What is a Referral Program?

A referral program bridges the gap between your loyal customers and their networks, enabling satisfied clients to introduce friends and family to your business. This helps you expand your reach and build relationships with new, potential customers.

A referral program drives organic growth by encouraging current customers to bring in new ones, fostering word-of-mouth marketing. By rewarding both referrers and newcomers, it creates a win-win scenario that supports immediate and long-term expansion while building lasting relationships.

Step 1: Navigate to the Referrals section in More > Referrals to view the configuration page.

Step 2: The Referring Customer and Referred Customer Sections let you customize rewards, allowing either or both parties to earn points or receive discounts.

Step 3: Create a reward for both Referring customers and Referred friends by clicking "Add Reward" and specifying the desired points amount.

Step 4: Add a Customer Facing Label to describe the reward, which will be visible to customers on your store's loyalty widget.

Step 5: You can specify Auto Approval Days to determine the number of days after which rewards will be credited to your customers.

Note: If you decide to modify the default content, please ensure you do not alter the {{points}} token, as it is essential for accurately displaying the point amount in the widget.

Step 6: You can also offer discounts to both Referring customers and Referred friends by setting up various Redeem Rules to suit your customers' needs.

For more information about discount rules, please click here.

Step 7: In the next section, you can set the conditions under which the points or discounts you’ve configured will be applied to your customers.

Below are brief descriptions of each option:

The "When referred customer creates an account" option rewards customers when a new account is created at your store.

The "When referred customer visits the store" option rewards either the referring customer or the referred customer upon their store visit.

The "When referred customer makes any purchase" option lets you reward either the referring customer, the referred customer, or both, based on their purchase activity.

The latter three options require a few extra steps:

Note: To use the Purchase Subscription Product option, you'll need to have a subscription app installed in your store.

To view the Others page for other Referral Rules configurations, navigate to the Referrals section in More > Referrals > Others.

The above section, Allowance and Restrictions, is optional. You can use customer tags from the Customers section in your Shopify Admin to restrict/allow specific groups from this Referral Rule (e.g., New Customers, Wholesale Customers, Gold Members, etc.).

You can personalize the customer notification banner in the Notifications section to be displayed to your customers.

You can customize the Referral & Referred Note as well.

Lastly, you can Activate or Deactivate the status of your referral program.

When you’re finished, click the Update button. If you select the Activate status, your referral program will be activated.

To see how this referral program will appear to your customers, simply visit your storefront while logged into an account.

The widget will include a referral link section, allowing customers to easily copy and share their link to invite friends through any communication channel.

When friends use the referral link and you've set up a referring customer rule, your existing customers will earn the configured reward. Points will be added to their account, or they will receive a reward code via email linked to their store account.

If the reward is a discount code, it can be applied at the checkout page of your store before completing the purchase.