Emma Lewisham runs a store credit cashback campaign with Elephant Room

AUCKLAND — Emma Lewisham, the B Corp certified New Zealand skincare brand, ran a ten-day cashback campaign this August that gave customers 20% back as store credit rather than 20% off at checkout.

The campaign ran from 14 to 24 August 2026 and was built with Elephant Room, the Klaviyo agency and Shopify Build Award winner, on Giftnote store credit, Shopify Flow and Klaviyo.

The brand

Emma Lewisham makes what it calls "beauty with intelligence" — scientifically active natural skincare, formulated around the skin rather than around a single hero ingredient, and free from fillers, artificial colours, synthetic fragrances and preservatives.

The credentials are unusually serious for the category. The brand is B Corp certified, Climate Positive certified at product level and PETA Cruelty Free, and its science has been recognised by Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry Dr Peter Agre, with the brand's environmental work endorsed by Dr Jane Goodall.

Every product is refillable through the Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle take-back programme, a circular model the brand says can cut carbon emissions by up to 70%.

That last detail matters for what follows. This is a brand built entirely around customers coming back.

Why cashback rather than a discount

A discount and a cashback offer of the same percentage cost roughly the same money and do completely different things.

A discount closes one order and then trains the customer to wait for the next sale. Worse, for a brand whose whole model is refills and repeat purchase, a recurring discount quietly resets the price the customer believes your product is worth.

Store credit does the opposite. The customer pays full price today, which protects the brand's positioning, and receives value that can only be redeemed by coming back. One promotion buys two orders instead of one.

The mechanic

The campaign was deliberately simple from the customer's side.

The 90-day expiry is the part worth copying. Store credit with no expiry becomes a liability that sits on the balance sheet and never converts. A defined window turns it into a reason to come back inside a quarter, which for a skincare brand lines up neatly with the point a customer runs low on the product they just bought.

How it was built

Three systems, each doing one job.

Giftnote issued the store credit. Shopify Flow handled the trigger, evaluating each qualifying order against the market minimum and firing the credit issue without anyone touching it. Klaviyo carried the communication, telling customers the credit existed, what it was worth and when it expired.

Elephant Room built the campaign end to end. As a Klaviyo agency, the lifecycle side was theirs by default, and the store credit mechanic sat naturally alongside it.

The automation matters more than it sounds. A cashback campaign run manually means someone reconciling qualifying orders and issuing credit by hand, which caps the campaign at whatever volume that person can process. Automated, it scales to whatever the campaign does.

Why this suits a refillable brand in particular

Most promotions fight against a brand's own economics. This one runs with them.

Emma Lewisham's customers are supposed to come back, because the products are designed to be refilled rather than replaced. A mechanic that rewards the first purchase with credit toward the second is simply the brand's own model expressed as a promotion.

For any brand with a genuine repeat-purchase rhythm — skincare, supplements, coffee, pet food — the same logic applies. The question is not whether to discount, it is whether the incentive lands on the order you already had or the order you want next.

About Emma Lewisham

Emma Lewisham is a New Zealand natural skincare brand making scientifically active, refillable products across cleansers, serums, moisturisers, oils, masks, exfoliants and SPF. It is B Corp certified, Climate Positive certified at product level and PETA Cruelty Free, and runs the Emma Lewisham Beauty Circle refill and take-back programme.

About Elephant Room

Elephant Room is a Klaviyo agency and Shopify Build Award winner, working with brands on retention, lifecycle marketing and campaign builds. Elephant Room designed and implemented the Emma Lewisham cashback campaign.

About Giftnote

Giftnote is the gifting and store credit platform for Shopify brands, powering gift messaging, digital gift cards, store credit and multi-recipient corporate gifting for over a thousand merchants, with recipient and customer data flowing directly into Klaviyo, Attentive and Yotpo.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Emma Lewisham cashback campaign?

A ten-day campaign from 14 to 24 August 2026 in which customers spending above a market minimum received 20% of that spend back as store credit, valid for 90 days.

Why use store credit instead of a discount?

A discount reduces the value of the order you already have and trains customers to wait for the next sale. Store credit keeps the first order at full price and creates a reason to return, so one promotion drives two purchases.

How do you issue store credit automatically on Shopify?

Use Shopify Flow to evaluate qualifying orders against your campaign rules and trigger the credit issue, with a store credit platform such as Giftnote handling the issuing and balance. No manual reconciliation is required.

Should store credit have an expiry date?

Yes, in most cases. Credit with no expiry tends to sit unredeemed as an open liability. Emma Lewisham used 90 days, which is long enough to feel generous and short enough to prompt a return within the quarter.

What kind of brands does cashback suit best?

Brands with a genuine repeat-purchase rhythm — skincare, supplements, coffee, pet food — where the second purchase is expected anyway and the incentive is better spent pulling it forward than discounting the first.

Which agency built the campaign?

Elephant Room, a Klaviyo agency and Shopify Build Award winner, designed and implemented it on Giftnote store credit, Shopify Flow and Klaviyo.