Launching a loyalty program across multiple locations means coordinating participation, staff preparation, and customer communication. Franchise brands also need to account for which owners have opted in, while new gyms and fitness studios may want referrals and signups available during membership presales.
Perkville’s new location launch controls give businesses control over where and when their program is active. Launch participating locations together or on different dates, keep nonparticipating locations inactive, and choose which activities can happen before each location is fully live.
Manage franchise participation by location
For franchise brands, launching a loyalty program does not have to mean getting every owner on board at once. Activate participating locations while keeping the program inactive at locations that have not opted in. As more franchisees decide to participate, bring their locations into the program.
You can coordinate a shared launch for participating locations and add more locations whenever they opt in. Each location’s participation can be managed without changing the status of other locations.
Each location can have a custom message explaining why the program is not active there. For example:
Our rewards program is not available at this location yet. Please check back for updates.
For a location with a launch date, the message can be more specific:
Rewards are coming to our downtown studio on December 1. We look forward to rewarding your visits!
Set up data syncing before launch
You can set up data syncs for all locations while controlling which locations are live in the loyalty program. Syncing data does not activate an inactive location. Normal loyalty transactions will not be accepted until both the business program and the location are active, except for activities explicitly allowed while inactive.
This lets your team prepare the integration across the business without having to delay data syncing for locations that are not yet participating. Any allowed activities remain subject to business controls, transaction date limits, and other eligibility rules.
Schedule each location’s launch
Set a future activation date and time for a location so its program can go live on schedule. This makes it easier to coordinate the rollout with staff training, customer announcements, or a new location opening.
Coordinate activation dates across participating locations or schedule a separate date for a new opening. Normal loyalty activity requires both the business program and the location to be active.
Start referrals and signups before the full launch
An inactive program does not have to mean putting every activity on hold. You can allow selected activities before launch, including referrals and new loyalty program signups with registration bonuses.
For gyms and fitness studios selling memberships before opening, this creates a way to involve members early. For example, a new studio could let members who have already purchased a membership join its loyalty program and refer friends during presales, while keeping other earning and redeeming activities unavailable until launch.
This lets your team support referrals during the sales period without opening the full loyalty experience ahead of schedule. Your configured referral eligibility and reward rules still apply.
Let staff test the experience first
Before making the program available to all customers, you can allow staff to adjust customer balances or earn and redeem on their own accounts.
Your team can use these options to test earning and redeeming and practice helping customers before launch. Choose the activities needed for preparation while keeping normal customer activity paused.
Keep older transactions from earning unexpectedly
The earliest transaction date setting gives you control over how far back transactions can qualify.
Some membership and scheduling systems update transactions from months or years earlier. When those records sync to Perkville, you may not want them to generate rewards or count toward progress.
For example, if a location should only recognize transactions from December 1 onward, set that as its earliest transaction date. A transaction dated November 15 will be excluded even if an integration sends it to Perkville in January.
The cutoff applies to the transaction’s date, rather than when it arrives in Perkville. It is separate from scheduled activation, so you can decide when the program goes live and how far back eligible transactions may reach. Setting a date does not itself import or reprocess historical transactions.
Keep business controls in place
These controls are also available at the business level, which governs what individual locations can allow. Locations can follow the business’s allowed activity settings or choose a narrower selection. They cannot enable an activity that the business has disabled.
If both the business and a location set an earliest transaction date, the later date applies. This gives your organization shared safeguards while letting each location prepare and launch on its own timeline.
A note for API developers
Locations created through the API default to active to preserve existing API behavior. To create a location with its loyalty program inactive, explicitly pass loyalty_program_enabled as false. An administrator will then need to activate the location or schedule its activation when it is ready to participate.
Locations created through the Perkville interface default to inactive. If your integration adds locations for a phased rollout, set the API field explicitly so new locations follow your intended launch plan. Business program controls still apply to locations created through the API.
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