Create an auction here — find it under Rewards › Auctions in the admin.
Auctions let members bid against each other to win a prize. A member can set a max bid in points so they don't have to sit and watch the auction as new bids come in — the system keeps them on top until their maximum is reached. Once they're outbid, they get an automated email letting them know. Members can bid up to their available balance, and anyone who is outbid and doesn't win gets all of their points back. Auctions are great for experiences, autographed items, or anything with a high perceived value.
Some best practices:
Keep the auction to a limited window of time — one week, two weeks, a month. That's far more effective than running one all season.
Send out a reminder for bidders — use the Send Reminder At field to nudge everyone who has bid to place their final bid. Around noon on the closing day works well.
Turn on Overtime so a late bid can't win by sniping in the final seconds.
Use auctions for experiences or limited-quantity items — a way to reward your most engaged members, who have the most points to spend.
Click New Auction on the Auctions page. That opens a full New Auction page with every setting on it, so you can build the whole auction in one pass and press Create Auction once at the end.
If you're setting up this week's auction from last week's, use the Duplicate action on the row instead — it opens the same page with everything already filled in. Duplicating only prefills the form; nothing is saved until you click Create Auction, and the bids, the winner, the image and the reminder are left off the copy while the dates are reset to a fresh window.
1. Title — required.
2. Optional: Subtitle.
3. Description — a rich-text editor, so you can format the item, its provenance, and what the winner receives.
4. Image — the picture members see in the store. Recommended 600×600px or larger, since images are cropped to a square. JPG, PNG or GIF, up to 8 MB. The preview beside the upload box updates as soon as you pick a file.
5. Starting Bid (pts) — the first bid must meet or exceed this.
6. Bid Increment (pts) — the minimum raise over the current bid.
7. Optional: Cash Value ($) — the declared retail value of the item.
8. Auction Starts and Auction Ends — one date-and-time range, shown in your site's time zone.
9. Optional: Send Reminder At — emails everyone who has bid that the auction is closing soon. It has to be before the close time; a reminder scheduled after the auction ends is never sent.
10. Optional: Display Lag (Days) — how long the auction stays visible to members after it ends.
11. Optional: tick Overtime — late bids extend the clock, then pick an Overtime Window of 2 minutes, 5 minutes or 10 minutes. A bid inside the final window resets the clock to the full window, so the auction closes only after one quiet window. 5 minutes is the sports-auction standard.
12. Optional: Terms & Conditions — a second rich-text editor for the legal terms shown to bidders before they bid. This card is collapsed until you open it.
13. Choose how the item reaches the winner — Shipping (mail it to the winner's address), Pickup (the winner collects it in person), and on sites that have it enabled, Other (pickup under a custom label). Shipping can combine with either collection method, but Pickup and Other are the same thing under different labels, so only one of those two applies.
Pick Other and you also fill in Other fulfillment display text — what the winner reads in place of "Pickup", such as Will Call.
Pick Pickup or Other and a Pickup instructions (shown to the winner) editor appears.
Pick Shipping and you get Delivery instructions (shown to the winner) plus an optional Product weight (lbs), which carrier rate lookups and label-printing partners use.
14. Optional: restrict who can see the auction. This card is collapsed until you open it, and it opens on its own whenever something in it is already set.
Allowed membership levels (none = all) — leave it empty and every level can see the auction.
Filter Tags — these let members filter auctions on the storefront, e.g. Experiences, Signed, VIP.
Restrict to users on the allow list — tick it, then add Allow list tags. Only members carrying one of those tags see the auction.
Exclude users on the block list — tick it, then add Block list tags to hide the auction from members carrying one.
Show to unqualified members — when the auction is restricted, members who don't qualify still see it, locked and unable to bid. Add a Custom locked message (optional) or leave it blank for the default.
15. Click Create Auction. You land on the edit form with the auction saved, so you can keep going or head back to the auction itself.
Open an auction from the Auctions page and click Edit, or use Edit in the row's actions menu. It's the same form, with Save Changes at the bottom instead of Create Auction.
