How to Set Up Newsletter Rewards

Newsletter rewards pay your subscribers a small amount of Bitcoin every time they answer a poll in your newsletter. It turns a passive open into an action, and it gives you a real engagement signal on every send — not just an open rate.

Rewards land in the subscriber's balance within about a minute of them answering. There's no claim step and no code to redeem.

If you haven't set that up yet, start with How to connect Beehiiv and come back here afterwards.

Step 1: Navigate to Newsletter Rewards

From your merchant dashboard, go to Loyalty Program and select the Newsletter tab. This is where you set how much a poll response is worth and switch the program on.

If the Newsletter tab isn't there, Newsletter Rewards hasn't been enabled on your account yet — contact Oshi support.

Step 2: Choose a Reward Mode

You have two options, shown as a toggle at the top of the Survey Response Submitted card.

Fixed Amount pays every subscriber the same number of sats for every poll they answer. It's predictable, easy to budget, and the right starting point for most publications.

Tiered Rewards pays more as a subscriber answers more polls over time. A reader on their tenth poll can earn several times what a first-time responder earns, which rewards the habit rather than the one-off click.

Switching between modes saves immediately.

Step 3: Set Your Amount (Fixed Mode)

Enter the number of sats a subscriber earns per poll response and click Save Changes.

Most publications start somewhere between 100 and 1,000 sats per response. Work backwards from your list size: a 5,000-person list with a 20% poll response rate and a 500 sat reward costs roughly 500,000 sats per send.

Step 4: Build Your Tiers (Tiered Mode)

Click Edit Tiers to open the tier editor. Each tier has three fields:

• Tier Name — what the level is called (Bronze, Silver, Gold, or anything you like)
• Polls Required — how many polls the subscriber must have already answered to reach this tier
• Sats Reward — what they earn per response once they're in this tier

A subscriber always earns at the highest tier they qualify for, based on how many polls they've answered with your publication so far.

There are two rules the editor enforces:

• Your first tier must have 0 polls required. This is the base tier, and it catches every subscriber answering their first poll.
• The base tier is locked while other tiers exist. You can't delete it or change its threshold until you've removed the tiers above it. Its sats amount can be changed anytime.

A typical ladder looks like this:

Under that setup, a subscriber earns 200 sats for each of their first five responses, 500 for the next ten, and 1,000 from their sixteenth response onward.

Step 5: Activate the Program

Scroll to Newsletter Rewards Program Status and toggle it to Active.

Until you do this, Oshi records nothing — poll responses come in and no rewards are issued. A red banner at the top of the page warns you whenever the program is connected but inactive.

Step 6: Fund Your Rewards Balance

Newsletter rewards are paid from your Oshi rewards balance, the same balance that funds purchase rewards.

Estimate your per-send cost before you activate: your list size, times your expected poll response rate, times your reward amount.

What Your Subscribers Receive

When a subscriber answers a poll, three things happen:

1. The sats are credited to their rewards balance, usually within a minute.
2. They receive a reward email through whichever email provider you have connected — SendGrid, Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Oshi's built-in sending.
3. A Newsletter Rewards card appears in their rewards portal showing what they've earned and their progress toward unlocking it.

The Email Preview panel on the right side of the Newsletter page shows roughly what that email looks like with your logo and cover image.

To send subscribers straight to that portal from inside your newsletter, add the rewards card to your Beehiiv template — there's a ready-to-paste HTML block in How to connect Beehiiv. It uses Beehiiv's {{subscription_uuid}} merge tag so each reader lands in their own account without signing in.

Rewarding People Who Aren't Customers Yet

Subscribers don't need an existing Oshi account. If someone on your list has never bought from you, answering a poll creates a rewards account for them automatically using their newsletter email address.

This is what makes newsletter rewards an acquisition channel and not just a retention one — you're building a balance for a reader who hasn't purchased yet, and that balance is only useful to them if they do. See Understanding newsletter reward unlocks for how that plays out.

Built-In Safeguards

A few rules run automatically:

• One reward per poll response. A subscriber can't earn twice for the same answer, even if the webhook fires more than once.
• Polls expire. By default, only polls created in the last 24 hours pay out. See How to configure newsletter poll rules to change this.
• Deactivating stops payouts immediately. Any response waiting to be processed when you switch the program off is skipped, not queued.

What's Next

• Configure newsletter poll rules — Set custom time windows and reward amounts for individual polls.
• Understand newsletter reward unlocks — Learn how subscribers unlock and withdraw what they've earned.
• Fund your rewards balance — Make sure your account can cover every send.
• Connect Beehiiv — Review the API key, publication ID, and automation setup.