Referral Programs
A Referral Program allows customers to earn promotional reward credits for future purchases by referring friends/family to your site.
It is s a way to incentivize your customers to recommend your products to their family and friends.
- In the Chord OMS, navigate to Promotion/Promotion Categories.
- Click Promotions / Promotion Categories / New Promotion Category
- Name it P2P Referral in both fields and click Create
Now that your category has been created, let's create a new promotion
- In the Name field, enter Referral.
- Choose P2P Referral from the Promotion Category dropdown.
- Select Apply to all orders and click Create.
- In the Discount Rules dropdown, choose Referral.
- Select Match all of these rules.
- Click Add.
- In the Adjustment Type dropdown, pick Create per-line item adjustment and click Add.
- Your promotion is now set up!
To easily track the Referrer User ID, check the Order Completed event in your Segment Powered by Chord application. If you go to the Debugger in your Sources Backend Production, you can find out who referred an order.
This video creates a promotion for 10% off but you can select any adjustment of your choice
If you have multiple Stores, click the Discount Rules dropdown again, select Store, and type in the name of your store: ex: Chord.
Now that you have created the discount that will be applied to the customers (aka Referees) using the shared link, let's create a Referral Credit Amount for the person sharing the link (aka Referrer)
Navigate to Settings - Store, and under the Environment Variables table, scroll down, and let's provide the following values:
REFERRAL_CREDIT_AMOUNT: Give 10 (for $10) to the Referrer and click the + sign to save your changes.
In our example above, we provided a $10 store credit to the Referrer when a referee places an order, but it is entirely up to you which amount you want to reward your Referrers.
How does the referral work, where can the customers see the referral link?
When a customer places an order, on the Order Confirmation Page they can see the Refer a Friend widget
The customer, also known as the Referrer, can share that link to friends and family.
The Referrer may earn a Referrer Discount or Store Credit toward future purchases if a Referred Customer clicks on the Referrer’s Referral Link, and places an order on your site.
Will the Referrer receive an email when a Referee, or Referred Customer purchases our products?
Yes, in addition to the Refer a friend widget on your confirmation page, you can also send our Referral Prompt email. The email is part of our SDK and can be customized to your needs- A copy of that template can be found under Emails in Contentful.
Once the template Referral Prompt email has been customized for your Store you can also configured when you want it to be triggered
The email send date configurable in the OMS - Navigate to Settings - Store and under Environment Variables scroll down to enter the following:
REFERRAL_MAILER_DELIVERY_DELAY and let's add 330 and click the + sign to save your changes In this example the Tell your friends about us will be sent 330 minutes (5.5 hours) after an order is placed
This is a copy of the email template Tell your Friends about us
Can the referral link be passed through to my Email Marketing service downstream (i.e. Klaviyo, Iterable etc.), so all referral-related emails live with my transactional emails?
Yes, Chord's CDP layer, powered by Segment, allows for the auto-generated referral link , generated post order completion, to be passed through the CDP layer and re-routed to any downstream destination, including an email marketing solution like Klaviyo or Iterable.
Each Order Completed event that is triggered by the Chord OMS Back-End source, includes a purl_link attribute representing the auto-generated referral link, which then can be passed through to your configured email marketing solution destination (Klaviyo used for example purposes).
In Chord's CDP layer, powered by Segment, in your Backend Source --> Debugger --> Order Completed
Without the purl_link value properly passed through the Chord CDP layer, your email marketing service will not be able to pass this value into a template dynamically.
In Klaviyo, create a new Flow from scratch that will listen for the Order Completed event and will trigger a corresonding email.
Click Flows
Select From Scratch
Name your flow and click Create Flow
Click on Metrics
Under What action will trigger this flow? dropdown select Order Completed and click Done
Click Email and drag it above Exit
Click on Email Subject card
select Configure Event and Drag and Drop and click Done
Select a previously created template or create a new one:
Use Template and confirm that that the template is correctly pulling through the purl_link variable by clicking on Preview & Test
The link is present and visible in the template and ready to be sent to your customers
Verify the template in your inbox and is ready to be used!
When would the Referred Customer or Referee know that a discount will be applied to their order?
A link will display at the top of the browser letting the referred customer (aka the Referee) know that a promotion will be applied.
Will the discount be automatically applied to the order during that same session?
Both discounts, the Referrer and the Referee will be granted instantly (the order needs to be completed/validated for the referrer to receive the discount)
Is the link valid for multiple uses?
Is the link and is valid for one-time use only.
What are the rules for validating the discount? When is the eligibility check conducted?
There are two types of eligibility checks; referrer and referee
For the referrer, before store credit is awarded, the system will check the following rules for the discount to be applied:
- Has the credit card been used before?
- Has the shipping address been used before?
- Is it a first order?
- [optional and configurable] Has the referrer reached the annual limit for store credit?
For the referee, it’s more complicated. If the customer is logged in, the discount isn’t applied automatically if the logged in account has been associated with previous order(s). For non-logged-in orders, the discount can be removed after checkout if the system detects a previous purchase.
By default, no action is taken. In early 2022, the discount will be removed in checkout after the email address is captured and the system determines the customer isn’t eligible for a first-purchase discount.
If the user is not eligible to receive the discount - how and where are they notified?
If the user is logged in, the promotion will be returned as “ineligible” and the frontend can display a message.
For non-logged in users, it would be possible to display a message on the order confirmation page (today), and in the future, the eligibility check will happen during checkout with all the associated error messages.
Is there a limit we can set to limit the number of referrals?
Yes, you can set the limit in the OMS. Navigate to Settings --> Store, select your Store and scroll down to Environment Variables. Add REFERRAL_ANNUAL_LIMIT and the Value is the number you want to limit to be: In the example below we limit are referral to 5.
Can we reward only with Store Credit as a flat amount, or can it be a a % of sales?
It’s a flat rate right now. % of sales is an interesting idea and something we can look into. What did you have in mind?
If the referee ends up returning their product, is the store credit retracted?
Not at this time. Our recommendation is to look out for fraudulent activity - If you were to see weird behavior, we suggest you invalidate the credit which you can find in the OMS under Users
if you have any questions or need help, please reach out to us at [email protected]