The vast majority of people seek and accept friend recommendations when considering a purchase so marketers, in addition to running well-optimized Facebook ads and Adwords campaigns, make use of word-of-mouth marketing and social referrals. Giving rewards to customers who refer friends encourages this habit. The Friend referral module can be used to incentivize customers to invite their friends to shop in your store for points.

A popup will appear when a new visitor clicks on the referral link for the first time, displaying a coupon code. The loyalty member will receive loyalty points if the invited friend uses the coupon code in the checkout process effectively.

Find the configuration page of the Friend referral module by searching for it from the ‘Modules’ menu. The page will open to the ‘Settings’ tab where the referral preferences can be configured.

Setting up points and coupons

Point logic

In the first section, you can set up the point logic that will be the basis of rewarding your customers for referring their friends.

• Specify the number of points your customer will earn when a friend they invite makes a purchase in your store

• Select a frequency from the dropdown menu:

  • If you want to reward the referred customer’s first purchase only, select ‘referred friend’s first purchase’

  • If you’d like to reward the first purchase, and all subsequent purchases of the new customer, select ‘all of referred friend’s purchases’ option
    We recommend only rewarding the first purchase, to maintain control over the total number of points that can be earned with this module.

• Select the percentage value of the coupon that will be given to the referred customer.
  In order for the module to work correctly, you should set a non-zero value here.
  We recommend setting the percentage between 10-30%, so that the discount value is enticing enough for first-time shoppers to make a purchase, without “over-rewarding” those newcomers.

  

Communication channels

Under the Communication channel, you will find 2 channels that you can enable in your loyalty program:

• Referred friend coupon reminder
  By enabling this option, your newly acquired customers will be able to receive an email reminder about their coupon code.
  To customize the email:

  • Go the ‘Settings’ page of your program

  • Navigate to the ‘Emails’ tab in the left sidebar

  • Look for the ’coupon_reminder’ email

  • Click on the hamburger button and select the ‘edit’ option

  • Edit all the texts using our WYSIWYG editor by clicking on the content of the email, or feel free to use our built-in HTML and CSS editor

You can send a test email to yourself by clicking the hamburger button on the ‘Emails’ page, to see how the email will look from a loyalty program member’s perspective.

• Standalone referral page
  The dedicated page for your referral program will appear as a separate menu item in your membership site. On this page, your customers can find their unique share link and follow the invites they’ve sent and the points they earned. To customize this page:

  • Go the ‘Settings’ page of your program

  • Select ‘Design’ in the left sidebar

  • Look for the ‘Friend referral’ page

  • Click the ‘Edit’ button

  • Use our built-in HTML and CSS editor for further customization

Coupon settings

Choose coupon source. You can choose to upload your own list of codes or the Antavo platform can generate codes on your behalf.

• Upload: if you want to use your own coupon codes, upload a .csv format file with one code in each row
  When 90% of the coupons have been claimed, our system will send you a notification that your coupons are running low.

• Generate: if you want Antavo to generate codes, define the coupon pattern that we will follow based on these rules:
  # denotes a digit (0-9)
  @ denotes an alphabet character (a-z)
  ^ denotes a capital alphabet character (A-Z)
  * denotes an alphanumeric character
  $ denotes a capital alphanumeric character
  E.g. if you set ^##COUPON, a coupon code can be G11COUPON

• Remote: if you’d like to maintain more control over coupon management, you can set a callback URL endpoint that serves us with coupon codes to issue.

In case you use Coupon pools in your loyalty system, the coupon pool selection field will appear instead of the source selector.
By navigating to the Coupons tab of the Friend Referral module, you’ll find the list of coupon codes that have already been assigned to referred friends.

Loyalty Card

When the module is enabled, program members can learn about friend referrals on the membership site. The reminder appears as a card alongside the other actions customer can take to earn points.

In the third section of the module configuration page, you can define the content of the card.

• Set the title of the card
  Each card appearing on the membership site has a front and a back side. On the front, you can see the title and the custom image that you’ve just set, and the number of points you can get for a referral, alongside a CTA button that flips the card over to display the back side.

• Add a custom image
  Find the information about image upload requirements here.

• Add the description of the card
  On the back of the card, customers can find the title and the description added here.

You can use the 'Translate' buttons located on the right side of the fields to enter the card title and description texts in the relevant languages.

At the end of the setup process, please don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button.

Points Economy

In the 'Account' field, you have the option to choose the account to which the referral points should be allocated via the referral_points and referral_bonus events.

Popup with the coupon

The pop-up that displays the coupon code for the new visitor is automatically added by Antavo. Contact the Antavo Service Desk if you need help customizing this popup.

Post-purchase pop-up

You can choose to add a post-purchase popup that appears after a customer has made a purchase in your store. The popup will allow your customers to invite their friends on multiple social networks. Friends can also be invited by sharing unique referral links.

If you want to use this popup, please consult your developer, who needs to implement the popup into your post-purchase page.