REC & REC+

Refer-a-friend allows customers to send a coupon to friends to encourage them to buy from your website. This can be time-limited and targeted to customer groupings e.g. retail customers within certain delivery areas e.g. UK.

How It Works

• A customer buys a product (the customer is the 'referrer')
  
  
• The customer shares a referral coupon to a friend (the 'referee')
  The friend can only redeem the coupon if they have never previously placed an order, it will only work for brand new customers.
  
  
• The friend makes a purchase with the coupon discount applied
  
  
• The referrer then receives a separate referrer coupon as a reward via email which encourages them to make another purchase.
  
  Coupons are automatically assigned as being single use via the assignment rules. Once used, the assignment rule is deleted so a coupon cannot be used multiple times by either the referrer or referee. The share link will not work again for the same friend once they have placed their first order.

There are two places where the share link is available:

Logged in user account accessed via Preview User Area program

Clicking on Share gives the customer choices on how to share the URL with their friend(s).

The 2nd place is to add this to the checkout Thanks page so all customers who complete a purchase can refer-a-friend.

This is added as a link via the template system - your designer can assist with this.

Coupon Considerations

It is best to have 2 separate coupons set up for the referrer and the referee as this allows you to track each coupon and analyse how well the program is working.

You can use either lump sum (e.g. £10 off) or percentage discount coupons.

If using percentage discounts remember that if you are running other coupon schemes, such as Loyalty Coupons, then only the highest discount coupon will be applied at checkout. This is a safeguard to protect against giving away multiple discounts and impacting profitability. So to make sure the refer-a-friend coupons trump any others in play you would give them the highest percentage.

Multiple lump sum discounts can be applied during checkout.

Remember you can set coupon qualification rules such as 'Get £10 off your next purchase over £100 when you refer a friend'.

Examples

Here are some examples of schemes by major retailers.

Lump sum discount	Percentage discount	Lump sum with qualifying spend

How To Setup Refer-a-friend

This is a 4-step process:

1. Set up the coupons to be used for the discounts in Admin > Coupon Manager
   
   This is the same as setting up a normal coupon but in addition you should also select the countries to which this coupon applies within the coupon setup, plus the Smart Type e.g. Retail (ungrouped users).
   
   
   Do not assign the coupons - the system will automatically create the assignments for each qualifying customer. The coupons themselves will be set up with unlimited uses but the assignments will be treated as single use instead and removed after each use. Coupons auto-apply once a user logs in during the checkout process.
   
   
   
2. Go to Admin > Refer-a-friend System and complete the required fields:

• Enable (or disable) the coupons
• Set which coupon it uses (as set up in step 1) for the friend (User 1) and customer making the referral (User 2)
• Set the number of days the coupon can be used for (default to 30 days)
• Set which countries this applies to
• Set a filter for which group/smart-type it applies to - for example you can restrict it to retail only
• Set the content to be displayed to the friend and also in the user account area for the referring customer.

3. Set up the Refer-a-friend email task

The referrer receives a coupon as a reward via email when their friend makes a purchase, which encourages the original  customer to make another purchase.

Set up a page* or template holding the content which will be included in the email that goes out to the referrer when their friend has made a purchase.
Available tags to include in the content with the referrer's coupon code.
{{coupon_code}} 
{{coupon_end_date}}     (how long the coupon lasts for)

*Note: When setting up the page make sure to tick the field 'Use template tags in page content' which is under the box where you enter your content.

In Email Tasks set up a new task event: 'Refer A Friend Complete Order
Select the page / template content to use in the email and optionally include the above tags

Select the user groups who qualify. For Retail consumers tick 'Ungrouped'

Select the  countries for which the coupon will work.

There is no time delay needed.

'Replace' field is left unticked.

4. Add the refer-a-friend sharing link on the checkout Thanks page & email notifications

This can also be added to the checkout Thanks page so all customers who complete a purchase can refer-a-friend. This is added as a link via the template system ( /customer_home.php?p=refer_a_friend) your designer can assist with this plus other relevant order notification emails that go out to the same groups that qualify for the scheme:

• Order confirmation
• Order updates
• Product reviews
• Anniversary emails
• Loyalty coupon reminders

REPORTING

Order Manager

To see which orders came from referrals, the traffic column will show 'F' for a Friend referral

Reports

Run Order Information Report > Traffic Sources > Friend

Coupon stats
Go into Coupon Manager and click Report for the 2 coupons you have set up for the referee and the referrer

Analytics
In Google Analytics you can track the URL parameter ?friendref=

MARKETING

Update your terms and conditions to cover the refer-a-friend scheme.

Advertise the refer-a-friend scheme:

• On your website
• On social media
• In email marketing
• On Google My Business
• In text ad extensions
• In printed material sent out with orders 

FUTURE IDEAS

Report of users making the most referrals who could potentially become influencers / trade customers.