If you're a Shopify or BigCommerce merchant, the coupon codes are automatically generated by ReferralCandy for your Advocates. How do I set up coupon rewards?

For other platforms, you as the merchant must generate and provide the coupon codes as these may be tied into your store’s checkout process. How to create coupon codes?

Yes. Once set up, the ReferralCandy app monitors and detects* successful referrals automatically.

However, it may take a couple of hours after a purchase has taken place for the platform to run through all the necessary verification checks, so it isn't instantaneous.

Each Advocate receives a unique referral link that they can share with their friends. The clicking of this referral link by a friend, combined with the JavaScript tracking code placed on your purchase completed page, and the purchase information sent to us enables the tracking of successful referrals*.
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*Note: For eCommerce platforms with specific integration plugins (E.g. Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce), the ReferralCandy app obtains information directly from the platform. The unique referral link together with the information obtained from the platform enables the app to track sales that come from referrals.

At the moment, ReferralCandy is only able to assist with 1 tier referral programs.

You can reward the original Advocate for their direct referral to a friend, but won't be able to reward the original Advocate when their friend refers someone else.

For example, if A refers B, and then B refers C:

Yes, but in a fixed manner. Advocate rewards from ReferralCandy are typically sent to Advocates once they have referred enough rewardable referred purchases to be eligible for a reward. Learn more

ReferralCandy will handle the payment of cash rewards to customers via PayPal under Anafore LLC. Learn more

ReferralCandy sends cash rewards to your Advocates through PayPal. In the event that your Advocate does not have a PayPal account, they will still be able to claim the cash reward in the following manner:

You can also refer to the How to receive money article on PayPal's help center site.

Important: PayPal has restrictions on sending cash to specific accounts. Read this article to see what account types are restricted.

A referral link is a unique link that's given out to Advocates who are enrolled in your referral campaign.

ReferralCandy generates unique and campaign-specific referral links for each Advocate, which they can share through their share page. The system uses the unique referral links to detect sharing and referral activities. Learn more

There are conditions that need to be met first before an Advocate receives their referral reward. Learn more

There are a couple of potential reasons why. Read more to see how you can troubleshoot coupon issues at checkout.

As you promote your referral program and generate more referrals, you will see more coupons generated by ReferralCandy on your Discounts page. This may make it difficult for you to manage and view all available coupons in your store, including discount codes you created yourself.

You can create filtered views to organize your discounts on your Shopify Admin page. Learn how

Go to the Contacts page and paste the friend offer code (e.g., FRIEND-12345) in the search bar to identify the Advocate associated with that coupon.

To track the coupons rewarded to Advocates, go to My Store > Track Coupons.

Use the search bar to identify the Advocate who received the coupon reward (e.g., THANKS-12345). This page contains all the single-use coupons you sent to Advocates as rewards.

It depends on the platform you are on. If you are a Shopify or BigCommerce retailer, an Advocate gets a unique, multi-use friend offer coupon code generated by ReferralCandy. This coupon code is linked to the Advocate.

For other platforms, coupon codes in friend offers are not linked or unique to the Advocates. Each store's referral program uses the same coupon code in all friend offers made by Advocates.

Regardless of the platform you are using, ReferralCandy will be able to detect referred purchases and identify the Advocates that made those referrals.

This is possible depending on how your Shopify store is set up and is not dependent on ReferralCandy. ReferralCandy does not control the behavior or workflow of the checkout process of any store.

Additionally, ReferralCandy does not require a store’s checkout process to be modified in order to run a referral program. Hence, if you want Referred Friends to log in (or not) in order to use their offers, change your Shopify store’s setup accordingly.

When the friend offer expires, the campaign stops automatically preventing Advocates from sharing their referral links, and their referred friends from seeing the friend offer landing page to use their reward.

When your campaign is stopped by the system due to an expired friend offer, all purchases since the campaign was stopped won't be processed and ReferralCandy won't detect new referrals. Learn more

To resolve the issue caused by an expired friend offer:

Read this article to see how you can troubleshoot checkout issues with friend offers.

The ReferralCandy app has automated mechanisms to mitigate discount code misuse. To prevent existing Advocates from misusing their own coupon codes that are meant for referring their friends, the app hides the friend offer discount code when they attempt to view the friend landing page via their own referral link.

However, the correct discount code will appear when friends of the Advocate view the friend landing page when the referral link is viewed from a different device/browser.

When an Advocate opens their own referral link, they will see:

We understand that most merchants would like the Friend Offer to be available to new customers only for one-time use to prevent coupon code misuse.

However, we don't offer the single-use coupon code as an option for the Friend Offer simply because it does not actually address the concern around coupon code misuse while increasing the administrative burden on retailers. Learn more

Unfortunately, many eCommerce platforms don't provide us with sufficient access to their coupon generation feature to allow us to automate this for you so you will have to create the coupon codes manually.

Creating the coupon codes yourself through your store's admin panel is the best way to ensure that the coupon codes will work with your store's checkout process, giving you greater control over the coupon code conditions and functionality that are ultimately defined by your eCommerce platform.

ReferralCandy then helps you distribute these codes to your customers after specific triggers. We do not affect the functionality of these pre-set coupon codes. Find out more about How to Create Coupon Codes.

Note: If you're a Shopify or BigCommerce user, ReferralCandy is able to automate the coupon generation for your referral program.