Introduction
Referrals are a great way to expand your reach and grow your customer base. This article will go over how referrals work from the perspective of a customer at your store.
Overview
The Referral Flow
In Smile, the referral flow is simple.
1. Your Customer Advocate (customer A) refers their friend (customer B) by sending them their referral URL.
2. When customer B clicks on the URL, they should see a prompt for them to enter their email address. When customer B enters their email address, the 'Friend' reward will be sent to them via email.
From the email, Customer B will be able to copy their coupon code and use it in an order:
3. If customer B then goes on to make a purchase, customer A will get their reward.
Note that the friend does not need to create an account, nor use the friend reward that they redeemed in order to complete the referral. They would just have to make a purchase!
Sending referrals from the customer panel
With a Smile referral program, your customers are encouraged to share their referrals from directly within the customer panel. By default the sharing options are Facebook, X, and email.
Advocates can also copy and paste their referral url and send it to friends and family wherever they like.
📋 Note: If a customer has checked out as a guest before, or entered their email in any capacity they will not be able to use the referral link (as they will already have an email associated with their name) and will therefore not be eligible.
Sending referrals from the post-purchase order confirmation page
✅ The Guest referral nudge is only available for merchants using the Shopify platform and has the program participation set to allow guest participation.
✅ The Referral nudge is only available for merchants using the Shopify platform and on the Growth plan and up.
If you have Program participation set to allow guest shoppers to participate in the rewards program - customers without accounts will be able to share their referral links through the post-purchase nudge on the 'Thank you' page:
If you are on the Growth plan and up and have the referral sharing nudge enabled, customers with accounts will be able to share their referral links through the post-purchase nudge on the 'Thank you' page:
✅ BigCommerce users: Smile completes referrals based on the first order made by the referred friend. BigCommerce will create duplicate orders and only complete the second one if the customer navigates away from billing, either to go back in the checkout flow or even if payment is declined. As a result of this, the first order does not complete and will be considered an 'Incomplete' order. Smile won't be able to complete the referral because of this. If this edge case occurs we recommend manually awarding the advocate with the advocate reward.
What's next?
Referral program overview
Learn more