Turning Purchases into Partnerships: Transforming Customer Loyalty in E-Commerce

Every e-commerce business knows the struggle: customers buy once and disappear. In this case study, we reveal how a fashion store turned that challenge into an opportunity with Smile.io.

Executive Summary

As a fashion e-commerce company, our client failed to create loyal customers or achieve repeat sales despite the product quality and user experience. What the store lacked was a systemic e-commerce loyalty program, which is commonly used by online businesses today to achieve long-term loyalty. As an e-commerce development company, we fulfilled their requirement by integrating Shopify with the loyalty platform, Smile.io. The implementation created a loyalty engine that incentivized purchases, referrals, and engagement.

Challenges

Here are the challenges the fashion store faced before integrating Shopify with point reward systems. High churn rate Customers who have purchased once did not return again, showcasing the absence of loyal customers and a high churn rate. The lack of repeat purchases indicated the need for a loyalty program. Rising Customer Acquisition Costs Running paid ads and influencer marketing repeatedly to bring new customers was expensive. So the store wanted to retain the existing customers more. Manual and generic rewards They tried providing discounts and rewards manually, which led to errors, inefficiencies, and poor customer experiences. Limited Customer Engagement Without gamification or rewards, customers have little incentive to interact beyond purchases. Difficulty in encouraging more spending The e-commerce business struggled to encourage customers to spend more per order or buy complementary products.

The Solution

As a solution, SayOne integrated Smile.io directly into their Shopify store to automate and scale loyalty initiatives. The program included:

Points system The integration added a point system where customers earned points for purchases, reviews, and referrals. Tiered rewards The rewards were provided in different levels extending up to VIP status, which encouraged higher spending. Referral incentives After the integration of Shopify with Smile.io, the store offered incentives or discounts for customers, bringing in new buyers.

During the integration process, we experienced the following challenges:-

Historical data migration The client had partial records from a previous manual system. CSV imports required multiple iterations due to formatting mismatches and validation errors. As a result, we coordinated closely with Smile support to clean and re-upload. Email automation deliverability Shopify Flow’s transactional tagging initially affected open rates for VIP welcome emails. We proactively migrated these to Klaviyo using dynamic Smile tags, improving segmentation and performance.

Results

Within six months of integration, the integration generated the following outcomes:- Repeat purchase rate Repeat purchase rate rose by 28%, from 6% before the integration to 34% six months after the integration. Average order value Average spend per transaction grew by 15% by introducing a point system and tiered rewards. Referral-driven sales By offering referral incentives, the Shopify store gained more sales, accounting 12% of total revenue. Customer satisfaction Reward point systems and personalized dashboards led to higher customer satisfaction, increasing from 78% to 91%. Program adoption Over 65% of active customers enrolled in the loyalty program as they enjoyed the additional benefits apart from the product quality that the store offered.

Key Learnings

A full data audit should be conducted before the migration begins, and dedicated time should be provided for data migration. Integrating points balance tags into Klaviyo flows during the Shopify-Smile integration helps promote rewards through personalized campaigns from day one.

Looking Ahead

With the success of increasing repeat purchases and improving customer loyalty with Smile rewards, the e-commerce store is now planning to reduce product returns by integrating an AI virtual try-on tool to their e-commerce store platform.

Contact us today!