Free shipping and early access are not a membership. They were in 2016, when almost nobody charged for a relationship. Charge $99 a year for that same bundle in 2026 and you will get polite indifference and a brutal renewal rate.
Look at what a working version costs and does. Target Circle 360 runs $99 a year and helped drive same-day delivery up 35% year over year, with 13 million members joining Circle since launch. The lesson is not the price point. It is that the benefits were operational rather than promotional. Membership changed how the company delivered, not just what it discounted.
You have 3 mechanics available now that did not exist in the original playbook. A members-only AI concierge that knows the order history and answers in your brand's voice, so service stops being a queue. Consent-first replenishment, where the customer approves a suggested reorder instead of getting billed by a subscription they forgot about. And member pricing that follows the shopper into your store, because the same customer record sets the price at the register.
On your side that is a subscriptions app for the fee, native store credit for any monthly balance, a Functions rule for member pricing, and POS for the in-person half. None of it is exotic. The hard part is deciding what a member gets that a non-member genuinely cannot buy.
The honest catch: a paid membership is a promise with a renewal date attached. Every benefit becomes a service level you owe forever, and churn shows up in a way loyalty points never did. If fulfillment is inconsistent today, a membership converts a shipping complaint into a refund demand, because the customer paid for reliability specifically. Fix operations before you sell the promise, or the program will audit you in public.
Pricing the membership is not the difficult decision. Deciding what you are willing to guarantee for 12 months is.
