How to set up Tiers and Rewards

This feature is part of Skio’s Loyalty Program. To add this feature to your store, reach out to our sales team at sales@skio.com.

How do Tiers and Rewards work?

Before configuring your program, here's what to know about how Skio evaluates and assigns tiers.

Spend is evaluated over a configurable time window: You can set the evaluation period to customer lifetime (all-time spend), a rolling window (e.g., the last 12 months), or a calendar year (resets annually). Spend is calculated using pre-discount item prices and excludes shipping and taxes. By default, all Shopify orders count toward spend, both subscription and one-time, though you can configure each tier to count only subscription orders or only one-time orders.
- Tier durations start from when the program is enabled, not from when the customer originally qualified. For example, if you use a rolling 1-year evaluation and a customer's qualifying purchases were 6 months ago, their tier duration still starts from the activation date.
Existing customers are evaluated immediately when you enable the program: Skio looks back through customer order history based on your evaluation timeline setting and assigns tiers accordingly.
- You can do a phased rollout by enabling tiers for a select group of customers first (by email) before opening it up to your full subscriber base, useful for testing the experience before going live.
Customers keep their tier status until their tier duration expires: If a customer no longer meets the eligibility requirements, they won't be downgraded until the end of their configured tier duration (for example, the end of the rolling year or calendar year).
Tier status updates in real time: Whenever an order is placed or canceled, Skio re-evaluates the customer's tier. Canceled orders are excluded from all tier conditions.

How do I set up Tiers and Rewards?

Step 1: Navigate to your Skio Dashboard

In the Skio Dashboard sidebar, select Loyalty > Tiers and Rewards.

Step 2: Configure your Global Tier settings

In the Global tier settings section, select Edit and configure the following settings:

Enable loyalty tiers

Enable tiers for all customers: Select this to give all customers access to tiers.
Enable tiers for select customers (recommended during program setup): Select this option to limit tier access to only the customer emails you enter in the text box. This is useful during setup as a test mode to test the customer experience before going live.
Disable tiers for all customers: Select this to disable tiers for all customers.

Enter one email per line.

Tier duration timeline

The Tier duration timeline settings determine how long customers will qualify for a tier after meeting the eligibility requirements.

Rolling year: Select this option to set tier status to expire exactly one year after activation. For example, if a customer enters a tier on June 28, 2023, they’ll be automatically downgraded on June 28, 2024.
Customer lifetime: Select this option to make tier status permanent. Customers who qualify will keep their status indefinitely and won’t be downgraded.
Calendar year: Select this option to have tier status expire on January 1 of the following year. For example, if a customer enters a tier at any point in 2024, their status will expire on January 1, 2025.
None: Select this option to have tier status expire immediately when a customer no longer meets the eligibility criteria. For example, if a tier requires spending $200 in the past 90 days and a customer drops below that threshold, they’ll be downgraded the same day.
Custom period: Select this option to set a custom rolling timeline for tier status, such as 6 months from the activation date. For example, if a customer qualifies for a tier on March 1st, their status would expire on September 1st unless they requalify. This is helpful if you want to reward recent activity while keeping customers consistently engaged throughout the year.

Default evaluation timeline for tier conditions

The default evaluation timeline for tier conditions setting determines how far back Skio looks into a customer’s history once loyalty tiers are enabled. You can also set an evaluation start date under each option if you want the timeline to begin from a specific point forward.

Rolling year: Evaluates eligibility based on the past 12 months from today.
Customer lifetime: Evaluates eligibility using the customer’s entire order history.
Calendar year: Evaluates eligibility using data from the current calendar year (January 1 to today).
Custom period: Evaluates eligibility based on a custom rolling timeframe you define.

Step 3: Add a new tier

In the Your tiers section, click Add new tier. You can add as many tiers as you need.
Configure the following settings for each tier:

Eligibility requirements

Contains products in orders: A customer qualifies if they’ve received a specific product (or set of products) a certain number of times across their order history. You can choose to apply this to all orders, subscription orders only, or one-time orders only. You can also set a quantity requirement and optionally filter by product variant.
Order count: A customer becomes eligible when they reach a specific number of orders. You can choose whether to count one-time purchases, subscription orders, or both. You can also override the global timeline settings to apply a custom eligibility window for this tier.
Streak count: A customer becomes eligible when they reach a specific number of streaks.
Customer spend: The customer qualifies if their total spend is equal to or greater than a specific dollar amount. You can choose whether to include one-time purchases, subscription orders, or both. You can also override the global timeline settings to set a custom eligibility window for this tier.

The Override global timeline settings toggle displays on each eligibility requirement which lets you set a different evaluation timeline for a specific tier, without changing the global default. When enabled, it will override the global eligibility timeframe for this condition.

For example, your global timeline is set to “Customer lifetime," meaning the system looks at a customer's entire order history to determine tier eligibility. But for your VIP tier, you only want to reward recent activity, so you enable the override and set it to a custom period of 6 months. Now, only orders from the last 6 months count toward VIP qualification, while all other tiers still use the lifetime window.

Rewards

There are several reward types you can offer to customers.

Free gift on subscription
Free shipping
Discount
Exclusive content
Variable order credits
Fixed order credits
Earned credit multiplier

For each reward, you’ll see configurable options that determine when the reward should apply. The available options may vary depending on the reward type:

Upon entering tier (only once per customer): This will apply as soon as they join the tier. The actual effect may occur on the next order, depending on the type of reward, but it will only trigger once. For order credits specifically, the reward is applied immediately to the order that caused the tier upgrade.
On every order after joining tier
On specific order number in tier
Indefinitely upon entering tier

See Loyalty Rewards glossary for a full list of Loyalty key terms and concepts.

Skio Loyalty evaluates tiers *from top to bottom*, with the highest tier at the top of the list.

If a customer cancels an order, Skio immediately re-evaluates their tier status. Canceled orders don't count toward any tier conditions including lifetime value, order count, and products purchased.

Saving tier changes and notifying customers

When you edit loyalty tiers and click Save changes, you'll see an option to notify affected customers. All customers are immediately synced with the new tier configuration, which may change their current tier, available rewards, or point balances. Check the notification box to automatically email customers whose tier or rewards are impacted by your changes.

Make sure your tiers are ordered correctly to ensure each customer is placed in the right tier. To reorder your tiers, click and hold the six-dot icon on the right side of each row, then drag to rearrange.

Customer experience

Refer to Tiers and Rewards: Customer experience overview to learn how customers view their tier status and progress.