Your customers post about you on Instagram. Now you can reward them for it.

Every time a customer posts a story tagging your brand, something valuable happens. Their followers see it. They trust it — because it came from a real person, not an ad. And for a few seconds, your brand is front and center in someone else's world.

Most loyalty programs miss this moment entirely. They reward purchases. They track points. But the behavior that actually grows your brand — a customer showing up for you in public, unprompted — goes unrewarded.

That changes now.

Your customers post about you. Now you can reward them for it.

With Instagram Story Mention Rewards, Joy automatically detects when a customer tags your brand using the @mention sticker in their Story — and adds loyalty points to their account instantly. No forms to submit. No screenshots to send. No manual review on your end.

The moment the Story goes live with your tag, Joy catches it. Points land in their account. They get a reason to keep posting.

For brands where Instagram is the main stage — beauty, fashion, lifestyle, food — this is the missing piece. You already know that a single Story from the right customer can drive more traffic than a paid campaign. Now that moment is tied into your loyalty program, and customers know it.

What it actually solves

UGC doesn't happen by accident. Customers who feel recognized post more. Customers who get nothing for it eventually stop.

Story Mention Rewards give your most enthusiastic customers a reason to keep showing up — not because you paid them, but because your loyalty program acknowledges the things that matter. A mention isn't just content. It's advocacy. It deserves a reward.

The brands that get this right turn their loyalty program from a discount engine into something customers actually talk about. "I posted a story and got points" is a story worth telling.

Take it further with Shopify Flow

Story mentions are just the trigger. What happens next is up to you.

Joy connects natively with Shopify Flow, which means the moment a customer mentions you and earns points, you can chain additional actions: send them a personalized Instagram DM, reply to their comment, trigger an email sequence, tag them in your CRM. The mention becomes the start of a workflow — not the end of one.

A customer tags you in a story → earns points → gets a DM: "We saw your story 🙌 You just earned 50 points. You're 100 away from a free product."

That's not a loyalty program. That's a relationship.

One thing to know: For Joy to credit points to the right customer when they mention you, their Instagram username needs to be on file — collected via Joy's loyalty widget or social login flow. The mention is still detected either way, but points can only be assigned once the username is matched to a loyalty account. The good news: your other Instagram automations (auto-replies, DMs via Shopify Flow) work independently of this and require no extra setup.

How it works

Connect your Instagram Business account to Joy under Integrations → Instagram. Then enable the Instagram Story Mention earning program, set the points reward, and you're done.

When a customer posts a Story tagging your account, Joy detects the mention via Instagram's API and credits their loyalty account automatically. They don't need to do anything extra. You don't need to check anything.

You can set daily limits per customer, restrict to members only, or stack it with other earning programs — it's all configurable.

Available on Advanced and Enterprise plans. Requires an Instagram Business account connected to Joy.