How to bulk issue store credit on Shopify via CSV

The CSV

Two columns do the work.

email,amount,note,expires_in_days
dana@example.com,25.00,Q3 win-back,60
sam@example.com,25.00,Q3 win-back,60
alex@example.com,40.00,Apology order 1042,90

email has to match an existing Shopify customer. amount is a plain number, no currency symbol. note is internal and shows up in the credit history, which is the thing that saves you when someone asks in November why a customer has $40 sitting on their account. expires_in_days is optional and worth using.

Getting the list out of Shopify

Customers, Segments, Create segment. The segment editor is more capable than most merchants realise and it is worth building the rule properly rather than exporting everyone and filtering in a spreadsheet.

Campaign	Segment rule
Win-back	number_of_orders >= 1 AND last_order_date between 90 and 365 days ago
VIP	amount_spent >= your 90th percentile
Category cross-sell	Bought from collection A, never bought from collection B
Apology	Customers on a specific order tag

Export, keep the email column, delete the rest, add your amount.

Sizing the credit

This is the part that decides whether the campaign makes money.

The credit has to be big enough to notice and small enough that the customer still spends their own money. Below about 20 percent of your average order value nobody moves. Above about 50 percent you are buying orders at a loss.

At an $80 AOV, $25 is the sweet spot for most stores. The customer sees a quarter of a typical basket already paid for, comes back, and spends $85. You discounted a reactivated customer by roughly 29 percent. That customer was worth zero the month before.

Set an expiry

A win-back credit with no expiry is a coupon that sits there forever, creates no urgency, and never leaves your liability column.

Sixty days is a sensible default. Put the date in the email subject line. Send one reminder at seven days out. Redemption on these campaigns clusters hard in the last 72 hours, which is the entire argument for the deadline.

Gift card expiry is a different story, restricted or banned in most jurisdictions. Store credit issued as a promotion is where expiry actually belongs. See set up store credit expiry on Shopify.

What goes wrong

Issuing before checking the total. The preview shows the sum. Read it.

Emails that do not match a customer record. Store credit attaches to a customer, so an email with no matching customer has nowhere to go. The preview flags these; fix the file rather than issuing a partial batch.

Crediting people who are already going to buy. A win-back segment that includes customers who ordered last week is just a discount on revenue you already had. That is what the 90-day floor in the segment rule is for.

Never telling anyone. Half of failed store credit campaigns are failed email campaigns.

Where to go next

• Bulk issue store credit to a customer segment, the filter-based version that does not need a CSV
• Win back lapsed Shopify customers with store credit, the full campaign structure with email copy
• The Shopify store credit guide, if you are still deciding whether credit or gift cards is the right instrument