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.
See the image below for a visualization of how enrollment works:
*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 referral campaign through any of the following:
Purchase - Customers are automatically registered as contacts after making a purchase at your store.
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 are enrolled in your referral campaign when they meet the segment criteria of the segments targeted by your campaign. There are two types of segments:
Static - Segments you manually add contacts to via the import contacts tool.
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.
Learn about segments and configuring your campaign's target audience here.
Advocate enrollment
The contacts who meet the criteria of a targeted segment are automatically enrolled in the campaign. 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.
Once enrolled, an invite email is sent to the Advocate. To send out this email to successfully enrolled customers, the Invite Email must be enabled on your campaign's Email Settings page. Learn more
Unqualified contacts
If the contact doesn't meet a segment criteria, they aren't enrolled in the campaign. They remain registered as contacts and are considered never enrolled until they meet the segment criteria targeted by the campaign.
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 referral campaign, or are imported to segments, they are automatically registered as contacts in your ReferralCandy account.
Advocates (Campaign level) - When your contacts meet the campaign's segment criteria, 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 fails to meet a segment criteria, 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 that meet a segment criteria, where that segment is targeted by your campaign.
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 that were previously enrolled in your campaign, but do not meet the campaign's segment criteria anymore.
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 that were not previously enrolled in your campaign, and do not meet the segment criteria of the campaign upon purchase or signup.
They are not in any 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?
How is an Advocate unenrolled?
An Advocate is unenrolled when they used to be enrolled in a campaign, but stopped meeting your campaign's segment criteria. For example, if you increased the lifetime spend of a dynamic segment from $50 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.
Unenrolled Advocates need to reach a total spend of $100 at your store to be tagged as Enrolled again. Once re-enrolled, they can continue referring their friends.
Waitlisted contacts
By default, all contacts are waitlisted when they don't meet a segment criteria after making a purchase or signing up via a form.
However, you can turn waitlists off if you don't want to automatically register your customers for your referral program without their consent. Waitlists can be disabled for campaigns that use the referral extension or the post-purchase popup widgets.
Note: Although considered never enrolled, waitlisted contacts are part of the Signup form submitted dynamic segment by default. You can use this segment to target all contacts, including waitlists, who signed up via the join page or signup widgets.
Learn how to turn waitlists on or off for the referral checkout extension or the post-purchase popup widget.
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