Set up a pet birthday reward

Pet owners celebrate their pets’ birthdays, and a reward that arrives in time to order a treat is a reason to come back. With Celebrate a pet’s birthday, customers add their pets on your storefront and Charm issues a reward for each pet every year, with bonus points or a discount code.

Steps

Go to Program → Earning points and click Add way to earn.
Choose Celebrate a pet’s birthday (under For your industry).
Pick the Pet birthday reward: Bonus points (200 by default), Free product, Amount off, Percentage off or Free shipping.
(Discount rewards only) Limit how long the reward is valid is on by default, with Days the discount code stays valid set to 7, counted from the pet’s birthday. Turn it off for a code that doesn’t expire.
Send the reward before the birthday is on by default, with Days before the birthday the reward is issued set to 14 (up to 60). Turn it off to issue the reward on the day itself.
Pet must be on file in advance is on by default, with Days the pet must be on file before the reward is issued set to 30. Turn it off to reward pets added at the last minute.
Under Which animals can customers add?, untick any animal you don’t want to offer. All nine are ticked by default: Dog, Cat, Rabbit, Bird, Fish, Small pet, Reptile, Horse and Other. Tick just one (say, Dog for a dog shop) and customers aren’t asked at all: every pet is that animal.
Set Pets per customer (1 to 10, default 2).
Click Add, then Save.

How the reward works

One reward per pet. Charm checks pet birthdays daily. A customer with two pets gets two rewards a year, each with its own email.
Pets per customer is also the reward limit. Nobody can check how many pets a customer really has, so the number of pets they can add is also the most pet rewards they can collect in a year. If you lower it later, customers who already have more pets still get only that many rewards a year. Removing a pet that was already rewarded this year and adding another doesn’t unlock a second reward that year.
The head start moves the reward, not the code’s validity. With Send the reward before the birthday on, the reward and its email go out that many days early, and the code’s validity still counts from the birthday. With a 14-day head start and 7 days’ validity, the code works until 7 days after the birthday.
The waiting period counts to the day the reward is issued. With a 14-day head start and a 30-day waiting period, a pet has to be added 44 days before its birthday to be rewarded this year. Pets that are imported or added by your staff don’t wait.
Leap days. A pet born on 29 February is celebrated on 28 February in years without a 29th.

Adding and editing pets

Customers add pets themselves from the rule’s card on the floating widget, the Loyalty Hub or the landing page. Each pet needs a name and a full birthday, year included; when you offer more than one animal, customers can also say which one it is. In the Loyalty Hub and on the landing page, customers tap a pet to open its form. They can fix a pet’s name or animal at any time, but once a birthday is saved it can’t be changed again for a year. The form tells them when it unlocks, or to contact you. Remove sits at the bottom of the form and asks to confirm before it deletes the pet’s name and birthday, which frees a place for a new pet. The floating widget only adds pets; editing and removing happen in the Loyalty Hub and on the landing page.

Your staff can help too, for example with a wrong date. Go to Customers, open the customer, and click Edit next to Pets. Pick a pet to change it and click Save pet, click Add pet to add another, or click Remove to take a pet off. Staff edits skip the once-a-year limit on changing a birthday, and staff can add more pets than Pets per customer allows, though the customer still earns at most that many pet rewards a year. The Pets row appears once your store has a pet birthday rule.

What customers see

Floating widget: a “Your pets” card on the widget’s main view lists each pet with an icon for its animal, its name and its birthday. Among the ways to earn, Celebrate a pet’s birthday has an “Add a pet” link that opens a short form. Visitors who aren’t signed in see the reward only.
Loyalty Hub: a “Your pets” section right under the balance summary, with a tile per pet showing its icon, name, birthday and when the reward arrives, for example “Your reward in 12 days, ahead of the birthday”. A pet added too late for this year’s reward shows “Added recently, so the first reward arrives next year.” instead, and when the customer has already collected this year’s pet rewards, the line says the next one arrives next year. The rule’s card links to “Add a pet”, which turns into “Manage pets” once a pet is saved.
Landing page: the same “Your pets” tiles above your ways to earn, and the same add or manage button on the rule’s card.
Email: the Pet Birthday Reward email goes out with each reward, so with a head start it arrives before the birthday. A discount reward shows the code in the email, ready to copy. Bonus points appear in the customer’s points history named after the pet’s birthday, in the customer’s language. Find it in Emails under Pet birthday to edit it or turn it off.

VIP tiers and inactive customers

With a Bonus points reward, Use different values for each tier pays each VIP tier a different number of points. See per-tier rule values.
You can hide the rule from some tiers with per-tier availability.
Pause recurring rewards for inactive customers in your points expiry settings also skips pet rewards for customers whose points have expired for inactivity.