Issuing points to a group of contacts, once or on a schedule

An issuance hands out the same number of points to a group of contacts. It can run once, when you press the button, or keep running on a schedule and follow the audience as it changes.

Use it for a thank-you bonus, a compensation round, or a monthly bonus for everyone in a tier. To give points to one contact, assign them on the contact's page instead: see Adding and correcting a contact's balance. To give points the moment a contact does something, use an automation: see How to add points through an automation.

To find it, go to Loyalty → Points issuances.

Setting one up

Click New issuance. The setup runs in steps, and nothing is created until you click Create on the last one, so a setup you abandon leaves nothing behind.

Information

Name, and an optional Description that only your team sees. Use it to record why these points went out.
Points. How many points every recipient gets on each run. It's a whole number of at least 1, and it's the same for everyone. An issuance only adds points: it can't take them away.
Business profile. The points transactions are booked on this business profile.
Type. A One-off is issued once, when you press Issue now. A Recurring issuance runs on the schedule you set. You can't change the type after you create the issuance.
Send by system email. Off by default. Turn it on to announce the points with a points recipient email. The points are issued either way, also to contacts who can't be emailed.
Email to send. Only shown when your account has 2 or more points recipient emails: pick the one that announces these points. If you don't have one yet, the form links you to Points recipient emails in your loyalty settings, where you create it.

Audience

Who receives the points:

All contacts: every contact of your account, on every run.
Narrow down: then pick Contact lists, Tiers or Selection of contacts. Only the contacts in what you picked get the points. A contact who's in 2 of the selected lists still gets them once.

The audience is looked up again at every run, which is the point of a recurring issuance: a tier or a list keeps following its current members. A dynamic list updates as soon as something happens to a contact, and is also rebuilt in full every night. See Creating a contact list for what updates a list straight away and what waits for the nightly rebuild. Contacts who've opted out of marketing still get the points.

Resending

Recurring only, because a one-off has no later run. It decides whether a contact who already got points from this issuance gets them again on a later run:

Every run
Once every X days, with the number of days you set
Once per calendar month
Once per calendar year
Once per contact, meaning once ever

The calendar options follow the calendar, not a count of days. With Once per calendar month, a run that fires a few hours earlier in the month than last month's still issues.

Schedule

Recurring only. Pick the Frequency and the time. The options are Daily, Weekday, Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, First day of the month, Last day of the month, Quarterly and Annually. Quarterly runs on the day you pick in January, April, July and October. The time is in your account's timezone.

You can also add an optional Active period. Runs outside it are skipped instead of issued. Leave the start empty to begin as soon as you activate the issuance, and the end empty to keep going until you pause it.

When the audience is made of contact lists, the time can't fall between 00:00 and 02:00, because that's when every dynamic list is rebuilt, and a run in that window could read a half-finished list. 02:00 itself isn't allowed either. The form then says Pick a time after 02:00.

Getting it running

A One-off is created as a Draft and waits for you. Press Issue now and confirm. The confirmation names the number of contacts first, for example Issue points to 250 contacts?, so you can catch an audience that's wider than you meant. Click Issue points to go ahead. Issue now is disabled while the estimated audience is 0.

Issued points can't be called back by the issuance. To take points away from a contact afterwards, correct their balance on their page: see Adding and correcting a contact's balance.

A Recurring issuance is also created as a Draft and needs a schedule before it can be activated. Until it has one, the page says Set a schedule before activating this issuance. Press Activate and it starts running on its schedule. Pause stops it without losing anything, and Activate picks it up again. On an active recurring issuance you can also press Issue now to run it once by hand, on top of its schedule.

While a one-off is still a draft, you can change it on its Information tab: its name, description, points, business profile, audience and email. Once it's been issued, it can't be changed. A recurring issuance stays editable there, including its resending, and you change its schedule on the Schedule tab.

Other actions on the page:

Duplicate opens the setup as Duplicate issuance, filled in from this issuance. That's how you make a variation without retyping it, and how you change the type: duplicate it and pick the other one.
Delete is only available on a draft or a paused issuance, and you confirm it in the Delete issuance window. The issuance and its run history are removed. Points that were already issued stay with their contacts.

The statuses

Draft: set up but never started.
Active: a recurring issuance that's running on its schedule, or a one-off whose single run is in progress.
Paused: a recurring issuance you stopped.
Completed: a one-off that has run.
Has errors: the last run couldn't work out the audience. Check the setup. A recurring issuance can then be activated again. A one-off in Has errors can't be run again: use Duplicate and issue the copy.

Following the runs

The Runs tab lists every run. A run is created when the schedule fires, or when you press Issue now and the issue goes through. If a manual Issue now is refused, for example because something in the setup isn't valid, you get an error message and no run is added.

The columns are Started at, Status, Trigger (Manual or Schedule), Contacts, Issued, Failed, Skipped and Completed at. Skipped counts contacts the resending setting held back, and contacts that were deleted after the audience was looked up.

Open a run to see the contacts in it and the points each one got. The points link to the points transaction itself, and that transaction also shows up in the contact's history like any other. When the issuance sends an email, you also see how that email did: Created, Processed, Sent, Delivered, Deferred, Bounced, Dropped, Spam report or Failed to send, with opens and clicks.

A recipient reads Issued, Failed with the reason, or Email failed, which means the contact has their points but the announcement didn't go out, for example because they have no valid email address.

A common reason for Failed is your program's maximum points balance: a contact the points would take over the maximum gets none of them. See Changing the maximum number of points a contact can hold.

When a run is skipped

A skipped run means the issuance fired and deliberately did nothing. The reason is on the run:

The business profile of the issuance no longer existed.
No contact lists, tiers or contacts were selected.
One of the selected contact lists wasn't active.
The issuance had no schedule, or the schedule was switched off.
The run fell outside the issuance's active period.
Nobody matched the audience at the time.
Contact data was being rebuilt at the time. The next run picks it up.

Most of these are worth acting on: a deleted business profile or an emptied contact list skips every run until you fix it.

The other tabs

Information shows the settings, the points and business profile, the audience with an estimate of how many contacts it currently comes to, and the email that announces the points.

Schedule, for recurring issuances, is where you change the schedule and the active period later on.

Activities logs what happened to the issuance itself: created, changed, activated, paused, schedule changed, runs started, skipped or completed, and whether it was deactivated because of an error.