Points Expiration
Success team avatar
Written by Success team
Updated over a week ago

To see which plans include Points Expiration please see our pricing page


Rewards expiration

Rewards don't have an expiration date. You can disable the rewards at any time, however, once disabled, the redeemed but unclaimed rewards won't be able to be used at the checkout.

If you want to give points back to your customers after you disabled them, or you're out of stock you can do this manually. Go to the customer's account, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the button Refund.


Points expiration

By default, points in LoyaltyLion do not expire. However, this feature is available on selected plans. Please visit our plans and pricing page to see what plan this feature is available on and contact your account manager for access.


How to enable points expiration

  1. Log in to your LoyaltyLion account

  2. Click on the tab Manage

  3. On the left find Configuration and click Settings

  4. Select the Enable points expiration checkbox

  5. Set how many months after the customer's last order their points should expire

  6. Set the Points expiring notice, which is the number of days notice you will give the customer before their points expire

  7. Click on Update settings to save

How points expiration works

If you have a live program and you turn on Points expiration, we do not immediately begin expiring existing customer points.

Once you switch on points expiration, the expiration will only take place one expiration period after the date you switch it on.

The expiration period is the length of time you specified in the Points expiration period field.

This means that if your expiration period is 12 months and you enable points expiration on March 1st, 2023, any customers who have not placed an order on or after that date will start to have points expire on March 1st, 2024.

If the customer has not made any purchases for a consecutive 12-month period, they will have their approved points balance expire in full. Any points earned during the 12-month period from non-purchase activities will also expire on the same date.

If a customer hasn't placed any orders from the point they joined the Loyalty Program, then the expiry period is calculated from the time they register their account.

You can also set the points expiring notice, which is the number of days notice you will give the customer before their points expire. You can notify the customer by using LoyaltyLion emails or through some ESP integrations


FAQ

Q. Will my customers be notified if their points are about to expire?
​Yes! Once you've enabled point expiration, you can automatically email the affected customers, encouraging them to redeem their points or make a purchase to keep their existing balance.

If you have an Attentive integration or enhanced Klaviyo integration (included on our Plus plan as standard and available as an add-on for other price plans), you can notify your customers through them, rather than using LoyaltyLion.

Contact support@loyaltylion.com to learn more about our integrations.

You can find our Points expiring soon email in the Emails tab. 

Q. What happens to pending points?
​If a customer still has pending points when their points are expired, those points will remain pending. We don't remove a customer's recently pending points because it's a good indication that they're beginning to re-engage with your loyalty program.

Q. What happens to points that guest customers have? Do they also expire?

We do not expire points of guest customers, as we are unable to notify them about their point expiring. We will keep the points until the guest customer enrolls in the program. Only then, we will start the points expiratoin clock. If a customer doesn't place any orders from the point they joined the Loyalty Program, then the expiration period is calculated from the time they register their account.

Q. Can customers extend their points differently, for example by receiving birthday points or completing social media activities?

No, only placing an order can stop points from expiring.

Q. Are points a financial liability?
If you're wondering whether points count as a financial liability - they normally don't. Here is more information: http://www.iasplus.com/en-gb/standards/ifric/ifric13

Q. If I change my points expiration settings from a longer period of time to a shorter one (eg. From 12 months to 6 months), what will happen? Will customers' points expire straight away?

This depends on the level of engagement from the customers in your store. In this example, any customers who have made a purchase from your store within the past 6 months would not see their points expire.

However, if your previous point expiry period was 12 months and you changed this to 6 months, any customers who had last made a purchase more than 6 months ago would be eligible for points expiration.

For example, Customer A made a purchase 8 months ago and you switch the point expiration period to 6 months.

In cases like these, customers will get a two-week grace period from the time the setting is changed where you can let them know their points are due to expire. We recommend you let the customers know so that this does not come as a surprise (and this can be a great way to get customers to re-engage!)

Please bear in mind that:

  • Anyone who has already received a point expiration email warning them that their points will expire in 2 weeks will have their points expire when we said they would.

  • If your points expiration emails are enabled, customers whose expiration date will be placed in the past because of the change we are doing will receive the email to let them know straight away that they have 2 weeks before their points expire.

  • If your point expiration emails are enabled, customers whose points expiration date is still in the future and haven't received a point expiration email yet will receive the email about their points expiring 2 weeks ahead of whenever the new deadline is.

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