions that do not include a specific dynamic build-a-box product.
Does not contain static boxes: Filter subscriptions that do not include a specific static build-a-box product.
Exclude products: Identify subscriptions that do not include a specific product (helpful when paired with “contains products”).

Other conditions

Audit log: Filter subscriptions based on specific audit log actions.
Cancel Flow: Filter subscriptions that had X rebuttal shown and was saved or not saved.
Quick action: Filter customers or subscriptions based on whether a specific Quick Action link has been actioned, or viewed but not actioned.
Surprise and Delight: Filter customers who were or were not qualified for a surprise and delight gift.

Step 6: Save and activate your rule

Click Create rule to save and activate

Your rule will now appear in the Active rules section on the main Surprise & Delight page.