4. Invite Your Customers

After completing the onboarding flow, your loyalty program is set up. Once you enable your cashback earning rule, it becomes active. The next step is inviting your customers to join.

Crowny offers multiple ways to invite your customers into your loyalty program. Each method is designed for a different situation, from fully automated onboarding after a purchase to manual invitations for specific audiences.

This article explains the available invitation methods, when to use them, and what to keep in mind when sharing invitations.

Important
The cashback rule controls whether your loyalty program is active. If it’s paused, your program is inactive. Customers won’t be able to earn points through any earning rules, and invitations (automatic or manual) will not work.

When your loyalty program is active, Crowny’s email module becomes active automatically. From that moment on, customers who complete a purchase in your store will receive a post-purchase email, inviting them to join your loyalty program. 

“You received points. Claim your points and browse what deals you can get.”

Through this email, customers can:

This method requires no work from you. It is the easiest way to steadily grow a high-quality member base over time. It also ensures you only invite members who actually spend money in your store.

In addition to our automated emails, you can actively invite customers using Custom Actions in the Crowny Portal. 

Custom Actions allow you to create QR-code invitations that you can share however you like. You can generate a QR code that lets customers join your loyalty program when they scan it.

These invitations are useful when you want to onboard:

You control how and where these invitations are distributed.

Custom Actions are not limited to invitations only. You can also create a custom action that awards a fixed number of points when someone scans a QR code. This makes point-based QR codes a powerful tool for promotions, events, or campaigns. If the person scanning the QR code is not yet a member, Crowny will first invite them to join the program before applying the reward or tier.

Custom Actions can also be used to grant customers a specific loyalty tier. This is especially useful when you want to onboard long-time customers into a higher tier immediately, for example. This allows you to tailor the starting experience for different groups of customers. Discover our best practices on how to use manual tier invitations. 

Each invitation QR code also has an underlying URL. We do not recommend this, but you can extract this URL using a verified QR-to-URL converter and include it in emails or other digital channels. When doing so, it’s important to be careful with how the link is shared.

Some platforms, such as messaging apps or social media platforms, open links in an in-app browser by default. In these cases, Crowny’s verification mechanics may not work as expected. Even on platforms without in-app browsers, it is possible that the link won’t work as expected. For example, the link might get shortened automatically. In this case, the link might not work anymore. 

To avoid issues:

In any case, be sure to ALWAYS TEST whether the link works the way you want it to, on the platform where you plan on sharing it. If you’ve set a usage cap on the QR code or link, make sure to account for your test scan or click.

In the next article, we’ll explain how program visibility and activation work, and what happens once you enable your cashback rule.