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
- Referrals are available to Pro and Custom merchants as part of the Retain package.
Key features
Reward your loyal customers
Create and manage robust referral programs using the Recharge flow canvas that encourages your existing customers to advertise 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 their referrals with credits, which are automatically issued into 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: Reward existing customers when someone uses their referral 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.
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 experience 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 experience. If a new customer does not use an email address at the checkout, the Referral experience does not trigger, and a Recharge customer is not created. |
| One-time customers |
Referrals work for both subscribers and one-time customers. See Can one-time customers use Referrals? for more information. |
