Getting started with Referrals
Leverage word-of-mouth marketing to help scale your business and attract new customers. Use Recharge to build enticing referral programs, encouraging your current customers to share their favorite products with their favorite people. You can offer referrals on both one-time and subscription products.
This guide explains the benefits of using referrals, use cases, and things to consider when implementing a Referral program.
- Shopify Checkout Integration
- Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration
Before you start
- This feature is available through Rewards. Access to Rewards depends on your plan. Check the Loyalty tab in your merchant portal to confirm whether this feature is available in your store.
Key features
Reward your loyal customers
Create and manage robust referral programs using the Recharge flow canvas to encourage your existing customers to promote your brand on your behalf.
Provide your customer advocates with referral links they can share with their friends and family. Advocates receive credit back to use on future purchases, and new customers receive a discount on their first order, whether it’s a one-time or recurring purchase.
Seamlessly integrates with your existing tech stack
Referrals integrate seamlessly with your Affinity customer portal and Recharge Credits.
- Affinity customer portal: Subscribers can access their referral links right in the customer portal, without you having to do any custom coding or your customers having to log in to any additional places.
- Recharge Credits: Reward customers for referrals with credits that are automatically added to their existing credit balance. This further helps enforce retention while increasing engagement.
Pre-built templates
Recharge offers the following pre-built templates so you can easily implement a referral program:
- Incentivize friends program: Allow customers to provide referral links to their friends, who receive a discount on their first checkout order.
- Reward advocates: Offer a fixed credit reward to advocates when someone shops through their link.
- Send reminder to friends: Remind existing customers to refer their friends using their referral code.
- Referral after checkout: Display a referral link on the Thank You page after a customer completes a one-time or subscription purchase at checkout. This encourages customers to refer friends by offering reward incentives for their next purchase.
- Refer friends in the customer portal: Update Referrals related translations shown in the customer portal.
Use cases
Review the following use cases to understand how other merchants are using credits to improve key metrics such as customer retention and LTV:
Use case |
Benefit |
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A meal company rewards customers for referring their friends. The store provides the referral link to existing customers in the Affinity customer portal to make it easy for customers to participate in the referral program. When a referral signs up they receive a discount, and the existing customer gets a credit towards their next purchase, which is added to any existing credit balance they may have. |
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| A beauty subscription box incentivizes new customers to refer their friends and family with referral links available immediately after they check out. If a customer shares the link and a friend subscribes they receive credits to use towards future purchases. |
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Set-up instructions
See How to set up a referral program for detailed set-up instructions.
Considerations
Conisder the following when using Referrals:
Consideration |
Note |
| Javascript SDK |
You can use the Javascript SDK to retrieve Referrals information. See Referrals Info for more details. Additionally, use the Credits reference to display earned credits to advocates. |
| Fraud prevention |
The Incentivize friends Landing page collects the friend's contact information before they can claim the referral offer. This process ensures that Recharge checks for matching email addresses between the friend and advocate before allowing the friend to check out with the referral discount. The Landing page is the recommended method to offer your referral incentive. The Incentivize friends storefront modal collects friend information at the checkout, which does not prevent self-referrals during friend discount redemption. However, when the Reward advocates flow triggers, it verifies the friend’s email against the advocate’s email. If they match exactly, the flow does not execute, and the reward fails. |
| Customer emails | Customers must provide their email addresses to trigger the Referrals flow. If a new customer does not use an email address at the checkout, the Referral flow does not trigger, and a Recharge customer is not created. |
rc_referral_link |
You may need to backfill your Klaviyo data to use the rc_referral_link custom property. |
| One-time customers |
Referrals work for both subscribers and one-time customers. See Can one-time customers use Referrals? for more information. |
| Updating existing referral flows |
You cannot update an flow after activating it. If you need to make changes to the flow, you must:
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| Editing Referral links | Referral links are generated at account creation and cannot be edited. As a workaround, customers should checkout with a different email to create a new account and receive a new referral link. |
