How to set up a Surprise & Delight rule

Before you start

Review our Understanding Rules guide here.

What is a Surprise & Delight rule?

Surprise & Delight is a feature that helps you increase subscription retention by offering free products or discounts at strategic points in the subscriber lifecycle automatically.

This tactic helps reduce churn by:

• Rewarding subscribers for staying active.
• Offsetting common drop-off points (like after the third order)
• Giving long-term subscribers something to look forward to.

For example, you could set up Surprise & Delight rewards on the following orders:

• Order 2: Free trial pack of a different product.
• Order 3: Extra 10% off.
• Order 6: Extra 20% off.
• Order 10: Free product that complements their subscription.

How does Surprise & Delight work?

Rules trigger after the previous order processes to ensure customers see the reward before their next shipment.

For example:

• A reward on order 2 triggers right after checkout.
• A reward on order 4 triggers after order 3 processes.

Skio checks eligibility anytime a subscription is edited. If the subscription no longer qualifies, the reward is removed automatically. 

If you want the rule to apply to customers that might be eligible before you created the reward, go to Features > Rules and click Sync rules in the top right corner to run a check for eligibility.

Surprise & Delight rules are order-based, meaning you can include multiple gifts or discounts within a single rule for a specific order (e.g., order 3).

If you want to apply rewards on different order numbers (e.g., order 3 and order 6), you'll need to create separate rules for each.

How to set up a Surprise & Delight rule

Step 1: Create a new rule

1. In the lefthand menu of your Skio Dashboard, go to Features > Rules > New Rule.
2. Select Surprise & Delight.
3. Choose the order number to apply the reward to.

Step 2: (optional) Add a discount

Input a percentage-based discount or a fixed amount discount to apply off the entire order. 

Step 3: (optional) Add a free gift

1. Select the product(s) or variant(s) to use as the free gift.
2. Toggle on Enable gift swapping if you want to give customers the ability to choose an alternative gift.
3. Click Configure Alternatives to select which products and variants customers can swap to. Click Select all to allow any product or variant as a swap option.

Enable gift swapping when setting up a Surprise & Delight rule, and configure alternative variants customers can choose from.

You can include multiple free gifts and/or discounts in a single Surprise & Delight rule.

Step 4: Select conditions for a rule

You can add filters to control when the Surprise & Delight rule should trigger. These conditions help you target specific subscriber behaviors, statuses, or order details.

1. Under Select conditions for this rule, choose from the available filters.
2. To add more options:
   • Click + OR Condition to apply the rule if any of the conditions are true.
   • Click + AND Condition to require that all selected conditions are true.
3. (Optional) Check Apply across all of the customer's subs if the condition should apply across all active subscriptions for the customer.

Available condition filters

You can mix and match the following conditions based on your campaign goals:

•  
  • Customer tag
  • Credit balance
  • Tier
•  
  • Order number
  • Total quantity
  • Total value
  • Subscription creation date
  • Day of week
  • Discount code
  • Is prepaid renewing
  • Migrated from another platform
  • Next billing date
  • Shipping interval
  • Subscription country
  • Subscription ID
  • Subscription note
  • Subscription type
•  
  • Contains products
  • Contains dynamic boxes
  • Contains static boxes
  • Exclude products
•  
  • Audit log
  • Cancel Flow
  • Quick action
  • Surprise and Delight

Once you're done selecting your conditions, click Continue to proceed.

Step 5: Complete setup

Give your rule a name and save your rule.

To apply the rule retroactively to existing subscriptions, go to Features > Rules and click Sync Rules.

How do customers know when they receive a Surprise & Delight reward?

When a customer meets the conditions set in your Surprise & Delight rule, a banner appears in the customer portal on the eligible subscription.

If gift product swapping is enabled, customers will see a Customize your gift button in the portal, which lets them choose an alternative variant.

To enable or disable the banner, in Customer Portal V2, enable the Show “surprise & delight” banner toggle. In Customer Portal V3, this toggle can be enabled in the Branding tab under Subscription banners. 

How can I tell which customers received a Surprise & Delight reward from my Skio Dashboard?

When viewing subscriptions from the Subscription Management tab in your Skio Dashboard, a Surprise & Delight gift badge will display beside the free product on any eligible subscriptions to indicate when a customer is receiving a gift. For discounts, it will be indicated in the discount chip underneath the Subtotal. 

Surprise & Delight FAQs

• No, it applies to the specific order only.
• Yes, if eligibility is met for multiple rules, all rewards will be applied.
• Yes. You can apply rules to all products, specific products, or individual variants.
• The rule will still apply. Skio does not check stock levels for Surprise & Delight rules.
• Rules will apply to each eligible subscription in the customer’s account.