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A-Z Glossary of commonly used terms
A-Z Glossary of commonly used terms
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Written by Adam
Updated over a week ago

Advocate: An individual who has been enrolled into your referral program. This individual is sent a unique referral link to share with their friends. An Advocate can also be a customer and/or a Referred Friend.


Campaign Status: There are two (2) campaign statuses in your referral program:

  • Active: Referrals are tracked and rewarded. New Advocates can be enrolled in the program.

  • Inactive: Customers can’t refer friends to your store. Your store stops getting new Advocates.

Commission: The percentage of the final invoice amount of the referred purchase that ReferralCandy takes as a fee for facilitating that referred purchase.


Customer: An individual who has made a purchase from you store (that ReferralCandy is aware about). A customer can also be an Advocate and a Referred Friend.


Dashboard: The interface that you see when you login to your ReferralCandy account. It provides information about your referral program along with the various details of the friend offer, referral reward, emails & pages, integration, and payment details.

Emails (sent by ReferralCandy): There are three (3) main types of emails that are sent out by ReferralCandy to Advocates as part of your referral program:

  • Invite Email: Invite emails are sent out to individuals to invite them to participate in your referral program, at which point they become Advocates. They are sent automatically after customers make a purchase at your store. You can also manually send out invite emails via the Import Contacts tool.

    • Post-purchase Invite Email - sent to customers after a purchase is made.

    • Self-signup Invite Email - sent to customers after signing up for your referral program via widgets or the Join Page.

  • Reminder Email: Reminder emails are sent to advocates at fixed intervals (from 1 to 12 weeks frequency, and it can also be switched off) to update them on the latest offerings from your referral program and to keep your business top of mind.

  • Reward Emails: There are three (3) types of reward emails:

    • Ineligible Reward Email - sent to Advocates when a referral they made that was pending review is cancelled or the associated purchase was returned.

    • Pending Reward Email - sent to Advocates when a purchase is made at your store through the Advocate's referral link, but has yet to meet all the requirements required to earn a referral reward. Meeting these requirements might mean waiting for the referred purchase review period to be over and/or accumulating a minimum number of referrals before a referral reward is paid out.

    • Successful Reward Email - sent to Advocates when a referral they made becomes eligible for a referral reward.

    Note: You are able to edit the subject, content, HTML & CSS of each email template.

Email Addresses: There are three (3) email address settings in your referral program:

  • Admin Email Address - the email address that ReferralCandy sends various administrative alerts or emails to. This includes invoice emails, coupon expiry alerts etc. You can find this setting in Profile > My Profile.

  • Login Email - the email address that you use to log in to your ReferralCandy account. You can find this setting in My Store > Store Settings.

  • Sent-From Email Address - the email address from which automated referral program emails will appear to be sent from. It is recommended to use an email address with your store's domain to reduce the likelihood of emails being marked as spam. You can find this setting in Campaigns > Settings.

Friend Offer: The friend offer is an incentive that you can offer to a referred friend to encourage them to make a purchase at your store.

Integrations: The process of connecting your online store to ReferralCandy so that referral activities and transactions can be tracked. There are three (3) main types of integration:

  • API Integration - integrates your store with ReferralCandy to efficiently exchange referred purchases and transactions data. This is highly customizable and requires programming experience to set up.

  • Email Integration - forwards invoice emails from purchases completed by your customers to ReferralCandy. The information in the invoice emails will be scanned, tracked, and reported into your ReferralCandy account. This is the simplest and easiest way to integrate, and is popular with most merchants.

  • JavaScript Integration - uses a JavaScript code to track purchases. The code is inserted onto your store's purchase completed page, and can also be applied to the Post-Purchase Popup widget. This tracks purchases more accurately than Email Integration, and requires programming experience to set up.

Import Contacts tool: This tool is accessible via your ReferralCandy dashboard, and is used to manually send referral invite emails to past customers. You can add customers individually, by batch through a CSV upload, or by importing from Mailchimp.

Invoice Email Statuses (emails sent to ReferralCandy): There are five (5) different statuses for invoice emails that get sent to ReferralCandy as part of the Email Integration:

  • Unprocessed - system has received the email but relevant information has not been extracted yet.

  • Processed - relevant information has been extracted from the email.

  • Pending Review - system has received the email and an engineer will be looking into it to extract relevant information from the email.

  • Missing Information - a ReferralCandy support engineer has flagged the email as lacking relevant information. We will contact you if any action is required on your part to correct this.

  • Ignored - a ReferralCandy support engineer has set the system to ignore the email as it is likely not an invoice email.

  • Dropped - system automatically dropped this email because it was received while your campaign was stopped.

Minimum Purchase Amount: The smallest purchase amount a referred friend has to make for the Advocate to be eligible for the referral reward.

Minimum Usage Fee: The base amount that is charged for the use of ReferralCandy on a monthly basis, unless the accumulated commission for the month exceeds this amount, in which case the accumulated commission is the amount that is charged.

Pages: There are two (2) types of pages that are offered as part of your referral program:

  • Landing Page: This is the landing page that potential customers see when they click the referral link sent to them by Advocates. If there is a friend offer, the landing page will contain the coupon code (that you have defined) for potential customers to use at your store and obtain the associated incentive on a qualified purchase (subject to your conditions).

  • ReferralCandy Portal: A combination of three pages hosted by ReferralCandy for your Advocates where they are able to: (i) log in to view the current friend offer or referral reward offered by your store via the Portal Access Page; (ii) share their unique referral link with friends via email and/or social media at the Portal Sharing Page; and (iii) view their referral activity history at their Portal Rewards Page. You can configure access to the ReferralCandy Portal for:

    • Existing Advocates + new signups; or

    • Existing Advocates ONLY

    Note: You are able to edit the content, HTML & CSS of each page template

Referral Link: The mechanism by which the referral activity is tracked between Advocates and their friends. It is a unique link given to each Advocate when they are enrolled in your referral program. When a Advocate's friend clicks on the referral link, the Referred Friend will be brought to a landing page which shows the coupon code (friend offer) that can be used at your store.

Referral Report: A report that shows the activity summary and key metrics of your referral program for the past 30 days.

Referral Reward: The referral reward is an incentive that you can offer to Advocates to encourage them to share their unique referral link with their friends. When a Referred Friend makes a qualified purchase after clicking the Advocate's unique referral link, the Advocate will be eligible for the referral reward (subject to your conditions).

Referral Tracking Code: The tracking code is a snippet of JavaScript that needs to be inserted on the purchase completed page of your website as part of the integration process with ReferralCandy. Along with the referral link, it enables ReferralCandy to track and identify successful referred purchases.

Referred Friend: An individual who the system detected was referred by an Advocate.

Referred Purchase: A purchase that is made by a Referred Friend using an Advocate's referral link, that passes fraud prevention measures and meets the criteria (minimum purchase amount, X number of purchases by referred friend) set by the merchant (see related 'Rewardable Referred Purchase' entry below).

Referred Purchase Review Period: The review period after the referred purchase, during which earned referral rewards are placed on hold. During this review period, you can mark a referred purchase as invalid or cancelled. After this review period, eligible Advocates who have made successful referrals are sent their referral rewards. The length of the review period is set by you and typically corresponds with the time period on your return policy (if applicable).

Rewardable Referred Purchase: A referred purchase (see 'Referred purchase' above) whose referred purchase review period is over, and now counts towards a reward.

Set-Up Wizard: A sequence of dialog boxes and pages that guides you through a series of well-defined steps to set up your referral program. The term "Wizard" was originally derived from the term "Windowed Interactive Setup Assistance Dialog" (WISAD). Cool, huh?

Social Media Messages:
Social media messages are the default messages (Twitter & Facebook) that Advocates see when they click on the Twitter or Facebook sharing buttons from their invite email or Portal Sharing Page. You are able edit the default message to align with your store's branding. Advocates are also able to personalize their message before sharing it with their friends.

Widgets: Widgets are free additional features that you can enable to improve your Advocates' user experience and increase the effectiveness of your referral program.

  • Embedded Signup: A social sharing panel that can be embedded in your customers' user account page. This allows your customers to directly send the referral link to their friends via email, Twitter or Facebook.

  • Post-Purchase Popup: A feature that shows a social sharing panel popup immediately after your customers make a purchase at your store. This allows your customers to directly send the referral link to their friends via email, Twitter, or Facebook.

  • Referral Widget: A floating widget at the bottom of your page that can be embedded on your front page or any page you choose. This allows individuals to click through to the ReferralCandy Portal Access Page where they can sign up for your referral program, enrolling them as Advocates.


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