Loyalty and Rewards in Reorbit — How the Program Fits Together

How the pieces of a Reorbit loyalty program fit together — what creates points, what spends them, and the one part that doesn’t use points at all.

The model in one page

A Reorbit loyalty program is built from four things. Three of them run on points; the fourth deliberately doesn’t.

Piece	What it does	Runs on points?
Earn rules	Create points. One rule per customer action — an order, a review, joining, a birthday.	Creates them
Reward rules	Spend points. Each turns a number of points into a discount, free shipping, or a free product.	Spends them
VIP tiers	Reward your best customers by letting them earn faster, so they reach the same rewards sooner.	Multiplies them
Referrals	Pay a customer for bringing you a new one, and give the new one a reason to buy.	No — pays a discount

Referrals are the exception, and it catches people out. Neither side earns or spends points — a referral mints a Shopify discount code directly. If you’re looking for the setting that pays points for a referral, it doesn’t exist.

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What to build first

The order matters, because each piece is useless without the one before it.

1. At least one earn rule. Nothing else works until customers have a balance. Join the loyalty program plus Points per Amount Spent covers most stores.
2. At least one reward rule. Points with nothing to spend them on are a liability rather than a loyalty program. Price your cheapest reward so a typical customer can reach it within two or three orders.
3. The storefront widget. Customers can’t see their balance or redeem anything without it. (See Adding Reorbit to your storefront.)
4. Then tiers and referrals, once the basics are earning and redeeming.

Anchor your points economy before you write any rules. Decide what one point is worth — 100 points = $1 is a common choice — and price every earn and reward rule against it. Retrofitting an exchange rate after customers have balances means either devaluing what they hold or absorbing the difference.

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Settings that apply across the whole program

Some settings aren’t on individual rules:

• Order Points Settings — rounding, whether tax and shipping count, how long order points are held, and whether points come back on a refund. These apply to every rule that pays on an order.
• Referral program settings — refund holds and anti-abuse caps, covering every referral rule at once. (See Setting Up Referrals.)

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In this section

• Creating an Earn Rule — every way a customer can earn.
• Creating a Reward Rule — every way they can spend.
• Setting Up VIP Tiers — the ladder your best customers climb.
• Setting Up Referrals — advocate and friend rewards.
• Order Points Settings — the program-wide order rules.

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FAQ

Do I need all four pieces?

No. Earn rules and reward rules are the minimum for a working program. Tiers and referrals are additions, and plenty of stores never use either.

Can a customer earn points for referring someone?

Not today. Referrals pay a discount code to both sides. If you want a referral to be worth points, there’s no setting for that.

What’s a sensible points-to-currency rate?

100 points = $1 is a common anchor because the arithmetic is easy for customers. What matters more than the exact number is that every rule is priced against the same one.

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Next steps

• Next: Creating an Earn Rule — start here.
• Related: Program setups that work — five complete builds with real numbers.