Loyalty Member
A Loyalty Member is a customer or business enrolled in a Salesforce Loyalty Management program, stored as a record on the standard LoyaltyProgramMember object.
Definition
A Loyalty Member is a customer or business enrolled in a Salesforce Loyalty Management program, stored as a record on the standard LoyaltyProgramMember object. Each member links to one Loyalty Program and to a customer identity (a Contact, Person Account, or Account). The record carries the member type, membership number, enrollment date, and membership status. It is the anchor that every other loyalty record points back to.
A common misconception is that the point balance and tier live directly on the member record. They do not. A member's currency balances sit on related LoyaltyMemberCurrency records, and the current tier sits on LoyaltyMemberTier records, one per tier group. The LoyaltyProgramMember object arrived in API version 51.0 (Spring '21) as part of the Loyalty Management product, which is licensed separately and aimed at retail, travel, hospitality, and financial services rewards programs.
How the member record anchors a loyalty program
The LoyaltyProgramMember object
LoyaltyProgramMember is the standard object that represents one enrolled customer. It holds LoyaltyProgramId (the program the member belongs to), a MemberType of Individual or Corporate, a MembershipNumber, an EnrollmentDate, and a MembershipStatus. Individual members link through ContactId or a Person Account; corporate members link through AccountId, which is how business-to-business partner programs are modeled. The object was introduced in API version 51.0, so it has been available since the Spring '21 release. Because the member is the join point for the whole data model, almost every other loyalty record (currency balances, tier assignments, transaction journals, issued vouchers, and badges) carries a lookup back to it. That design keeps a single source of truth for who the customer is, while the moving parts like points and tier are tracked on their own related objects. When you build reports or screen flows, you usually start from the member and traverse outward to the related records you need.
Where the point balance actually lives
The member's point balance is not a field on LoyaltyProgramMember. It is stored on LoyaltyMemberCurrency, which represents the balance for one member and one program currency. A program can define more than one currency, so a member can hold several LoyaltyMemberCurrency records at once. Salesforce splits points into two kinds. Qualifying points measure engagement and drive tier upgrades or downgrades. Non-qualifying points (sometimes called redeemable points) are what the member spends on rewards, products, or services. Both balances are tracked per currency on the member's currency records. Every change to a balance is written as a transaction so the number can be reconciled at any time. If you are surfacing a balance on a Contact page or in a service console, you read it from LoyaltyMemberCurrency, not from the member record itself. Getting this distinction right early saves a lot of confused formula fields and report filters later on.
Tiers and tier assessment
A member's current tier lives on LoyaltyMemberTier, with one record per tier group the program defines. Tiers (for example Silver, Gold, Diamond, Platinum) gate multipliers, eligible promotions, and exclusive benefits. Movement between tiers is handled by the tier assessment process, which compares a member's qualifying point balance against the minimum thresholds a loyalty manager sets for each tier in a group. When a member earns qualifying points, the platform flags them as eligible for assessment, then upgrades or downgrades them on the next run. Programs define a qualifying period, the window in which qualifying points count toward status. In a fixed model the qualifying points reset on a set date each year, and the member starts the next period from zero. Tier changes are recorded so you can audit and report on how a member moved over time. Designing thresholds carefully matters, because loose rules crowd the top tier and dilute the rewards that make it worth reaching.
Earning, redeeming, and the transaction journal
Member activity flows through transaction journals. Each accrual (a purchase, a signup bonus, a promotion award, a referral) adds points, and each redemption (a catalog reward or a voucher) subtracts them. The journal is the audit chain behind a member's currency balances, so the current numbers can always be traced back to the events that produced them. In practice you do not hand-edit balances. You insert journal activity, usually triggered from the source system where the purchase or interaction happens, and the platform updates the related currency records. Points also expire. Fixed-model points expire on predetermined dates, while activity-based points expire after a set period of inactivity measured from the member's last activity. When an expiration job runs, eligible points drop off and balances update, which can in turn trigger a tier downgrade at the next assessment. This is why teams integrate point-earning at the point of sale, ecommerce checkout, or mobile app rather than relying on manual grants.
Enrollment and the member lifecycle
A member usually joins through a public-facing signup (an Experience Cloud site, a mobile app, or a point-of-sale system) or through batch enrollment when an existing customer base is migrated in. Enrollment creates the LoyaltyProgramMember record, links it to the right Contact, Person Account, or Account, sets the enrollment date and starting status, and can award a welcome bonus. Members are created through the user interface, through Loyalty business APIs and Connect REST API calls, or through batch processing for high volume. Membership status moves through a lifecycle that controls participation. An active member can earn and redeem; a suspended member is temporarily blocked, often during a fraud review; a closed member has left the program. Status directly affects eligibility for promotions and redemptions, so service and operations teams lean on it when handling disputes or account closures. Keeping enrollment automated and status accurate is what keeps the rest of the program trustworthy.
Individual and corporate members
The MemberType field decides how a member connects to the rest of Salesforce. Individual members power consumer programs and link to a Contact or Person Account, the pattern behind airline and retail rewards where one person holds the account. Corporate members power business programs and link to an Account, the pattern behind distributor or partner reward schemes where an organization is the member. The same data model serves both, but the configuration differs because one rewards a person and the other rewards a company. Corporate programs often pair a corporate member with related individual memberships, so employees of a partner can transact under the company umbrella. Picking the right member type at design time matters, because the identity linkage is hard to change after launch without meaningful data migration. Think through whether you are rewarding people, organizations, or both before you enroll your first member, and confirm the choice against how marketing and service plan to use the data downstream.
Connecting members to marketing and service
The reason loyalty sits on the Salesforce platform is that member data does not stay siloed. Tier and balance information can feed segmentation in Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud, so a tier-up moment or a points-expiry warning becomes a triggered campaign. Service teams see member context (tier, status, recent activity) right alongside the case they are working, which lets an agent resolve a loyalty question without bouncing between systems. Because the member record is a standard object, it participates in reports, list views, flows, and platform events like any other object. That makes it straightforward to build automation: a flow can adjust a member, enroll a new one, or react to a tier change. The unified view is the practical payoff. The customer's loyalty standing, their service history, and their marketing engagement all reference the same member record, which is hard to replicate when loyalty runs as a disconnected third-party system.
How to enroll a Loyalty Member
You can enroll a customer by creating a Loyalty Program Member record directly in the app. Open the Loyalty Programs tab, select your program, go to its Loyalty Program Members related list, and click New. For high volumes, use the Loyalty APIs or batch enrollment instead.
- Open the program
Go to the Loyalty Programs tab and select the program you want to enroll the customer into. The member always belongs to exactly one program.
- Start a new member
From the program's Loyalty Program Members section, click New to open the member record form.
- Set member type and identity
Choose Individual or Corporate, then link the matching identity: a Contact or Person Account for individuals, or an Account for corporate members.
- Fill membership details
Enter the membership number, enrollment date, and membership status, then save. The platform creates the related currency and tier records as activity begins.
The program the member is enrolled in. Stored as LoyaltyProgramId and required on every member record.
Individual or Corporate. Determines whether the member links to a Contact or Person Account, or to an Account.
The unique identifier the member is known by in the program. Often generated by the enrolling system.
The date the customer joined the program. Used as the start point for qualifying periods and activity tracking.
The lifecycle state, such as Active or Suspended, that controls whether the member can earn and redeem.
- Do not expect a points field on the member. Balances live on related LoyaltyMemberCurrency records, and tier lives on LoyaltyMemberTier.
- Choose Individual versus Corporate carefully. Changing the identity linkage after launch usually means a data migration.
- For large customer bases, enroll through the Loyalty APIs or batch processing rather than creating records one at a time in the UI.
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About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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