Tag-based membership tiers
Run a secondary loyalty program granted by a Shopify customer tag: an invite-style tier alongside your milestone tiers for paid memberships, VIPs, staff, or app-driven cohorts.
Milestone tiers reward what customers do: points earned, amount spent, or an item purchased. A tag-based tier works differently: membership is granted by a Shopify customer tag. Whoever carries the tag is in the tier; remove the tag and they return to your regular tier ladder.
That makes it the tool for tiers that aren't earned through activity:
Paid memberships: a membership product purchase applies the tag (via Shopify Flow or subscription auto-tagging).
VIPs, ambassadors, and staff: hand-picked members, tagged manually or in bulk.
Cohorts: a specific groups of customers you are looking to run specific offers and marketing to.
You can have one tag-based tier per program, running alongside your milestone tiers as a secondary track.
Set it up
Go to Loyalty Program → Membership Tiers and add or edit a tier. Under Milestone to achieve tier, choose Secondary loyalty program: membership is granted by a Shopify customer tag instead of points or spend.
Trigger tag: customers carrying this Shopify tag are granted this tier.
Lifetime membership (membership and points never expire): when enabled, this tier and the points earned in it are excluded from expiry. Ideal for paid memberships where points should never lapse mid-membership.
Set the Tier name and Tier level as usual. This tier cannot be promoted or demoted: customers keep it for as long as the trigger tag is assigned.
How customers enter
Apply the trigger tag to the customer in Shopify (manually, via Flow, or from another app). Roadmap then:
assigns the customer to the tag-based tier immediately
removes their previous tier's program tag automatically, so tags never conflict
sets their new membership start date (using your store's timezone) and removes any expiry date (tag-based tiers do not expire).
Any loyalty points that customer already had before entering this tier remain. However, they will still expire per the terms applied when the points were earned.
logs the promotion on their timeline
What tag-based members see
Ways to earn and ways to redeem scoped to their tier. Use the Membership tier eligibility setting on earners and rewards to build the tier's own earning rates and redemption options. Members only see what their tier is eligible for.
No progress bar. The Loyalty Progress Bar app block hides itself for tag-based members, since milestone progression doesn't apply to them.
Klaviyo properties adjust. Progression and expiry properties are cleared, everything else keeps syncing. See the breakdown below.
Klaviyo properties for tag-based members
A tag-based tier has no "next tier" and no membership expiry, so those Klaviyo profile properties are cleared while the customer holds the tier:
Next tier name
person.roadmap_loyalty_next_tier_name
Points away from next tier
person.roadmap_loyalty_next_tier_points
Membership expiry date
person.roadmap_loyalty_expiry_date
Everything else remains and keeps syncing as normal:
Total points earned
person.roadmap_loyalty_total_points
Total points earned in period
person.roadmap_loyalty_total_points_earnt_in_period
Total points expiring in next 30 days
person.roadmap_loyalty_expiring_points
Current tier name
person.roadmap_loyalty_current_tier_name
Has Membership account
person.roadmap_has_account
Total spent in period
person.roadmap_total_spent_in_period
Birthday
person.roadmap_loyalty_birthday
Member since
person.roadmap_loyalty_member_since
Membership start date
person.roadmap_loyalty_start_date
Next point expiry date
person.roadmap_loyalty_point_expiry_date
Points expiring on next expiry date
person.roadmap_loyalty_next_expiring_points
Latest order points earnt
person.roadmap_loyalty_latest_order_points_earnt
Worth knowing when building flows and segments:
roadmap_loyalty_current_tier_nameholds the tag-based tier's name, so Klaviyo splits and segments on tier name keep working for these members.The period counters (points earned in period, total spent in period) restart from the customer's new membership start date.
With Lifetime membership enabled, points earned inside the tier never expire, so the point-expiry properties only reflect points the customer earned before joining the tier.
Full property reference: Loyalty profile properties and email snippets.
Tier-specific cart messages
The Edit Membership Tier form includes a Cart announcement bar card. Give the tier its own Message and members of this tier see it in the cart bar instead of the bar's default message. Click the snippet chips to personalise it: {amount}, {total_points}, {cart_points}, {current_tier_name}, {next_tier_name}, {points_required}, {amount_required}. Snippets with no value behind them are removed from the message, so keep next-tier wording out of your top tier's message.
Leave the field blank to use the default bar, configured in Cart Announcement Bar settings.
How customers exit
Remove the tag, and Roadmap recalculates the customer into your milestone ladder:
Their start date refreshes to todays date and their current period's points or spend decide which milestone tier they land in. If nothing qualifies, they hold no tier.
Their tier tags update to match, and the change is logged on their timeline.
So a lapsed paid member, for example, drops back to exactly the tier their organic activity has earned. Nothing needs manual cleanup.
Related guides
Award points with customer tags: tags that award points rather than tiers
Reward subscribers with loyalty points: auto-tagging as the entry mechanism
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