Setting Up Your Rewards Program

Most cigar shops decide to "do a loyalty program" and then lose a week arguing about the details. Don't. Pick a points rate, pick what the reward is, turn it on, and adjust once you've watched real customers use it. The whole setup takes about ten minutes, and every number in it can be changed later.

This article walks the actual screens. If you'd rather read about what the pieces are — points, punchcards, birthday rewards, coupons, membership tiers — start with Managing Customer Rewards and come back here to build it.

Where it lives

Open the Dashboard, click the Customers tab on the left, and click the Manage Rewards Program card. (Can't find it? Type "rewards" in the search box at the top right.)

This is an add-on feature. If the card isn't on your Customers tab at all, Coupons & Rewards just needs switching on for your store — give us a call.

What you're looking at

The window that opens is the Rewards Program Viewer — a list of your programs, one per row, with the numbers that matter right on the row: Points Per Dollar, Reward Given At, whether the Welcome Coupon is on, which one is the Default Program, and whether it's Active.

Two rows worth knowing about before you touch anything:

NO REWARDS (ID 0) is greyed out, and TORO won't let you edit it. That's on purpose — it's the built-in "this customer earns nothing" setting, and it's what you assign to someone who doesn't want to be in the program. Leave it alone.
TORO Rewards Program (ID 1) is what most stores start with: 1 point per dollar, reward at 400 points. You can absolutely just edit this one instead of creating your own.

Show Active Only at the top-left is ticked by default, so retired programs stay out of your way. Untick it when you're looking for one you turned off.

Building the program

Click + to create a new program, or select a row and click * to edit the one you've got. Either way you land in Setup Rewards Program. It's one big window; here's what's on it, in the order it matters.

The earning rules

Rewards Program Name — what you'll call it. Customers never see this; it's for you.
Rewards Program is Active — tick it. (This is also the switch you'd untick later to retire the program — see Turning Off Your Rewards Program.)
Points Per $ — how many points a dollar earns. 1 is the normal answer. TORO won't accept less than 0.1, so you can't use this box to switch earning off.
Points Needed For Reward — how many points before a reward comes out. 100, 200, 400 — whatever makes the math you want.
Points Expiration In Days — how long a point lives. Leave it blank and points never expire, which is what most shops want. (If what you actually want is to clear everyone's balance once a year, that's a different tool — see Rewards Program Reset.)
Max Points Accumulation — a ceiling on how many points someone can sit on. Go past it and the register stops the cashier with "the maximum you can accumulate is X points" and makes them cash some in. Only available on dollar-amount coupons; leave it blank if you don't want a ceiling.
Allow Rewards on Discounted Items — whether an already-discounted cigar still earns. Off means the discount is the deal and it doesn't also build points.
Require Text Message Consent to join Loyalty Rewards Program / Require Email to join Loyalty Rewards Program — makes the contact detail a condition of earning. Powerful, and worth thinking about twice: a customer who won't give a phone number simply doesn't earn.
Automatically Send Coupons — send the reward the moment it's earned instead of asking the cashier "now or later?". TORO ticks this for you and locks it on for percentage coupons and item coupons; it's only a real choice on dollar-amount coupons.
Print Reward Coupons at the Register — whether earned coupons print on the receipt printer. This one is store-wide rather than per-program, and it's covered in Managing Customer Rewards.

What the reward actually is

The Reward Coupon panel is the payoff — what the customer gets when they hit the points threshold.

Start with Coupon Type:

Percent — a percentage off. Fill in the number and it reads 10 % off.
Amount — a flat dollar amount, e.g. $10 off.
Discount On Item — a percentage off specific items only. Pick them with the + and - buttons under Items Receiving this Discount; the coupon won't save without at least one.

Then:

Minimum Purchase Required To Use — the spend the coupon needs before it can be applied. Blank means no minimum.
Coupon is valid starting — Today or Tomorrow — for [N] days. Leave the days blank and the coupon doesn't expire.
Custom Coupon Message — the words that go out with it. As you type, Example SMS underneath shows the customer's actual text message, built with your real numbers. Use it — it's the only place you'll catch a message that reads badly before a hundred people get it.
Send as MMS — sends it as a picture message instead of a plain text.
Stackable with other coupons — whether this reward can be used on the same sale as another coupon. Off unless you say otherwise, and it's forced off for item coupons (two of them would fight over the same cigar).

The welcome coupon

The Welcome Coupon panel is an optional one-time "thanks for joining" for brand-new members. Tick Send Welcome Reward Coupon and it wakes up: a dollar amount off a minimum purchase, when it starts and how many days it's good for, its own Custom Coupon Message with its own live example, and its own Send as MMS and Stackable with other coupons.

It's one of the cheapest things in the system. Somebody hands over their phone number and gets a text back that's worth money — that's the moment they decide the program is real.

Questions at the register

Down in the Gather Customer Data panel, tick Customer Data Module is Active and TORO starts quietly filling in the gaps in your customer records — asking, at the register, for the things you don't have yet. Tick the ones you want: Ask For Birthday, Ask For Anniversary, If customer has an anniversary, then ask for spouse's birthday, Ask if Mother or Father, Ask for Instagram Handle.

Days Between Questions stops it becoming a nuisance — that's how long TORO waits before asking the same customer anything again.

Now click Save.

Make it the one people join

Back in the viewer, select your program and click Set Default. That's the program every new customer is signed up to from now on. It has to be Active first — TORO tells you so if it isn't.

Existing customers stay on whatever program they're already assigned to. You can move any individual customer on their account screen, in the Rewards Program dropdown.

The extras, once the basics are running

Everything below is optional and all of it can wait a week.

Points Rate Schedule… — inside the program editor, next to Points Per $. Pay a different rate on chosen dates, days and times — double points on a slow Tuesday, half on a packed Friday. The button stays greyed out until the program has been saved once, because a rule needs a program to belong to. Full details in Managing Customer Rewards.
Manage Birthday Rewards Program — an automatic reward on a customer's birthday, with tiers by how much they spend.
Manage Anniversary & Significant Other Birthday Reminder Messages — automatic anniversary and significant-other reminders, plus Mother's Day and Father's Day.
Manage Coupon Word List — the pool of words TORO builds coupon codes from. Make it yours.
Coupon Code Format — what codes look like: Word + Numbers (PIE713), All Numbers (847-291), or Two Words (PIE-SKY).
View Rewards by Day — a report of what the program actually paid out.

A starter program that works

If you want to stop deciding and start running:

Points Per $ 1 · Points Needed For Reward 100 · Coupon Type Amount · $10 off · no minimum purchase · valid Tomorrow for 60 days · Send Welcome Reward Coupon on, $5 off.

Spend $100 across as many visits as it takes, get $10 back. Everyone understands it instantly, including your staff at 8pm on a Saturday.

Two things to know before you go live

Changing the rate later changes what people earn from that moment. Edit Points Per $ or Points Needed For Reward on a program that already has customers on it and TORO tells you how many are affected and asks you to confirm. Points already banked are never touched — only future earning changes.

And the one that decides whether any of this works: a customer only earns when they're attached to the transaction. If your staff rings someone up without looking up their account, that sale earns nothing — no points, no punchcard progress, no birthday coupon applied. "Can I look up your account?" has to become as automatic as "Would you like a bag?"