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How to ban a contact

Prevent Advocates from referring or getting rewards when they violate your store's policies

Adam avatar
Written by Adam
Updated this week

If necessary, you can ban an enrolled contact, also known as an Advocate, to stop them from participating in your referral program. Never enrolled and unenrolled contacts can also be banned to prevent them from being able to refer when they qualify to enroll in your referral campaign. Learn more about enrollment states.

Why ban an Advocate?

Ultimately the decision to ban a contact falls upon your discretion as the merchant. Here are common reasons why a contact may be banned:

  • They breached the terms and conditions of your referral program.

  • They posted their referral link or code on coupon and discount sites, such as Honey or RetailMeNot, and your terms don’t allow that.

  • They referred themselves to get rewards.


Banning a contact

  1. On the dashboard, go to the Contacts page.

  2. In the search box, enter the name or email address of the contact.

  3. Click the contact's name to view their information.

  4. Click Actions and select Ban Contact.

  5. You'll see an acknowledgment popup message. Check I acknowledge the effects listed are irreversible and click Confirm Ban.

Important: Banning a contact is irreversible. Once a contact is banned, they can't refer their friends anymore and their pending rewards will be disqualified.


Effects of banning

The table below describes the effects of banning a contact when they are currently an enrolled Advocate in your referral campaign. Note that once a contact is banned, you can't unban them.

Components

Effect

Referral link

The referral link is disabled. Any new referrals will no longer be linked to the Advocate.

Additionally, anyone who opens the link of a banned Advocate will be redirected to your provided store URL.

Emails

The emails are disabled and the Advocate will not receive any automated emails such as the invite and reward emails.

Rewards

All referred purchases still within their review period are automatically disqualified after banning. The rewards will not be sent to the Advocate.

Advocate rewards for referred purchases that are past their review period must be handled manually.

  • If you offer coupon rewards, you may choose to disqualify coupons already distributed from your eCommerce platform.

  • If you offer cash rewards that haven't been paid out yet, please contact us.

If you are using Shopify or BigCommerce, the Advocate reward coupon codes and friend offer coupon codes are automatically disabled after banning.

Commissions paid to ReferralCandy

Referrals within the review period will be disqualified, so you will not have to pay commissions for those referrals. Additionally, you will not have to pay commissions for any 2nd and 3rd referred purchases that would've been otherwise charged.

They will be marked as Commission not chargeable.

Others

The following are useful logs you'll see on the ReferralCandy dashboard and the Klaviyo UI related to the ban.

ReferralCandy Dashboard

After banning a contact, you will see these changes on their contact page:

  • The referral link is removed and disabled.

  • The contact is tagged as Unenrolled.

  • The activity log on the contact's page has the below logs:

    • Banned - by you

    • Coupon code [code] disabled on [platform] due to being banned

Klaviyo Integration

If you have Klaviyo integrated, you will see the following changes on the contact's profile:

Note: Automatic code disabling is only supported on Shopify and BigCommerce.


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