Recharge Loyalty: Cash-back programs overview

Cash-back programs enable you to schedule cash-back promotions that automatically issue credits to your customers. Taking the manual work out of issuing credits, you can provide a seamless rewards experience for acquisition and retention strategies.

This article provides an overview of how cash-back programs work and the steps for creating and managing your programs. 

Before you start

• Percentage-based cash back is calculated based on a new checkout and/or a recurring subscription order’s subtotal (before shipping and taxes).
  • For example, if a customer’s order’s subtotal is $100 (before shipping and taxes) and qualifies for 10% cash back, they will receive $10 in reward credits.
• You must have Recharge Loyalty enabled to offer cash-back programs to customers. 

How it works

Cash-back programs are automatically enabled if you have Recharge Loyalty. Create programs to automate credit issuance and create promotional or incentive offers for your customers.

Cash-back programs support the following capabilities:

• Automatic Recharge Credit issuance - Instead of manually issuing credit, Cash-back programs allow you to automate the credit issuance process for checkout and recurring subscription orders. Prepaid subscriptions function differently for cash-back programs. See Prepaid subscriptions for more details.
• Concurrent Cash-back Programs - You can run multiple cash-back programs simultaneously, providing increased flexibility for customer segmentation, product promotion, incentive variation, and Recharge multi-product compatibility.
• Reward maximum cash back for eligible customers - Cash-back programs are designed to maximize customer engagement. Customers eligible for multiple cash-back -rograms are rewarded with the highest possible cash back amount. This approach boosts customer retention, supports Recharge’s multi-product compatibility, and self-resolves cash-back program conflicts.
• Seasonal and Event scheduling - You can create campaigns with cash-back program scheduling. Campaigns have start and end dates, enabling you to develop customer promotional offers.
• Segmentation with customer tags - You can filter customer eligibility for your cash-back programs using Shopify customer tags.

Prepaid subscriptions

Prepaid subscriptions have an upfront cost, followed by $0 recurring shipments. This recurring order structure causes percentage-based and fixed-amount programs to behave differently:

• Percentage-based programs - With percentage-based programs, reward credits accumulate for customers after their initial order or prepaid renewal but will not apply to future $0 recurring charges. This is because percentage-based programs rely on the subtotal to calculate and use credits, so for a $0 charge, it would result in a $0 reward credit.
• Fixed-amount programs - Fixed-amount programs do not calculate reward credits using the order subtotal. This program will calculate and apply reward credits for initial orders, $0 recurring orders, and renewal orders.

Create cash-back programs

You can create cash-back programs from the Credits section of the Recharge merchant portal. Use the following steps to create a cash-back Program:

1. From the merchant portal, click Loyalty and select cash-back promotions.
2. Click Create program and enter a Program name. Program names are for internal reference only.
   
3. Click the drop-down menu and choose either % Percentage amount or $ Fixed amount.
4. Enter an amount.
5. Optional - Choose a start date and time using the When is this program active? section. Choosing Default sets the start date and time to the present.
6. Optional - Check Set end date to set a specific date and time for the program to end.
7. Optional - Enter a Shopify Customer tag to segment which customers are eligible for the program.
8. Optional - Set the STATUS of the program. The default status is Inactive.
   
   • Active Programs will automatically issue reward credits to customers for all eligible purchases.
9. Click Save program.

Manage cash-back programs

Once you have created cash-back programs, you can manage them in the Credits section of the Recharge merchant portal. Managing cash-back programs includes deactivating or reactivating and permanently deleting a program. Use the following steps to manage cash-back programs:

1. From the merchant portal, click Loyalty and select cash-back promotions​​.
2. Click the ellipsis and select an action:
   • Deactivate
   • Reactivate
   • Permanently delete - cash-back programs can only be deleted if inactive.
3. Confirm your action using the pop-up modal.