Affiliate rewards vs customer loyalty: which should your Shopify store use?

The clearest difference: whose purchase earns the reward?

With customer loyalty, a shopper earns points for their own eligible order. They can later redeem those points for rewards your store offers. The practical message is simple: shop with us, collect points and use them towards a future reward.

With affiliates, the person sharing a tracked link earns points when someone they refer makes an eligible purchase. An affiliate might be a creator, an existing customer or another relevant partner. They do not need to make videos to use a standard affiliate link.

RewardMe supports both programmes. Its Shopify App Store listing describes tracked affiliate links, branded points and rewards such as discounts, shipping rewards and manual payout requests. Choose which rewards to enable and explain the conditions. Earning points does not mean money is automatically paid to a bank account.

Start with loyalty when the next order is your priority

Loyalty is a sensible first experiment when customers have a natural reason to buy again, but you want a clearer invitation to return. Coffee, skincare refills and pet supplies are useful examples. Look at your own order history before deciding: how long do people usually wait between purchases, and how many make a second order?

For a fictional tea shop, the offer might be “Collect Tea Leaves when you shop and redeem them for a discount on a future order.” The merchant still needs to choose a rate and a realistic redemption threshold. A customer should be able to understand the offer without calculating a complicated conversion.

If your main product is bought infrequently, loyalty may still suit accessories or gifting. Check whether customers can realistically reach a reward within your expiry rules. A programme that requires years of normal shopping to unlock a small benefit will be difficult to explain convincingly.

Start with affiliates when people are ready to recommend you

An affiliate programme needs people willing to share your products with a relevant audience. Installing an app does not recruit those people for you. Start with a small group you can support: customers who already recommend your store, creators familiar with the products or partners whose audiences have a clear reason to care.

A fictional homeware store could invite a ceramic artist to recommend its mugs. The artist joins the affiliate programme and shares their tracked link. When a referred shopper makes an eligible purchase, the artist earns points according to the store’s rules. The store can then assess the referred orders and the reward cost.

Before inviting anyone, explain what counts as a qualifying purchase, when points become available and how to redeem them. Decide who will answer questions and review applications. A smaller programme with clear instructions is easier to learn from than a large list of people who never share a link.

Shoppable Reels add a way to recommend products

Shoppable Reels belong to the affiliate journey. Creators join your store’s affiliate programme, create Reels featuring its products and share their affiliate link on social media. Visitors watch the Reels and use product buttons to reach your Shopify product pages. Eligible referred purchases earn the creator points in their affiliate profile.

That is useful when seeing a product in use helps explain it, such as showing the size of a bag or how a ceramic cup looks on a breakfast table. The video supports the recommendation. Video views alone do not earn purchase rewards.

Ordinary customers can still earn loyalty points without filming anything. Affiliates can still use normal referral links. Introduce Reels to the people who want to create content, while keeping the other routes easy to understand.

If you run both, budget for the whole order

Running both can make sense when you have repeat customers and active recommenders. Keep the rules distinct, even if both programmes use a branded points name such as Stars. A shopper and an affiliate should each know which action earned their balance.

Consider a planning example, not a preset RewardMe offer: a £40 order leaves £16 after product and fulfilment costs, before rewards and app fees. If the reward costs allocated to that order are £2 for the affiliate and £1 for customer loyalty, £13 remains before other expenses. Add a £4 customer discount and that falls to £9. This is a simple budget illustration, not a profit forecast.

Use your own costs and distinguish points issued from rewards redeemed. Confirm whether and how your configuration awards both kinds of points on a referred order before advertising that experience. Also check discount combinations, returns, cancellations, point maturity and expiry. Do not promise behaviour you have not tested.

Use a small launch checklist

Pick one primary goal and one starting group. For loyalty, that might be helping existing buyers understand their next reward. For affiliates, it might be getting a few relevant partners through their first tracked purchase. Add the second programme once the first journey is clear enough to explain in a short message.

• Write one sentence explaining who earns points and which action qualifies.
• Choose rewards and thresholds using your actual margin and purchase frequency.
• Tell members where to see their balance and how to request a redemption.
• Test the intended purchase, tracking and redemption journey in an appropriate test setup.
• Check the handling of cancellations and returns against your published rules.
• Review current plan allowances and usage charges before expanding the programme.

Measure loyalty and affiliates separately

For loyalty, monitor second purchases, time between orders, reward redemptions and the cost of those rewards. Compare comparable customer groups and buying periods where possible. A growing points balance alone does not show that the programme is helping customers return.

For affiliates, look at how many approved partners actually share their links, the eligible orders attributed to them, returns and reward costs. An attributed order tells you which tracked referral received credit; it does not prove the sale would never have happened otherwise.

Use those observations to change one part of the programme at a time. If members do not understand redemption, improve the explanation before increasing the reward. If affiliates are inactive, ask what they need before recruiting more. RewardMe is free to test on your store, with plan allowances and usage charges shown on the Shopify App Store listing.

Common questions