Setting Up a Referral Program

In this article, you'll learn how to create a Referral Program in Talon.One.

Before you start, your system must be integrated with Talon.One and have at least one active Application. 

Whether signing up for a subscription service or making a first purchase, new users are much more likely to try a product for the first time on the recommendation of a satisfied customer they know.

With a Referral Program you provide an incentive for existing users to recommend your product to their friends and ensure a rewarding first interaction with your brand for these new customers.

Whichever the best outreach method for your business, Talon.One's Rule Builder lets you maintain and optimize complex and highly-targeted referral campaigns.

Referral Terms

• Advocate: The customer or user who recommends your product.
• Friend: The new customer acting on the advocate's recommendation.
• Referral code: The code that the advocate gives to their friend

Step 1: Enabling Referrals in a Campaign

• Create a New Campaign in your chosen application.
• Give your Campaign a name.
• Enable Referrals on this Campaign.
• Enable either Coupons or Loyalty on this Campaign.

To add Referrals to an existing campaign:

• Open that campaign's Settings page.
• Click on Features.
• Enable Referrals on this Campaign.
  • Also enable Coupons or Loyalty if you want to use them as referral rewards.
• Click Save Changes.

You'll now have access to new Referral features for the Rule Builder:

• Condition: "Referral code is valid", which makes sure the code hasn't been used already.
• Effect: "Redeem a referral code" which marks the referral code as used.
• Effect: "Create a referral code" which generates a code for this user to give to others.

• Code length
• Whether to use numbers, letters or both
• Whether to split up long codes with dashes
• Characters that will always appear at the beginning of the code
• Characters that will always appear at the end of the code
• Characters that will never appear in the code

Step 2: Creating a Rule for Code Generation

• Create a new rule.
• Set up Conditions for when you want this rule to be triggered.
• Add the effect "Create a referral code" and select your campaign.

When this rule is triggered, a code will be generated for this user which they can pass on to friends. Details of this code are sent within the response body of the integration API:

Step 3: Creating a Rule for Code Redemption

Now let's create a rule for what should then happen when a friend uses a valid code.

First, we'll make sure the entered referral code hasn't expired and that the friend is allowed to use it.

• Create a new rule with the Condition "Referral code is valid".

Then let's make these referral codes single-use so that they will expire when redeemed.

• Add the Effect "Redeem a referral code".

We'll now set up rewards for successful code redemption.

First, we'll give a 10% discount on this session to the friend who is redeeming the code:

• Add the Effect: "Set a discount"
• Set this discount value to [Session.Total] * 10%

Then we reward the Advocate with a Coupon or Loyalty Points, depending on your use case.

If you have Coupons enabled for this campaign:

• Add the Effect "Create coupon" and select "Advocate" as the recipient ID

If you have Loyalty enabled for this campaign:

• Add the Effect "Add loyalty points" and select "Advocate" as the recipient ID.

And that's our first basic Referral Program set up.

When a customer meets the conditions you set, they will receive a referral code, which they can distribute to friends.

When one of the friends makes a purchase from you and uses the referral code, they will receive a 10% discount on their order, the original advocate customer receives a coupon or loyalty points equal to 10% of the order made, and the referral code is marked as used.

Now you know how to create and get started with your first Referral Program in Talon.One.

These are just basic examples of what is possible with your Talon.One integration. Depending on what data points you send, you can build rules to meet your promotion requirements.

Next, you might want to check out: 

• Referral Program Ideas
• How to Create a Loyalty Program
• Campaign Library