Configuring Membership Eligibility Rules – SHOPLINE Help Center

Member System allows you to control exactly who can participate in your store’s membership program. You can choose to enroll all customers automatically, ensuring even visitors can participate and earn rewards, or you can restrict membership only to customers who are registered and have a valid email address.

By adjusting these rules, you can manage how customers join your membership program, encourage account registration, and better control the distribution of points and member benefits.

This guide explains how to configure participation rules and how changes may affect your customers’ points, tiers, and rewards.

How to Set Up Membership Eligibility

By default, your store is set to allow All customers to participate in the membership program. To change your eligibility strategy, follow these steps:

From your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Member System > Membership eligibility.

Select one of the following options:

All customers (recommended): All customers, including visitors, can participate in the membership program and earn rewards.

Registered customers with email only: Only customers who are registered and have a valid email address can participate. Visitors cannot earn new points or enjoy member benefits.

Notes:

Only customers who are registered and have a valid email address will be enrolled. Customers without an email address or without a registered account will not be included.
After switching to this option, any points previously earned by visitors will be retained. These points can only be used after the customer completes account registration. For more details, please refer to the Switching to "Registered Customers with Email Only" section.

Click Save, review the confirmation window, then click Switch now to confirm.

Notes:

After updating the setting, changes are processed asynchronously. Membership statuses and related data may not update immediately, and some customers may temporarily see outdated information.
Before switching the strategy, ensure you fully understand how the change will affect customer eligibility, points, tiers, and benefits to avoid unintended impact on operations or customer experience.

Understanding the Impact of Changing Strategies

When you switch your eligibility strategy, the system will automatically update customer membership statuses. It is important to understand how this affects their points, tiers, and rewards.

Switching to "Registered Customers with Email Only"

If you switch from allowing all customers to restricting access to registered users only:

Membership status changes: Customers without a registered account or a linked email address will immediately lose their membership status.
Member benefits changes: Affected customers will lose their VIP tier, stop earning points and store credits, and no longer have access to member-exclusive offers.
Points and rewards retention: Previously earned points, store credits, rewards, and gift cards will remain in the customer’s account:
- Store credits, rewards, and gift cards can be used after the customer completes account registration.
- Points can only be used after the customer joins the membership program.
Referral impact: Referral links remain valid and can still establish referral relationships, but no referral rewards will be issued to non-member customers.
Purchase-related impact:
- Purchasing paid membership products will not activate membership tiers.
- Purchasing gift card products will still issue gift cards as normal.
Notifications: Only notifications related to store credit refunds and gift cards will be sent. Other types of notifications will not be triggered.

Switching to "All Customers"

If you switch from a restricted strategy back to allowing all customers:

Eligibility restored: Previously excluded customers (such as visitors) will regain membership eligibility.
Automatic tier recalculation: VIP tiers will be recalculated automatically based on the customer’s historical orders.
No retroactive rewards: Points, referral rewards, or membership benefits that would have been earned during the excluded period will not be issued retroactively.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: Will customers whose tiers were manually adjusted or who purchased paid memberships be affected by strategy changes?

No. Customers whose tiers were manually adjusted (e.g., after membership migration) or who have purchased paid memberships will not be downgraded to non-members due to strategy changes.

Q2: Can I manually adjust points for customers who were excluded from the program?

Yes. While historical points are not retroactively issued by the system, you can manually adjust points, rewards, or store credits in the admin panel if you wish to compensate a customer.

Q3: Will customers be notified when their membership tier is lost due to a strategy change?

No. The system will process the tier downgrade, but it will not trigger a downgrade email notification to the customer.

Q4: Will customer data be deleted if they become ineligible for the membership program?

No. All existing data for all customers, including points balance, rewards, store credits, gift cards, and membership history, will be retained in the system.

However, while the customer is ineligible, new data (such as points or rewards) will not be generated based on system rules.