Your tiers are built and creators are in! This guide covers what the platform does on its own from here — when performance is measured, when members move between tiers, when rewards go out, and what creators are told at each step.

The most useful thing to know up front: tier changes and reward delivery can run on different schedules.

If you're still designing your tier structure, start with the Program Design Guide instead!

Three automatic processes drive your program, on different cadences.

The monthly reward run never pauses. If your Evaluation Period is 3 months, tiers only get reshuffled every third month — but in the two months between, monthly gifts still send and monthly tasks still pay out normally. A quiet month for tier movement is not a quiet month for rewards.

Tier evaluation is the one you control with the Evaluation Period setting. When it runs, it scores everyone against your tier requirements, moves them, and then issues rewards based on where they landed — that order matters in a couple of places noted below.

Separately, any tier change you make by hand takes effect immediately.

Tier qualification goals are measured over a rolling window of completed calendar months, counting back from the 1st of whichever month the evaluation runs in.

Three things worth knowing:

These definitions are where reported numbers most often diverge from what brands expect.

Posts counts distinct posting days, not individual posts — three posts in one day count as one. Only posts mentioning one of your program's connected social accounts count, and if your program requires content approval, only approved posts do.

Revenue is gross attributed revenue by order date. Cancelled orders are excluded, but refunds are not deducted — a refunded order still counts. For affiliate network integrations (Impact, AWIN, Rakuten), orders still pending network confirmation count too, since thresholds reflect creator activity rather than confirmed payouts.

Sales counts distinct attributed orders, New Customers those from first-time buyers, and Impressions sums impressions on qualifying posts.

The four buttons in the Evaluation Period card are the live program setting, and clicking one saves it immediately. Only account Owners can change it; anyone else gets a "Permission Required" message and nothing saves.

For example, the monthly run only picks up programs that already have at least one tier configured. So if you finished tier setup on August 6th, the August 1st run had already come and gone with nothing to do for your program. September 1st becomes your first evaluation, and a 3-month cadence then runs September → December → March.

If your evaluations need to land in particular months — to line up with a quarterly business review or a manual process you're replacing — tell your Client Strategist which months you want. Re-anchoring is quick, but it has to happen before an evaluation runs, because the first one to run sets the anchor.

In off-cadence months, monthly gifts and monthly tasks continue as normal. Only the tier reshuffle and its notifications wait.

Automatic promotions happen only when tier evaluation runs — not the moment a member crosses a threshold.

The helper text under the Evaluation Period buttons currently reads "Members will be upgraded as soon as they meet requirements," which overstates it. On a 3-month period, a member who clears Gold in the first week waits until the next quarterly evaluation. Change their tier by hand if you want it sooner — that applies instantly.

What is real-time is task and milestone rewards, evaluated within minutes of a post being approved or an order attributed, independent of the evaluation schedule. So a member can earn their current tier's task rewards all quarter while waiting on a promotion.

Yes, members move down automatically, in the same evaluation that handles promotions. Someone whose numbers fall below the Gold threshold is placed in the highest tier they do still qualify for. Two protections limit this:

When a tier has a Max Participants cap and more members qualify than there are spots, they compete. Qualifiers are ranked by the tier's primary metric — revenue if the tier has a revenue goal, otherwise posts — and the top N get in. Ties break by the metric itself, then incumbents keep their seat over an equally-performing newcomer, then longest tenure wins.

Anyone who qualifies but misses the cut cascades down to the next tier they qualify for — they aren't dropped out of tiers just because the tier above was full.

A welcome gift is granted once per member per program, at their initial approval, based on the tier they were approved into. A member who joins at Silver and is later promoted to Gold does not receive Gold's welcome gift — not on promotion, not on a later re-approval. Welcome gifts are a joining reward, not a per-tier reward.

For your setup: if there's something every Gold member should have, put it in Gold's monthly gift or a milestone. A welcome gift on an upper tier only ever reaches members approved directly into it.

Inactive isn't a tier you configure. It's the card at the bottom of your tier list counting everyone with no tier assigned — a count, not a container. Nothing to set up, no rules to write, no rewards to attach.

Members land there two ways: an evaluation found they qualified for none of your automatic tiers, or someone moved them to "Inactive (unassigned)" by hand.

Dropping to Inactive is the one tier change that sends nothing — no email, no Hub notification. This is intentional rather than an oversight: the copy is built around naming the tier a member moved into, and there isn't one.

So a member can quietly lose their monthly gift, their tasks, and their tier commission rate without ever being told. They'll notice the rewards stopped; nothing will explain why.

Two ways to handle this. The cleanest is to give your lowest tier no qualification goals (or a goal of zero), so it catches everyone and nobody goes untiered — your entry tier's gift and commission rate become your program's floor. Otherwise, check the Inactive count after each evaluation and reach out to that group yourself.

Monthly gifts are the one reward with no performance condition — every member in a tier that has one receives it every month, just for being in that tier.

When they send: on the 1st, to everyone who has a tier at that moment. Once per gift per member per month; re-runs can't double-send.

Which tier's gift: the tier they're in after that day's tier moves. This is where the ordering inside the run matters — a member promoted to Gold on October 1st receives Gold's gift that same day, not Silver's.

Before the 1st. The monthly run reads your tier configuration exactly as it exists at that moment, and there's no catch-up pass for a gift that didn't exist yet.

Plenty of brands treat the monthly gift as a curated product-of-the-month. LoudCrowd treats it as a standing configuration — it won't prompt you or flag that last month's pick is still sitting there, so the rotation is a recurring task on your calendar. Put a reminder in the last few days of each month. If it slips, the previous month's gift sends again with no way to un-send it.

Both are goal-based rewards a member earns by hitting a threshold, and both are awarded in real time. The difference is the window they measure and how many times they can be earned.

Worth repeating because it surprises people: the Evaluation Period setting governs tier movement only. Monthly tasks always measure one calendar month, even on a 12-month period.

Yes to both. A lifetime milestone is earned exactly once per member, and progress toward it is never reset — not by a tier change, not by a new evaluation period, not by anything. It can't be lost because it isn't stored as a counter: every check recomputes total activity from actual posts and orders since approval. A member at $8,400 toward a $10,000 milestone is at $8,400 whether they've sat in one tier or moved through four.

One qualifier: milestones are attached to tiers, so which ones a member is working toward changes with their tier. If Gold has a "$10K lifetime revenue" milestone and Silver doesn't, a member demoted to Silver stops being evaluated for it — their $8,400 is intact and waiting if they return, but it isn't theirs to earn from Silver.

A tip that follows: don't copy the same milestone onto multiple tiers. Each copy is a separate reward slot with its own earn record, so a member moving between two tiers carrying the "same" milestone can earn it twice. For a program-wide milestone, put it on your entry tier — everyone passes through it.

This is the behavior most worth understanding before adding milestones to an established program.

A milestone only applies to members who were below its threshold when you created it. On save, each member's total activity is checked as of that instant, and anyone already at or past the threshold is permanently ineligible. They will never earn it, and it doesn't appear in their Creator Hub at all — not as complete, not as claimable. It's simply absent.

Add a "$10K lifetime revenue" milestone today and:

That middle row is the part people expect to work differently: prior activity does count for anyone still below the line. The member at $8,400 needs $1,600 more, not a fresh $10,000.

The rule exists so launching a milestone doesn't fire retroactive rewards at your entire top tier — but it means your strongest members get nothing from milestones set below where they already are. Set them at levels members will reach going forward. To recognize someone already past a threshold, select them on the Members tab and use Send Reward.

These require creator notifications enabled for your store (on by default). Each arrives as an email from [email protected] and as an entry in the creator's Hub feed.

Every tier change notifies, including repeats — Gold → Silver → Gold sends two. Manual changes notify immediately rather than waiting for the next run.

The Creator Hub doesn't show a tier ladder. Creators don't see their tier name on a dashboard, the tiers above them, or how close they are to the next one. They see:

The tier-change email is effectively the only place a creator learns which tier they're in, so your welcome message needs to spell out the tier structure, the thresholds, and the window they're measured over. The platform won't show any of it.

Two members moving in opposite directions through the same program — a 3-month evaluation period with evaluations on Jan 1 / Apr 1 / Jul 1 / Oct 1.

Approved into Silver on May 12. Silver's welcome gift issues immediately, commission set to 10%.

May and June. She posts steadily and drives $1,900. On June 20 she crosses $100 in lifetime revenue and earns the Silver milestone within minutes — a "Milestone reached" email and $15 in site credit, not waiting for the 1st.

July 1 — an evaluation month. The window is Apr 1 → Jul 1, but only post-approval activity counts, so really May 12 → Jul 1: 9 posting days and $1,900. She clears Gold on both. In that single run she's moved to Gold, her commission updates to 15%, she's issued Gold's $25 monthly gift (the tier she's in now), and she gets a "You're now in Gold" email.

Two things that don't happen. She does not get Gold's welcome gift, having had her one in May. And monthly tasks in that same run are scored against Silver — the tier she was in during the activity period — so a promotion never pays the same month's work at the new tier's rate. Gold's tasks start counting from July, paid August 1st.

In Gold since last year, off a strong Q3. Then Q4 goes quiet: 2 posting days and $400 in October, 1 day and $300 in November, nothing in December.

Nov 1 and Dec 1 aren't evaluation months, so Priya stays in Gold — collecting the $25 monthly gift both months at 15% commission, despite being well under Gold's threshold. This is normal on a 3-month period: a member can sit two full months below their tier's requirement before the tier catches up.

Jan 1 — an evaluation month. The window Oct 1 → Jan 1 gives her 3 posting days and $700. She misses Gold on revenue but clears Silver. She's placed in Silver, commission drops to 10%, the $25 gift stops, Gold's $10K milestone stops being evaluated (progress intact if she returns), and she gets a "You're now in Silver" email. Everything she'd already earned stays valid.

The harder version: had Priya posted nothing at all, she'd have missed Silver too and landed in Inactive — no gift, no tasks, no milestone evaluation, commission at your program default, and no notification. She'd find out by noticing her rewards had stopped. Hence the entry tier with a goal of zero.

One last wrinkle: had Priya been approved after Oct 1, new-member protection would have kept her in Gold this round regardless of her numbers.

Related: Program Design Guide · Transitioning Your Rewards to Program Tiers · Notifications LoudCrowd Sends Automatically · Creator Messaging