Loyalty Points | How to Setup Programs & Checkout Customers
What is a Loyalty Points Program?
A points-based loyalty program is another option for retailers that is separate from other individual programs offered at the store. These programs offer points to customers for participating in your events or buying certain items. Once a customer earns enough points, they can redeem the points for rewards, also set up by the store. Most commonly, these programs are based on the number of dollars spent, where 1 point equals $1, but you can have points equal to any dollar amount you wish.
Astro Loyalty Points vs. Advanced Astro Points Program
There are now two types of Astro Loyalty Points Programs - Astro Loyalty Points & Advanced Astro Points.
An Astro Loyalty Points Program allows you to reward points based on purchases and actions, and customers can redeem their points for rewards. A Standard program is $20 per month. Loyalty Points | Design Ideas & Best Practices
An Advanced Astro Points Program (NEW) allows you to create a more robust program that can reward points based on purchases of specific items, completion of specific actions, create bonus point events based on the day of the week, tag customers once they reach a certain lifetime points threshold, give those tagged customers access to exclusive points rewards, and more. An Advanced Program is $15 per month and requires an active Astro Marketing Membership (Marketing Suite Pricing) to unlock the advanced features.
Activating Astro Loyalty Points
Login to your Astro Account as an Admin User. Go to your Actions menu and select "Billing Information." Check and see if "Astro Loyalty Points" is listed under your Astro Membership. If it isn't listed, click the pencil icon to adjust your membership. Then click the box beside "Astro Loyalty Points" and click Update Membership to add the platform to your account.
How to setup a Loyalty Points Program
To set up loyalty programs, click on My Points Setup from the Actions drop-down menu.
Once inside My Loyalty Points, start by checking the box beside "Check this box to enable your points based loyalty program. This is separate from the individual program offers currently available." Doing so will allow you to start building the elements of your program. (Unchecking this box is also how you hide your Points Program entirely if you wish to suspend it for a period of time.)
What are Events & Rewards?
Loyalty Points programs require both an Event and a Reward to function properly.
- An Event is the description of the Loyalty Points Platform you want to use and its program requirements. You can create an Action Event or a Purchase Event. An Action Event rewards points based on an action, such as volunteering at an adoption event or posting on your social media. A Purchase Event rewards points based on dollars spent at your store. You can choose how many points or fractions of a point you want customers to earn based on an Action performed or a Dollar spent.
- A Reward is the offering when the program requirements have been met. This can literally be anything you wish, $ off, % off, an item, a service, get creative!
With this program, you are able to create and maintain a loyalty points program of your choosing. You can set this up or if you need help, let us know.
My Points Setup - Step One - Creating Loyalty Events
You can set up Events that allow customers to earn points and designate the amount of points earned by each event. These Events and the points generated by them are fully customizable for your store. You can also choose to run multiple events at one time if you would like to allow your customers to earn points more than one way.
To set up a new event, click Add Event under the Event Title column.
A pop-up window will appear where you can enter the information for the new event. This information includes the title, description, dollar amount, and number of points earned. Make sure the Status is Active and click Save Changes when done.
The event you created will now be added to the list of events customers can participate in to earn points.
If you need to edit the event, click on the Event Name and make any necessary changes. You can also set the Event Inactive or Delete it entirely this way.
My Points Setup - Step Two - Creating Loyalty Rewards
After setting up the Points Earning Events, you can set up Reward Opportunities for your customers. Reward opportunities are typically products or store credit that a customer can receive when they earn enough points from participating in points-earning events.
To add a new reward, click Add Reward under the Reward Title column.
A pop-up window will appear where you can enter in the information for the reward. This information includes the title, description and required points. Make sure the Status is Active and click Save Changes when done.
You can add as many rewards as you like, and your customers can "spend" their points as they like on these rewards.
Checking Out a Customer with Loyalty Points
If a customer has participated in events and earned points in the past, their current points total will appear below their name on the left of the checkout screen.
Adding Points
To add the points they are earning during this transaction click the red Manage Loyalty Points button located below their current points total. This will bring up a pop-up. Depending on the style of your Points Event you will either be typing in the dollar amount associated with their current Purchase, or you will be entering the number of times they performed the Action you are rewarding points for.
In the example image below we are adding the Purchase amount, dollars and cents to the Qty field. So this Pet Owner's sale came to a total of $53.26. You can include the change, and don't worry about rounding up or down, Astro will handle that for you. When you are finished, click Save Transactions.
It is up to you whether you reward your customer for the Sale Total (after tax is applied) of their Purchase, or for the Subtotal of their Purchase (before tax is applied).
Then Astro will add the points you just entered to Today's Purchases.
The points are also added, temporarily, to a Loyalty Points card at the very bottom of the Pet Owner's Frequent Buyer cards. Here you will see how many points they just earned compared to the dollar amount they just spent. In this example when a customer spends one dollar they earn one Kat's Mutts Point.
The card will also showcase the Event and the Event description. The card is not permanent and will not appear again until after a customer earns more points.
If you made a mistake you can either click the Remove button associated with the Points Earned under Today's Purchases, or you can click the brown X on the Loyalty Point Card.
If you notice, the customer has not been awarded their 53 points yet. Their current Loyalty Points total below their name is still showing their previously earned total of 262. Your customer will not be awarded the points you just added until after you click Checkout.
Once you are satisfied that you have entered the correct amount of points to their Pet Owner account you can save the loyalty transaction by clicking Checkout and move on to the next screen. Now you will see that your customer has been awarded their newly earned 53 points and their Loyalty Points total is now 315. You will also see the newly earned points mentioned under Loyalty Transactions This Visit. Here you will see exactly how many points the customer was awarded. Since the Points Event in this example is $1=1pt Astro will round up or down depending on the cents entered, so $53.26 became $53 since .26 is less than .50.
Once you have reviewed the transaction you can finalize it by clicking Finished.
Removing Points:
You can subtract points if a customer's points exceeded the amount they were suppose to have. On the checkout screen, click Manage Loyalty Points.
Put a minus sign in front of the number that needs to be removed then click Save Transactions. Then select Checkout and Finish the transaction to save the changes to the customer's account.
How to View Your Customer's Loyalty Points History and Possible Reward Options:
To view your customer's Points History click the red Loyalty Details button. You can find this button on either their first checkout screen (above where it says Checkout) or the second screen prior to clicking Checkout (above where it says Finished). This will bring up a pop-up that shows you every time your customer Earned Points and every time your customer spent their points earned on one of your Rewards.
The Description column will show the name of either the Event or the Reward, Date reveals the date the transaction occurred, Qty is either how many dollars were spent (Dollars Spent Event), how many actions were performed (Actions Event) or how many Rewards were Redeemed, and finally Points reveals how many points were either awarded (positive number) or spent (negative number).
If you click on Reward Options button in the top right corner;
You will see all Reward Options available on the your loyalty program regardless of whether or not the customers have enough points to earn those Rewards. This is to help the cashier remind the customers of what is available to them now and if they decide to hold out and earn more points. Click on Loyalty History to return to the previous page and can click on the Close button when done.
How to Redeem Points for a Reward
If your customer have earned enough points to redeem one of your Rewards there will be a notification on the customer's Pet Owner Checkout screen that will say, "Customer is eligible for Loyalty Redemption. Click to Redeem Loyalty Points after Checkout".
To redeem some of your customer's points for a Reward click Checkout to move onto the Redemption screen. Then Click to Redeem Loyalty Points will appear on the same Redemption Alert as a clickable link.
Clicking this link will open up a redemption pop-up for Loyalty Points. It will show you how many points your customer has to spend. The pop-up will only show you a list of Rewards that the customer has enough points to redeem with the points they currently have. Beside those Rewards there are drop-downs that will allow you to select the quantity (Qty) of that reward the customer wishes to redeem. In the example below the customer has 262 points they can spend, so technically they could redeem the first Reward, 5% off Any Package Treat twice. In this instance I am only going to redeem for one, so I selected 1 from the drop-down. Then to the right you will see the number of points that will be deducted once the Reward is redeemed. Once you have selected the Reward your customer wants to redeem select Save Redemption Selection.
Remember, this is your Loyalty Points Program, so if you only want to redeem Rewards once per transaction you have every right to do that. Or you can redeem as many rewards per transaction that your customer can afford.
Now under Loyalty Transactions This Visit you will see the Reward your customer has redeemed minus the points they spent on it. You will also notice that under Loyalty Points it will show the customer's new points total now that those spent points have been deducted.
If the customer had also earned some points during this transaction those would also be listed under Loyalty Transactions This Visit.
Once you are satisfied, click Finished to finalize the transaction.
Need more help -- here is a video on how to Add, Remove, and Redeem Points Manually on a Pet Owner Account.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do points actually expire?
If you have a customer that has a current points total of 210, with 10 of those points being earned during a transaction that occurred 12-months ago. If you have your points set to expire after 12-months of being earned, then tomorrow this customer's points total will drop to 200 since those 10 points were earned outside of the permitted 12-month range.
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