Loyalty & Rewards: Virtue X Smile.io

Give Merchants the ability to offer donations to meaningful causes as point redeemable rewards.

With Virtue and Smile.io merchants get to:

• Stand out by offering a fresh, values-driven approach to loyalty. By enabling shoppers to redeem their loyalty points as donations to meaningful causes and by rewarding shoppers that donate during a purchase, brands can drive engagement, build emotional connection, and offer purpose-led rewards that align with their values.

• Merchants can choose from over 60,000 causes on the platform already or add their own partners
• Choose from environmental causes like plastic and carbon offsetting or pick a Charitable organization

Add Virtue Causes to your rewards program, let customers see the impact they've generated. Enable Smile.io Customer Account page to let shoppers track their reward points and support causes, as well as redeem discounts.

How to set it up

1. Choose Causes in Virtue App:

Select the charitable causes you’d like your customers to support by donating their loyalty points. Virtue offers access to over 60,000 verified causes. You can also add your own partner organizations if a cause isn’t listed.

2. Create Donation Products in Shopify Admin:

In your Shopify Admin, create a separate product for each cause you wish to support.

• The product title should clearly reference the cause (e.g., “$5 Donation to Clean Water Project”).
• The price should match the value you want customers to redeem using their loyalty points (e.g., $5 = 5 points).
• Set inventory to "Continue selling when out of stock" to avoid stock issues.
• Use a custom product type or tag like Virtue Donation to keep them organized.

Ensure the following settings are applied:

✅ Mark as Digital / Virtual

• In the product settings, uncheck “This is a physical product” to indicate it's digital.

✅ Exempt from Shipping Fees

• Because it’s not a physical item, this ensures customers won’t be charged shipping.

✅ Contains a Variant with Donation Value

• Create a variant with the donation amount as the variant price (e.g., $25).
• Variant name can reflect the donation amount (e.g., “$25 Donation”).

✅ Allow Selling When Out of Stock

• Enable “Continue selling when out of stock” to avoid inventory restrictions.

3. Set up your program is Smile App:

• Under Redeem Points > Ways to Redeem > Add Ways to Redeem > select Free Product campaign
• Set up your campaign
• Save

4. In Virtue head over to Store Giving > Give from Sales of specific products:

• Search for and select the Donation Product you created in Shopify.
• Set the Giving Amount as the full unit price of the product (e.g., $25).
• Search and select the corresponding Cause or Organization that aligns with the Donation Product.

This is where the donation will be directed when a customer redeems loyalty points.

• Save your settings to complete the setup.

5. Activate Virtue and you are ready to go!

6. View donation totals and by order breakdown in Virtue Payouts screen.

7. Show customers the impact they’ve made:

• Add the Virtue Post-Purchase Widget to display the donation amount generated from each order.
• Use the Virtue x Klaviyo integration to send personalized emails sharing each customer’s and your store's total impact.
• Install an Impact Calculator on your site to highlight the total contributions your store community has made.

8. Smile.io Customer Account page

• Activate Smile for Customer Account to generate more engagement with your loyalty and giving campaign.

Active the page via Smile App > On-site Content > Customer Account Page

• Customize and display the page to logged in shoppers

Note that per/product giving, required for step 4 setup, is only available to merchants on Virtue Impact Unlimited Plan.

Updated on: 17/12/2025