Launch a loyalty program

A loyalty program turns customer activity into a points ledger. OfferKit stores each member’s available balance, lifetime points, current tier, reward redemptions, manual adjustments, and expiration entries. Your application decides which real-world events award points and presents the program to the customer.

Design the program first

Write down four decisions before configuring OfferKit:

1. Enrollment — automatic for every account or explicit opt-in?
2. Earning — how many base points does each event award?
3. Status — which lifetime-point thresholds define tiers, and do tiers multiply earning?
4. Spending — what can members receive, and how many available points does each reward cost?

Also decide whether earned points expire. OfferKit can record per-entry expiration and run a background expiration sweep.

Configure the program

1. Create a campaign with type LOYALTY_PROGRAM.
2. Open Loyalty, create a program, and select that campaign.
3. Set the point-expiration period if points should not live forever.
4. Add tiers in increasing threshold order.
5. Add the rewards customers can buy with points.
6. Optionally create earning-rule records to describe and attribute earning behavior.

An earning multiplier uses basis points. 10000 means 1×, 15000 means 1.5×, and 20000 means 2×.

Rewards can return a discount, gift-card credit, or a custom payload. Your application must fulfill the returned reward in the customer experience.

Upsert and enroll a customer

const { customer } = await offerkit.customers.upsert({
  externalId: user.id,
  email: user.email,
  name: user.name,
});

const member = await offerkit.loyalty.members.enroll({
  programId,
  customerId: customer.id,
});

Both operations are safe to repeat for the same identity and program. Store the member ID with your integration data or retrieve it from your server-side mapping.

Award points at the right event

OfferKit does not infer purchases from your commerce database. Call earn when your chosen business event occurs—for example, after payment capture or order fulfillment.

const earned = await offerkit.loyalty.members.earn({
  memberId: member.id,
  basePoints: order.loyaltyPoints,
  eventId: order.id,
  note: `Order ${order.number}`,
  applyMultiplier: true,
});

Calculate basePoints in your integration according to the program policy. Supplying an earningRuleId attributes the ledger entry to that configured rule; the rule record does not subscribe to your application events by itself.

Pass a stable eventId so you can reconcile an earning entry to the source event. Your event handler should also deduplicate on your side before calling earn.

When the member crosses a lifetime-point threshold, OfferKit selects the highest qualifying tier. The member’s current tier multiplier affects later earning calls when applyMultiplier is enabled.

Let a member spend points

List rewards for the program, show the point cost, and submit the selected reward from your server:

const result = await offerkit.loyalty.members.redeem({
  memberId: member.id,
  rewardId: selectedRewardId,
  note: `Requested from account page`,
});

if (!result.ok) {
  return showRewardError(result.code, result.message);
}

await fulfillReward(result.payload);

OfferKit checks the balance and deducts the cost in one transaction. The returned payload describes what was purchased. Treat custom fulfillment as its own reliable workflow: record the OfferKit transaction ID, make your fulfillment idempotent, and surface failures to operations.

Show balance and history

const current = await offerkit.loyalty.members.get({ params: { id: member.id } });
const history = await offerkit.loyalty.members.history({ params: { id: member.id } });

Use current.balance for spendable points, current.lifetimePoints for tier progress, and the ledger to explain earning, reward redemption, adjustment, expiration, and rollback.

Test before launch

Test:

• repeat enrollment;
• earning below, at, and above every tier threshold;
• earning with and without a tier multiplier;
• duplicate application events;
• a reward with exactly enough points and one point too few;
• custom reward fulfillment failure and retry;
• expiration of several earning entries;
• positive and negative manual adjustments.

Operate the program

Use manual adjustment only with an explanatory note. The ledger should remain the audit trail for every balance change. When changing tier thresholds or reward costs, decide how the change should affect existing members before editing a live program.