Customers go through different enrollment states depending on the target audience you set up for your campaign, and your customers' referral activities. There are multiple ways for your customers to join your referral program.

When a customer makes a purchase, signs up using a form, or is manually imported to a segment, they are automatically registered as a contact in your account. The contacts list serves as the basis for enrollment based on the configuration of your account's segments, and your campaign's target audience.

The example below shows enrollment when no segments are excluded. If a campaign excludes a segment, its members remain excluded even if they match one of the included segments shown here:

*Note: The Lifetime spend ≥ 0 segment, also known as All Contacts or All Customers, includes all contacts in your account from any registration type.

Contacts that were registered through signup or import, and have not yet made a purchase, are recognized by the system as having a spend value of $0.

Contact registration

Before customers are enrolled in your campaign, they must first register for your campaign through any of the following:

Purchase - Customers are automatically registered as contacts after making a purchase at your store.
Signup form - Customers can register for your campaign using the signup form on the join page or widgets for Shopify and other platforms.
Import contacts - As a merchant, you can manually register contacts using the import contacts tool when you create or edit a static segment. You can import contacts via a CSV file, email address, or Mailchimp.

How enrollment works

Set up your target audience

To enroll contacts, you must first create a segment and set it as your campaign's target audience. Contacts qualify for enrollment when they match an included segment and do not match any segment excluded from that campaign. Excluded segments take priority over included segments. There are two types of segments:

Static - Segments you manually import to a campaign.
Dynamic - Segments where contacts must meet the conditions to qualify:
- Lifetime spend - Based on the total amount spent by the customer at your store.
- Signup form submitted - All the contacts who signed up for a campaign using a signup form are automatically added to this segment.
- Signup approved - Contacts whose signup for a campaign has been approved. Used by campaigns that review signups before enrolling them, such as affiliate campaigns with signup approval.

Learn about segments and configuring your campaign's target audience here.

Advocate enrollment

When the campaign is live, contacts who meet its target audience criteria are automatically enrolled. A contact in an excluded segment does not qualify, even if they also match an included segment. These contacts become advocates for the campaign, and are assigned a unique referral link, which they can share with friends. Enrolled advocates can start referring friends.

Important: Campaign enrollment controls who becomes an advocate and when a customer receives a referral link.

Reward type and Reward conditions do not control enrollment. In ReferralCandy:

Reward type controls what the advocate earns (example: store credits, cash, amount off coupon, Buy X Get Y coupon).
Reward conditions control when or if the advocate earns that reward, based on the referred friend’s purchase (example: minimum purchase amount by friend, first purchase only, first X purchases, every purchase, max rewards per advocate).

Even if you change the reward type or reward conditions, that won’t change when someone becomes an advocate or receives a referral link. To control who gets a referral link, use your campaign’s target audience (segments) and enrollment settings.

Example: You can restrict when advocates earn rewards based on the referred friend’s purchase, but advocates still receive their referral link based on enrollment rules.

Once enrolled, a welcome email is sent to the advocate. To send out this email to successfully enrolled customers, the Welcome Email must be enabled on your campaign's Email Settings page. Learn more

Unqualified contacts

Contacts who have never enrolled and do not meet the campaign’s target audience criteria remain registered as contacts. This includes contacts who match an excluded segment.

Contacts and advocates

Contacts are all the customers participating in your referral program, whether they are enrolled or not enrolled in any campaign. Advocates are contacts that were successfully enrolled in any campaign.

Contacts (Account level) - When your customers make a purchase at your store, sign up for your campaign, or are imported to segments, they are automatically registered as contacts in your ReferralCandy account.

Advocates (Campaign level) - When your contacts qualify for the campaign’s target audience, including its exclusions, they are enrolled as advocates in your campaign. Unqualified contacts are not added to the advocates list, but remain in your contacts list.

Note: Not everyone in a campaign's advocates list is enrolled and able to refer friends. When an advocate no longer qualifies for the campaign’s target audience, including because they match an excluded segment, they are tagged as Unenrolled and won't be able to refer. See Enrollment states.

Enrollment states

States	Campaigns and segments	Can refer?
Enrolled	Contacts who qualify for the campaign’s target audience: they match an included segment and do not match an excluded segment. They are added to your campaign's advocates list, and are tagged as Enrolled.	✅ Yes. Enrolled contacts are able to share their referral link and refer friends.
Unenrolled	Contacts who were previously enrolled but no longer qualify for this campaign’s target audience, including contacts who now match an excluded segment. They are on your campaign's advocates list tagged as Unenrolled.	❌ No. Unenrolled contacts have a referral link, but they won't be able to refer friends.
Never enrolled	Contacts who have never enrolled in this campaign and do not qualify for its target audience upon purchase or signup, including its exclusions. They are not in this campaign’s advocates list. They are added only to your account's contacts list tagged as Unenrolled. Waitlisted contacts are considered never enrolled. Learn more	❌ No. Never enrolled contacts don't have a referral link yet, and so they won't be able to refer friends.

How is an advocate unenrolled?

An advocate is unenrolled when they previously qualified for a campaign but no longer meet its target audience criteria. This can happen when they join an excluded segment, even if they still belong to an included segment. To exclude only selected people, create a separate static exclusion segment.

For a group-wide change, consider a campaign whose only included segment requires $50 lifetime spend. If you raise that threshold to $100:

Your advocates who have less than $100 lifetime spend, and were previously enrolled in your campaign, are now tagged as Unenrolled.
The unenrolled advocates remain on your campaign's advocates list, but they won't be able to refer friends.
To qualify again, these advocates must reach $100 total spend and must not match an excluded segment. Once re-enrolled, they can continue referring their friends.

Waitlisted contacts

Contacts who have never enrolled and try to sign up without meeting the campaign’s target audience criteria, including its exclusions, will be marked as waitlisted for that campaign. These contacts remain waitlisted until they meet the target audience criteria of your campaign, at which point they’ll be enrolled.

Campaign enrollment FAQ

Can advocates be enrolled in multiple campaigns?

Yes. Each campaign has its own target audience, including exclusions. A contact can qualify for several campaigns, or be excluded from one while remaining eligible for another.

Can I automatically enroll all customers/site visitors who sign up for my campaign?

Yes. Use the Signup form submitted dynamic segment to target customers who register for your campaign via your referral program's join page or widgets that include a signup form, such as the following:

You can restrict the segment to customers who signed up since a specific date. Contacts in an excluded segment remain excluded even when they match this signup segment.

Can I turn off or disable waitlist for my campaign?

Yes, you can disable waitlists for specific widgets if you don’t want to show the signup option to customers who don’t meet your target audience criteria.

The waitlist feature allows customers outside your target audience to sign up for your campaign, but it doesn't automatically enroll them in your referral program unless you add the Signup form submitted segment to your target audience. Campaign exclusions still apply.

Learn how to turn waitlists on or off for the referral checkout extension (Shopify) or the post-purchase popup widget.

How do I email past customers or invite website visitors to join my referral program?

There are a couple of ways to invite past customers and website visitors to join your referral or affiliate program:

Import customers to a segment

Add past customers via email, Mailchimp lists, or CSV file using the import contacts tool. The contacts should be added to a static segment that you can set as a target audience for your campaign.

When the campaign is live, imported contacts in an included segment qualify for enrollment unless they also match an excluded segment. Newly enrolled contacts receive a welcome email with their referral link if that email is enabled.

Through newsletters using the advocate join page

Each ReferralCandy account comes with an advocate join page link. To invite people who are subscribed to your mailing list, include a link to your join page in your periodic newsletter to invite them to sign up for your campaign.

Include a link on your home page

To let your website visitors know about your referral or affiliate program, include a link to the advocate join page or Join block for Shopify on your home page. You can also use the embedded signup or the floating referral widget to embed a signup page on your website. See how other merchants did that here.

What happens to advocates who are enrolled in multiple campaigns?

Advocates earn rewards from eligible purchases made by their referred friends, subject to each campaign's reward conditions. Being enrolled in several campaigns does not make one purchase earn rewards in all of them. Here are some sample scenarios:

Note: The reward-count examples below assume one eligible referred purchase earns one reward, with the review period complete and all other campaign reward conditions met. A campaign that requires several purchases per reward or uses milestone tiers can produce a different reward count.

Scenario 1: The advocate is enrolled in 2 campaigns and refers 2 people, one for each campaign. Does the advocate get 2 rewards?

Yes, the advocate gets 2 rewards, 1 reward from each campaign. Because campaigns are independent and running in parallel, getting a reward in one campaign has no impact on getting a reward in another campaign.

Scenario 2: The advocate is enrolled in 2 campaigns and refers 1 friend. The friend tries to use referral links from 2 campaigns to make a purchase. Does the advocate get 2 rewards?

No, the advocate doesn’t get 2 rewards. A single purchase can only be referred by 1 person through 1 campaign. The referral detection system automatically detects and assigns which campaign the purchase was referred through.

Scenario 3: The advocate is enrolled in 2 campaigns and refers 1 friend. This friend makes 2 purchases, one for each campaign. Does the advocate get 2 rewards?

No. After making their first purchase, the referred friend is considered a registered contact in your account, and the advocate is ineligible to get rewarded for purchases made by the same friend through another campaign. A broad pre-requisite for all referred friends, is that they must be NEW customers (they must not exist within your ReferralCandy "Contacts" list)

Scenario 4: If an advocate is enrolled in 2 campaigns, could they potentially get 2 referral emails at the same time after enrollment?

Yes. If enabled for both campaigns, the advocate gets 2 separate referral emails containing their campaign-specific referral links.

Where do I find my customer's referral link?

Shopify

For Shopify merchants, you need to add a ReferralCandy app block to view the customer's referral details:

In Shopify admin, go to the Customers page.
Find your contact from the list or use search. Click the contact's Shopify ID to view the customer's profile.
Under App blocks, add the Enrolled referral campaign - details.
Once added, the app block shows your customer's Referral link.

If a contact is enrolled in multiple campaigns, click the dropdown to view their referral link for another campaign. Contacts who are not enrolled in any campaign won't have a referral link on the app block.

Other platforms

For merchants using other platforms:

On the ReferralCandy dashboard, go to the Contacts page.
Find your contact from the list or use search. Click the contact's Name to view the customer's profile.
Under the INDIVIDUAL CAMPAIGN DETAILS section, find the contact's Referral Link.

Note: From these pages, you can view your customer’s referral link, but you can’t edit the personalized ending of the link.
For example, if your advocate Alice Smith has this referral link:
https://yourstore.refr.cc/campaign/u/alicesmith
The bold part (alicesmith) is the personalized part of the link.

As a merchant, there isn’t a way to change that ending from your ReferralCandy or Shopify admin. Renaming the customer in Shopify or in ReferralCandy Contacts won’t change an existing referral link, and there’s no sync or delay that updates it later. If an advocate or affiliate wants to change or hide their name in the link, they can update it themselves from their portal using the Customize option next to their referral link. You can share this guide with them: "Advocates & affiliates: How to customize your unique referral link."