Follow one customer through a year and you can see exactly where a store's repeat revenue comes from. Not from a campaign - from nine or ten small automated moments, most of which the customer would not describe as marketing at all. Here is that year, in order, with the mechanism behind each moment, because the sequence is the product.
Month One: Everything Before the Second Order
She buys once as a guest. Within a minute of the order being paid, MYLO has calculated what it would have earned and set it aside, and after a short delay - long enough that someone joining during checkout is not pestered - a message goes out with the points figure, the order number, the hours remaining and a one-click registration link. She joins two days later from her phone, with a one-time code instead of a password, and the points land automatically, matched by email, phone or the link itself. She has not yet made a second purchase and she already has a balance she did not expect.
The joining rewards fire at the same moment: joining points, a welcome coupon, free shipping or a free gift, whichever are switched on, with the code carried in the welcome SMS or email. On Shopify her tier and balance are written to her customer record. Two weeks after the first order was fulfilled, a review invitation arrives on a personal link that works once and expires - she leaves a review with a photo, which pays more points than a review without one, and it publishes on the product page with a Verified Purchase badge.
None of these moments is a campaign. Each one is a reaction to something the customer already did, which is why they land and a broadcast does not.
Month Four: The Reminder, Not the Discount
She comes back in April with a full cart and, as usual, forgets the points entirely. At checkout the redemption reminder asks whether she wants to use them first. She does. The discount code is applied straight to the cart rather than emailed, and before it is issued MYLO checks whether a non-stackable discount is already applied and tells her before deducting anything. Nothing here is a promotion - the store did not discount anything it was not already committed to. The workflow simply made sure the reward she had already earned turned into a use of it, which is the moment a points balance stops being a marketing promise.
Revenue contribution by loyalty mechanic, compounding over 12 months.
Months Six to Nine: The Three Quiet Ones
- The promotion she did not apply for - her third order crosses the spend threshold, so she is promoted immediately, the tier's upgrade coupon and points fire, a congratulations message goes out, and on Shopify the tier's automatic club discount and free shipping start applying at checkout with nothing to type.
- The birthday that arrives on time - a coupon and points on the day, at the hour the store set, once a year and never twice, valid either that day or through the month depending on how it was configured. She did not tell the store it was her birthday for this purpose; she added the date to the popup months earlier for the points.
- The deadline she was given notice of - her oldest points approach expiry, so a warning goes out in advance with a table of exactly which points expire on which date. She spends them. Had they simply vanished, she would have found out by noticing, which is how a loyal customer becomes a complaint.
Look at what those three have in common: each is triggered by the customer's own history rather than by the calendar of a marketing team, and each produces an order at a moment when a broadcast email would have been ignored. The refund case works the same way in reverse - if she returns something, the points earned on the refunded amount come back out automatically, proportionally on a partial refund, and if she had already spent them MYLO settles the difference against her unused coupons instead of leaving a negative balance.
Month Eleven: The One Workflow That Is Not Automatic
In October she goes quiet. No order, no visit, and nothing in the automated sequence is triggered by absence. This is the point where a person has to do something - but the targeting is precise rather than a blast. An SMS campaign can be aimed at a specific tier, at everyone above a balance threshold, or at exactly those members who have never redeemed a single point. Every link is shortened and tracked, so the report afterwards shows sent, delivered, clicked, ordered, the revenue attributed and the top customers it brought back.
Add up her year: one guest order, a retroactive credit, a welcome bundle, a photo review, a reminder-driven redemption, a tier promotion, a birthday coupon, an expiry-driven purchase and a reactivation. Two of those involved anyone at the store making a decision. The rest ran on rules set once at launch, each reacting to something she did, each logged with its source and the balance before and after. That is what a repeat-purchase engine actually looks like from the inside - not a clever campaign, but a sequence that never forgets to fire.