Loyalty Points

January 25, 2023


Benefits of Loyalty Points

Improve customer retention with incentives
83% of customers say loyalty programs improve their chances of continuing business with a retailer. Erply’s loyalty programs enable you to reward customers with automatic discounts, exclusive coupons, or free items. Gift points to your most loyal customers or tie in a promotion to boost customer loyalty.

A low-friction rewards system
Does your store run an exclusive rewards program? Loyalty programs are highly customizable to fit the needs of your business. All customers are assigned individual loyalty codes that can be printed onto barcoded cards for fast scanning.
With Erply, you can easily configure:

  • Rate of loyalty point accumulation
  • Eligible loyalty items
  • Loyalty point redemption options
  • Eligible customers

More data for stronger customer insights
Loyalty programs make it easy to understand your customer’s purchasing habits. Report on all reward point balances and related transactions to see how customers utilize your loyalty program. Capture data by requiring customers to sign up for your loyalty program, then reach out with relevant promotions.

Grow your CRM
While not necessary, you can require customers to sign up for your loyalty points program using their name, email address, or any other relevant information. Use this data to fill your CRM with valuable customer data, then reach out with relevant promotions and store deals. 

Set Up Loyalty Points

Defining loyalty points per dollar spent

To set up this loyalty points system, navigate to Settings -> Configuration -> Reward Points.

You can configure the rate of loyalty point accumulation there. Accumulation rates can be set in whole numbers or in decimals. When awarding fractional points per dollar, points will be rounded up

Loyalty points can be configured to expire after a certain number of months. This expiration rate is used for all points accumulated, no matter where they are set.
Leave this field blank if you do not want loyalty points to expire. 

Save when you are done.

Define loyalty points by product group

To set up this loyalty points system, navigate to PIM -> Product Groups.

Editing a product group enables you to determine how many points a purchase from that product group will reward. Locate the section titled For each item purchased from this product group, customer collects
Entering a 0 will cause the entire group to not award loyalty points.
Note: If the value should be applied to product subgroups, you will need to edit each subgroup.

Save when you are done.

Create promotions that consume loyalty points

To set up this promotion, navigate to Retail -> Promotions.

To redeem loyalty points with a promotion, enter a number in the Loyalty points can only be exchanged for a $ discount off the entire purchase section of the promotions module.
Discounts can be applied once per purchase, or as many times as the customer’s loyalty point balance allows.

More specific instructions on this can be found in the Promotions article.

Create coupons that consume loyalty points

To set up this coupon, navigate to Retail -> Coupon Rules

The Customer must redeem reward points for this coupon section allows you to determined how many loyalty points is required for coupon redemption.

More specific instructions on this can be found in the Coupons article

Save when you are done.

Update Loyalty Points

There are 2 ways to reset the loyalty point balance for all customers in Erply:
- Updating loyalty point balances for all customers,
- Updating loyalty points only for customers with a non-zero balance.

Updating loyalty point balances for all customers

This is the safest option but it will take several hours to complete the update.

Exporting

First you need to export your customer database. Once that is done, you can start editing the sheet.

Editing

Ensure that Column A contains the customer ID - this is how Erply will match each customer to their new point balance.
You may also want to keep the Customer loyalty card code column if you will be adding or updating a customer’s loyalty card number. 

Add a new column named Loyalty Points. You can assign a new point balance to customers in this column. If you want to reset a point balance, set it to 0.
Take note of the number of customers you are expecting to update.

Save this spreadsheet as a .CSV file.

Importing

After this is done, you can update your customer database via the import tool.
The columns that absolutely have to be mapped are: Customer ID, Customer Loyalty Code, Loyalty Points.

Erply will now show you an updated customer count. Make sure that this number corresponds to what you are expecting from what you counted on your spreadsheet earlier. 
Note: when importing a large amount of customers or if your account was recently used to handle a lot of data (sales, reports, stocktaking for example), the customer update can take more than 1 hour.

Once the import is complete, you will be presented with a summary of customers who have been updated, skipped or failed. 
It is recommended that you download the job report to keep a record of what customer data was changed. This can also be used to provide Erply support with a paper trail should you encounter any issues.

You can open a customer card to ensure the updated went through as expected.

Updating loyalty points only for customers with a non-zero balance

This method allows for a lighter, faster update, but presents a risk of creating duplicates if customer names are mapped incorrectly.

Exporting

With this method, you won't be exporting the customer data the usual way. 
Navigate to Reports -> CRM -> Reward point balances

In the new window that opens with the report, wait for the full report to load (you can check by scrolling all the way down until it doesn’t load more rows). 
Select all (ctrl+A or command+A) and copy (ctrl+C or command+C).

Editing

Open a new document in a spreadsheet editor like Excel and paste the report (ctrl+V or command+V).

Delete the header rows so that the document row 1 corresponds to the first customer row. After this, delete all the columns except the one with customers’ full names (column B).
Select the remaining column, right-click and remove hyperlinks.

Add a header row and name the first column Customer name and the second column New loyalty point balance. This will help mapping the fields with the importer. 
Fill the entire column B (new loyalty point balance) with "0" to zero out these customers’ point balances. Take note of the total number of customers who should be updated.

Save this spreadsheet as a .CSV file.

Importing

After this is done, you can update your customer database via the import tool.
The columns that absolutely have to be mapped are: Full Name, Loyalty Points.

Once your fields are mapped, select the field by which existing customers will be identified for updates. 
Locate the Match existing customers by section and select Full Name (this should be the only available option given the fields you mapped).

If everything is accurate, click on Start Import.
Note: when importing a large amount of customers or if your account was recently used to handle a lot of data (sales, reports, stocktaking for example), the customer update can take more than 1 hour.

Once the import is complete, you will be presented with a summary of customers who have been updated, skipped or failed. 
It is recommended that you download the job report to keep a record of what customer data was changed. This can also be used to provide Erply support with a paper trail should you encounter any issues.

You can open a customer card to ensure the updated went through as expected.

Generate Loyalty Points Report

Back office reports can be used to view all customer loyalty point balances and recent transactions involving loyalty point balances.

Navigate to Reports -> CRM -> Reward Point Balance Report

Reward point balances: View the reward point balance of all customers.
Reward point balances and recent transactions: View the reward point balance of all customers, plus any transactions that they made which caused them to accumulate loyalty points.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a limit to how many points can be earned?
No, but you can set an expiration for loyalty points.

Will customers know how many points they have?
Yes, this value is displayed on the receipt that is printed or emailed. A customer’s loyalty point balance can also be viewed at the POS.

Is every customer required to participate?
No, loyalty programs can be limited to specific customers.
To prevent a customer from earning loyalty points, select the “This customer does not earn new reward points” settings on their customer card at the POS.

Can I configure the POS receipts to show the customer's loyalty point balance?
Yes, we have a tutorial article just for that!