🚀 Feature availability
VIP Tiers are available starting from the Growth plan.
VIP programs are powerful customer retention tools, emphasizing exclusivity to encourage shoppers to spend more with your brand. They help achieve a higher customer lifetime value, particularly from your most loyal audience. This makes VIP programs an ideal strategy for boosting engagement and loyalty.
How do VIP Tiers work?
When customers reach the milestone you've set for your program, they are automatically assigned a Tier. You can configure settings to send them email notifications upon tier achievement and even provide rewards.
Customers can view their tiers in the Rewards widget on the storefront. Here, they learn about the benefits they receive from each tier and what actions they need to take to reach the next tier.
VIP Tiers enrollment
Before you start setting up the VIP Tiers, in the Growave admin panel, go to Rewards → Settings → VIP Tier program status → VIP Tier enrollment. Here, you can configure when customers are enrolled in the VIP Tiers program:
There are four options:
1. Look up activity from the first order
Activity tracking starts from the customer's first order. All consequent orders and other rewardable activities in the shop will be considered in the customer's status calculation.
⚠️ Important
Only activity after the first order is counted toward tier progress. If you select Earn points as a tier enrollment milestone, any points earned before the first order, including for referrals, reviews, or other non-order actions, will not be included in tier progress but will still appear in the customer's points balance.
To include earlier earned points in tier progress, set a Specific date for tier enrollment in your VIP Tiers settings (for example, the date you installed Growave or enabled tiers) and then run a tier recalculation.
2. Current year
This option tracks the customer's activity starting from January 1st of the current year. For example, if it is July 2025, it will consider activity from January 1, 2025.
3. Update tier progress based on recent activity
This enrollment option uses a rolling (moving) activity window to evaluate VIP progress dynamically. Instead of fixed dates, Growave continuously tracks each customer’s qualifying actions within the most recent X-day period (for example, 365 days). The window shifts forward every day, adding new actions and removing older ones, so VIP status always reflects recent engagement.
How it works
When the setting is first activated, Growave immediately looks back over the chosen period (for example, the last 365 days) and counts all qualifying actions that meet your selected VIP tier milestone, such as Purchases made, Spent amount, Earned points, or Referrals completed:
If the milestone is met, the customer joins the appropriate tier.
If the milestone is not met, the customer stays in the default tier (no tier).
Each following day, the system:
Slides the activity window forward by one day.
Removes any qualifying actions older than X days (they “fall out” of the window).
Adds any new actions completed today.
Re-evaluates whether the customer still meets the milestone:
Tier behavior
Customers remain in their tier as long as the qualifying actions inside the current window still meet the milestone threshold, even if no new activity occurs.
If older actions expire and the total remaining inside the window drops below the milestone, the customer is automatically downgraded to a lower or default tier.
When a customer performs new qualifying actions within the window, they can regain their previous tier or move up to a higher one instantly.
4. Specific date
Allows you to specify a date, which will serve as the starting point for tracking customer's activity and calculating their tier status.
VIP Tier rewarding
You can customize the frequency of rewards for reaching a specific VIP tier:
Reward only once: The reward for a tier is issued only once. If a user achieves the same tier again, they will not receive the reward.
Reward on every tier update: The reward for a tier is issued each time the user achieves the tier, regardless of how many times they reach it.
Setting up VIP Tiers
To set up and start running your VIP Tiers, go to the Growave admin panel → Rewards → VIP Tiers:
You can create as many VIP tiers as you want. Common examples include Gold, Silver, and Bronze, but you can use any names that come to mind.
Additionally, you can add a short description to give customers a better understanding of each tier. There is also an option to upload images, allowing for creative customization of your tiers.
Selecting milestone
After setting the starting point for tracking customer activities in the VIP Tier enrollment section, select the condition for achieving a tier — a milestone. You can choose one of the following milestones to create VIP Tiers:
Earn points
Purchases made
Spent amount
Customer tag
Referrals completed
⚠️ Important
If you've been using Growave's Rewards program without VIP Tiers and then enabled this feature, customers who meet all criteria (milestone achievement and enrollment settings) will be assigned to the respective tier and receive only one reward for that tier. They won't receive rewards for lower tiers, if any.
‼️ Warning
The milestone for earning a tier can be chosen only once when you create the first tier. You will not be able to select another milestone for subsequent tiers you create. If you need to change the milestone, you must delete all existing tiers and create new ones, which will result in the loss of customers' earned and multiplied points.
Earn points
Customers earn tiers based on the total points accumulated through shop activity. For example, a member gets the Bronze tier for earning 6000 points.
⚠️ Important
Points are excluded from tier calculation when:
The customer's Points balance is manually changed
Points are imported
Points are spent on a discount
The discount is refunded
If points are awarded for an order that is then refunded, the points will be deducted, affecting the VIP Tier status.
Purchases made
This milestone rewards customers based on the number of purchases they make. For example, a member who makes 10 purchases will achieve the Bronze tier.
Spent amount
This milestone rewards customers based on the total amount they spend on your site. For example, a member who spends $150 will achieve the Bronze tier.
Customer tag
This milestone determines VIP tiers based on the tags a customer has. If a customer qualifies for multiple VIP tiers due to having several relevant tags, they will receive the tier that was created first.
✅ Example
Suppose you have three VIP tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold, which were created in that order. You assign tags to each tier: order-tag, customer-tag, and product-tag. A customer named Alex has the following tags: order-tag, customer-tag, and product-tag.
According to the Customer tag rule, Alex qualifies for all three tiers. However, because the Bronze tier was created first, Alex will receive the Bronze tier.
⚠️ Important
If a tag is used in the Rewards eligibility settings to either allow or forbid participation in the Rewards program, it will not be available for use in the Customer tag milestone to assign VIP tiers.
Referrals completed
This milestone determines a customer's VIP tier based on the number of successful referrals they have made. The program evaluates referral metrics, and a validated referral can help a customer advance to a higher tier, provided they meet the enrollment criteria for that tier.
Setting up default tier
You can configure a default tier to automatically assign to users who have not yet made sufficient progress to achieve higher tiers. Users in the default tier will continue participating in the loyalty program and will advance to higher tiers as they meet the required progress criteria:
Adding points multiplier
The points multiplier function of VIP tiers increases the number of points users receive after reaching a tier. For example, without a VIP tier, a user may receive 100 points for leaving a review. If you set a multiplier of 2 for a certain tier, a customer in that tier will receive 200 points for leaving a review. Customers in higher VIP tiers benefit from these point multipliers, allowing them to accumulate points faster and enabling more frequent redemptions, while the redemption rules remain consistent for all tiers.
📗 Note
You can set up the points multiplier in every tier. If a Boost campaign and/or Birthday point multiplier is active at the same time, only one multiplier will apply with the following priority order:
Birthday point multiplier
Boost campaign multiplier
VIP Tier multiplier
Adding a tag to members when achieving a tier
You can enable an option to automatically assign a tag to customers when they achieve a specific tier (available for all milestones except for the Customer tag milestone). This tag can be used for audience segmentation and automation in tools like Shopify Flow, Klaviyo, Gorgias, or other apps integrated with Growave.
Selecting entry reward
You also can choose points, discounts (fixed amount, percentage discount, free shipping), gift cards, or free products to reward your customer for achieving the tier. Or choose to assign no rewards at all.
⚠️ Important
You can assign only one reward per tier. If you update the reward option, previously assigned but unused rewards will be removed (except for points).
Learn more about rewarding customers for reaching VIP tiers.
Perks for VIP Tiers
🚀 Feature availability
Perks are available for Growave 2.0 users (who joined our app after January 22, 2024) starting from the Growth plan.
In the VIP Tiers section of the admin panel, you can offer additional rewards to your top customers with the Perks feature. Located at the bottom of each tier editing page, this section allows you to define up to five extra perks outside of the loyalty program.
Enter the custom perks that your customers will receive. These perks are fully managed by the shop owner, providing flexibility in what you offer.
VIP iter members can find their perks in the respective sections of the Rewards popup widget and Rewards page:
Key features:
Add up to 5 perks per VIP tier
Customize perks to fit your business needs
Multilingual support for perks in various languages
This feature enables you to enhance customer loyalty by offering exclusive rewards to your VIP members.
Tracking VIP Tiers activity
You can monitor VIP Tier activity to see which customers have achieved specific tiers, when they achieved certain tiers, and what is the average order value (AOV) within the VIP Tiers program. To view this information, go to Analytics → Rewards tab → VIP Tiers.
🚀 Feature availability
Extended VIP Tiers statistics are available for Growave 2.0 users.
Changing VIP Tiers settings
When you update your VIP Tier rules, Growave requires you to manually launch a recalculation to apply changes across your customer base. Here’s what to expect:
1. A recalculation prompt will appear
Click Start recalculation. This triggers a full recalculation of VIP tier eligibility for your customers.
2. Customers will be reassigned based on the new tier rules
Customers who no longer meet the updated tier criteria will be downgraded or removed from the VIP Tiers program.
Customers who now qualify will be assigned to the appropriate tier — either higher or lower.
This includes customers who were not previously in any tier but now meet the new rules.
3. Tier Unlocked emails will not be resent automatically
To prevent mass email sends and avoid deliverability issues, Growave does not resend the “Tier Unlocked” notification after recalculation, even if customers are upgraded or newly assigned a tier.
⚠️ Important
Recalculation is a resource-intensive process and can only be launched once per hour.
Processing time may vary depending on the size of your customer base.
Avoid changing tier settings after launching recalculation, as those changes won’t apply until the next run.
Attempting to start a new recalculation within 60 minutes will result in an error message.
For any questions or requests regarding the VIP Tiers program, please contact us at [email protected] or use the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of the Growave admin panel. We're here to help! 🤗