Add a loyalty program with Smile.io

Smile: Loyalty & Rewards runs your points, VIP tiers and referrals. This integration brings the whole programme into your mobile app — balances, rewards, tier progress and referral links, all live from the same Smile account your storefront uses.

Connecting gives you two things at once:

• Six loyalty screens, already built. Rewards, Earn points, Redeem rewards, My rewards, VIP status and Refer a friend appear in App Design the moment you connect. You do not create them, and you do not have to touch them before they work.

• A Loyalty section in the Sections Library. Blocks you can put on your own screens — a points summary on the Account screen, "earn X points" on a product, a referral banner wherever it fits.

Everything the customer sees is read from Smile. Points, rules, tiers and rewards stay yours to manage in Smile Admin; the builder only decides where they appear and how they look.

• Smile is installed in your Shopify store.

• Your Smile plan has an integration slot free. Smile limits them by plan: Free 0, Essential 1, Standard 2, Growth and above unlimited. On Free, the connection cannot be made at all.

• You can sign in to the right Smile account — the one this store's programme lives in. See step 1 for why that matters.

Smile is available on the Enterprise+ plan.

There is no API key. Smile uses a sign-in and approve flow.

1. From Shopify Admin, open Ego Mobile Builder.

2. Go to Integrations.

3. Open Smile: Loyalty & Rewards.

4. Click Connect Integration. You are taken to Smile to sign in and approve the access.

When you come back the card turns green and shows the Smile account it bound to. Check that id. Running the approval while signed into a different Smile account succeeds and looks identical to a correct connection — it only surfaces weeks later, as customers whose points are all wrong. If the id is not the account you use in Smile, disconnect, sign out of Smile, and connect again.

Open App Design. The loyalty screens are already there, already filled in:

• Rewards — the programme's home: balance, quick actions, the rewards menu.

• Earn points — every way a customer can earn.

• Redeem rewards — what the points buy.

• My rewards — what this customer has already claimed.

• VIP status — tier progress and perks.

• Refer a friend — the referral link, the banner and how it works.

Edit them like any other screen. Each has a fixed block it is built around — the rewards menu belongs to Rewards, the referral link to Refer a friend — so those cannot be dragged to another screen, but everything around them is yours.

You never have to save them for the app to work. An untouched loyalty screen serves its default; saving only stores your changes on top.

The loyalty screens are only worth building if customers find them. Put an entry point on a screen they already use.

1. Open the screen you want — Account is the usual one.

2. Open Sections Library and find the Loyalty category.

3. Drag the block in.

Worth knowing:

• Account screen — Loyalty Your Rewards or Loyalty Welcome Overview. One per screen; the first shows a customer who already has points, the second welcomes one who does not.

• Product screen — Loyalty Product Earn Points, the "buy this, earn that" line.

• Home or Account — Loyalty Complete Tasks, the list of ways to earn.

You can also point any menu item or button at a loyalty screen: the six screens become navigation destinations as soon as Smile is connected.

Blocks dropped in before connecting stay dimmed, and their configuration panel shows a Connect Smile card instead of settings.

The app can report four things customers do that your storefront cannot: installing the app, opting in to push notifications, completing their profile, and checking in daily.

Those four are already published to Smile for you. What is missing is the only part Smile will not let anyone else set: how many points each one is worth. Until you create the earning rule, the action is recorded and awards nothing — and nothing anywhere reports an error.

In Smile Admin:

1. Go to Earning → Add a way to earn.

2. Under Smile Apps, pick the action: App Install, Check in App, Push Optin or Profile Complete.

3. Set the points and the earning limit, then save.

Back on the integration screen, the In-app activity points panel checks your Smile rules and warns you about any of the four with no rule yet. It matches on the rule's name, so if you renamed one in Smile Admin you can ignore the warning for it.

On the same panel, Tier reminder threshold (%) decides when a customer is nudged about the next VIP tier — set 80 and they hear from you once they are 80% of the way there. Leave it empty to turn these reminders off.

Click Save on the panel when you change it.

Before publishing, check with a real customer account that has points — an empty account hides most of what you just arranged.

1. Open each loyalty screen in the preview and check nothing is cut off at phone width.

2. Click Save.

3. Test on a device with Ego Live Preview: open the programme from your entry point, redeem something small, check the balance moves.

4. Click Publish to make the changes available in your app.

Connect fails, or Smile refuses the connection

Usually no integration slot. Smile allows none on Free, one on Essential, two on Standard. Check what else is connected in Smile, or upgrade there.

Points are wrong for every customer

Check the Smile account id on the integration screen. If it is not the account your programme lives in, the approval was run while signed into the wrong one — disconnect and connect again.

In-app actions award no points

No earning rule exists for them in Smile. Create one per action under Earning → Add a way to earn → Smile Apps. Nothing fails loudly when the rule is missing — the action is simply worth zero.

The warning lists an action I already set up

The check matches rules by name. If you renamed the rule in Smile Admin, the warning is wrong and can be ignored.

The loyalty blocks are greyed out in the editor

Smile is not connected. The configuration panel of a dimmed block links straight to the integration.

The loyalty screens disappeared

The integration was disconnected. Your edits are not deleted — reconnect and the screens come back as you left them.

I cannot find Smile under Integrations

It is available on the Enterprise+ plan. Check your plan under Pricing, or contact support.

1. Is this a second loyalty programme?
No. It is the same Smile programme as your storefront, shown in the app. Points earned in either place are the same balance.

2. Do I have to build the loyalty screens?
No. All six exist and work the moment you connect. Edit them only if you want to.

3. Can I change points or rewards from the builder?
No. Rules, tiers and rewards are managed in Smile Admin and read by the app.

4. Can customers redeem rewards in the app?
Yes — the Redeem rewards screen does exactly that, against the same balance.

5. What happens to my edits if I disconnect?
They are kept. Disconnecting hides the loyalty screens and blocks; reconnecting restores them unchanged.

6. Can I use the loyalty blocks without the loyalty screens?
Yes, but think twice: a points summary with nowhere to tap is a dead end. Give it a destination.