Q1 at Influence has been all about refining how you manage loyalty, improving visibility, and making it easier for customers to engage with your programs. 

From smarter segmentation to clearer status updates, these improvements give you more control while streamlining customer interactions.

Want to see how these loyalty enhancements can work for your business? Book a demo today and explore the latest features in action.

Here’s everything we introduced in the first quarter of the year.

Better Visibility: Clearer Program Status Indicators

Understanding whether your loyalty program is active or inactive should be simple. To make this clearer, we updated how the status of disabled programs is displayed:

• A red status indicator replaces the previous grey label, making inactive programs easier to spot.
• If individual loyalty rules (like "Place an Order" for earning points) are inactive, they now appear greyed out to reduce confusion.

This small but impactful change helps you quickly assess the state of your loyalty program at a glance.

Reversing Redeemed Rewards & Refunding Points is Now Easier

When customers change their minds after redeeming a reward, handling adjustments manually can be time-consuming. 

This update makes it possible to reverse a redeemed reward directly from the dashboard, deactivating the voucher in Shopify and refunding the customer’s points automatically.

This is particularly useful when:

• A customer redeems a discount but then removes the item from their cart.
• Someone mistakenly applies a reward to the wrong product and wants to correct it.
• You need to quickly resolve a refund request without extra manual steps.
  

Now, customers can easily adjust their purchases without losing their rewards, while merchants save time on manual corrections.

Smoother Referral Journeys with Smart Navigation

Referrals only work when they’re easy to complete. To streamline the process, we’ve introduced automatic scrolling to the referral widget when a friend clicks a referral link.

This means:

• Referees land directly at the referral section instead of searching for it.
• The process is more intuitive, leading to fewer drop-offs.
• More referrals are successfully completed, increasing the likelihood of new customer acquisitions.
  

By reducing friction in the referral process, this update makes it easier for customers to share and redeem rewards.

New Homepage Program Status Overview 

To help you stay on top of your loyalty setup, we’ve added a Program Status section to your Influence homepage. 

This gives you a real-time overview of:

• Which programs are currently active.
• Features you haven’t activated yet that could enhance your loyalty offering.
• Quick links to each program for easy management and adjustments.

This update makes it easier to assess your loyalty setup at a glance and ensures you’re making full use of the available features.

Prevent Reward Eligibility Issues with Tier Warnings

Loyalty tiers should function exactly as intended, without accidental restrictions. With this update, merchants will now receive a warning if a specific tier is blocked from earning points.

This helps prevent:

• Accidental exclusions that could lead to customer confusion.
• Unintentional loyalty rule settings that stop customers from benefiting from rewards.
• Support issues caused by unclear reward eligibility.
  

With clearer alerts, you can proactively check and update your settings to ensure every customer gets the experience they expect.

Influence x Dotdigital Integration

We’re excited to announce our new Dotdigital integration, designed to help you create smarter, more personalized email marketing campaigns using customer loyalty data.

With this integration, you can:

• Personalize email content with real-time loyalty data, including point balances and tier levels.
• Encourage engagement by sending targeted nudges to remind customers to redeem their points.
• Segment your audience based on loyalty tiers for tailored promotions and exclusive offers.
• Automate loyalty-driven messaging within Dotdigital, reducing manual effort while increasing retention.
  

By syncing loyalty insights with your email marketing, you can drive higher engagement, boost repeat purchases, and create more impactful customer experiences.

Introducing Memberships: Loyalty That Adapts to Your Customers

Loyalty programs work best when they reflect the unique needs of different customer groups. 

With Memberships, you can now segment customers into tailored groups and assign them custom loyalty rules, rewards, and perks.

This update allows you to:

• Define exclusive loyalty benefits for specific segments, such as VIP customers, wholesale buyers, or first-time shoppers.
• Automatically assign customers to groups using Shopify Flow, API integrations, or manual updates.
• Offer perks like exclusive product access, early sales, or special discounts based on group membership.

By moving beyond a one-size-fits-all model, Memberships ensure your loyalty program resonates with different types of customers.

Coming Soon in Q2: Memberships 1.5

Building on this, Memberships 1.5 is set to launch in Q2, introducing subscription-based loyalty and self-service enrollment.

With this update, merchants will be able to:

• Automate membership assignments based on active subscriptions (via Loop Subscriptions, Skio & Recharge).
• Enable self-service enrollment, allowing customers to subscribe to memberships independently.
• Unlock site-wide discounts for members, ensuring perks are seamlessly applied at checkout.
  

These enhancements will make it even easier to offer exclusive, recurring loyalty experiences while reducing manual management. More details coming soon!

Final Thoughts

Loyalty programs should evolve alongside your business, and that’s exactly why we’re continuously improving Influence. 

Q1’s updates have focused on greater flexibility, clearer insights, and a better experience for both merchants and customers - and there’s even more to come.

‍Book a demo to get started with Influence today!