Membership Programs
How to create and configure a membership program in Angle — enrollment qualifiers, eligibility periods, customer exclusions, and notifications.
A membership program is the top-level container for your loyalty experience. It defines who qualifies, how they qualify, and how long they keep their status. Every tier, reward, and wallet pass lives inside a membership.
Creating a Membership Program
Open the Angle app
Navigate to Membership in the Angle app sidebar and click Create membership program.
Set the program name
Enter a customer-facing name that appears on wallet passes, account pages, checkout, and marketing emails. Choose something that reflects your brand identity rather than generic loyalty language.
Examples from Angle brands:
- "The Oak Society" (Silver Oak)
- "Pack Perks™" (Ruffwear)
- "The Cellar Society" (wine brand pattern)
Choose your enrollment qualifier
This is the most important decision in your program design. It determines how customers qualify for tiers and applies globally — you cannot mix models across tiers.
| Qualifier | How It Works | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Spend-based | Customers are automatically placed into tiers based on cumulative qualifying spend. | Most brands. Straightforward, self-service, scales automatically. |
| Tag-based | Customers are enrolled when specific Shopify customer tags are added to their profile — manually or via Shopify Flow. | Employee programs, invite-only programs, subscription-gated tiers. |
Set the tier eligibility period
This setting only applies to spend-based programs. It determines how long customers retain their tier status after qualifying.
| Period | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Calendar year | Qualify in any month → keep the tier through end of the next calendar year. |
| Rolling year | Tier lasts exactly 12 months from the date of qualification. |
| Lifetime | Once qualified, customers keep their tier permanently. |
Save
Click Save. Do not activate yet — configure tiers, rewards, and wallet passes first.
Customer Exclusions
You can exclude specific customers from the membership using Shopify customer tags. Navigate to the Exclude customers section and:
- Enter one or more customer tags (e.g., "Employee", "wholesale", "angle_upload")
- Choose whether to exclude customers matching any of the specified tags or all of them
This is useful for keeping employee accounts, wholesale partners, or test accounts out of your customer-facing loyalty program.
Notifications
Toggle Send store credit emails to have Shopify automatically send its built-in email notification whenever credit is added to a customer's account. This is separate from Klaviyo flows — it's a simple transactional email from Shopify.
For most brands, it's better to control credit notifications through Klaviyo flows (using the "Store Credit Earned" trigger) rather than Shopify's default email. This gives you full design control and lets you include tier context, balance totals, and CTAs.
Running Multiple Programs
You can run more than one membership program simultaneously. This enables:
- Separate customer and employee programs — one spend-based for customers, one tag-based for staff
- Different currencies across stores — each Shopify store instance runs its own Angle installation and membership program
- Testing a new program structure while keeping an existing one live
Each program has its own tiers, rewards, wallet passes, and eligibility settings. Customers can only belong to one tier within each program, but could theoretically be enrolled in multiple programs if they qualify for both.