Hi, @midwestinkjet .
I understand this isn’t the news you are wanting to hear, but taking a look at potential apps, this doesn’t seem to be a feature that can even be done via an app. Additionally, you can always hire a developer to build a feature out for you via the Experts Marketplace, however I’m not sure that could even be done.
The reason why, is your request is extremely specific. Technically speaking, It requires the customer profiles to automatically connect to the shipping settings, which would also need to automatically connect to the checkout. There are a lot of moving parts that would need to coincide to create this feature, and for it to be custom developed for you by an Expert would be extremely expensive.
You could definitely speak to our live advisors to contact the third party shipping apps on your behalf to verify if this can be done, however it could potentially require you to change your plan to access these apps. If you change your current plan you would lose that plan forever as it’s a grandfathered plan.
Your best option in my opinion, would be to provide your customers with the coupon code, however without a price limit. You would need to email this to the specific customers and explain clearly that the shipping code can only be used for UPS ground and if the customer uses it for Expedited Shipping their order will be cancelled.
Another option is to change your loyalty strategy. As you mentioned above, this is a strategy you want to implement to give back to your loyal customers and increase their purchases. You could instead offer them discount codes, or loyalty points on their purchases, instead of shipping. There are tons of loyalty apps available that would allow you to provide this feature to your customers.
Lastly, you can reconsider your shipping strategy. (Please note, this strategy is only relevant if you are an online only business, if you have a brick and mortar the following will not work.) If you are online only, pivoting to free ground shipping is a fantastic marketing strategy. The trick is you would include the price of shipping into your product prices. This way you aren’t losing any revenue on your shipping as its already covered in the product price, and you can use the free shipping across the board as a great conversion strategy. It’s proven that customers are more inclined to pay a bit more money for the product and get free shipping then vice versa. However, this only works if you are online only, as you don’t want to increase your product prices in store.
