Referral program
Your customers already recommend you. Start paying them.
A referral program rewards your existing customers for bringing you new ones. Each customer gets a personal link or discount code, you track the sales it produces, and you pay a reward for every one that sticks. It runs on the same machinery as an affiliate program, pointed at buyers instead of publishers.
- Runs on links, codes, or both
- Rewards in cash or credit
- Refunds reverse automatically
Try it
The same four steps, three reward shapes
What you sell
The referrer gets
One month of credit
Their friend gets
20% off their first three months
New revenue
$294
per month
Reward cost
$294
Account credit
Credit keeps the money inside the business and costs you margin rather than cash.
- 1
Identify the customer
They are signed in, so the widget knows who they are without a form.
- 2
Issue something trackable
A personal link, a discount code, or both, generated for that account.
- 3
Attribute the sale
The referral is stored for the length of your attribution window. A typed code attributes at checkout.
- 4
Hold, then reward
The reward waits out the holding period so a refund can reverse it before the money leaves.
- ✓
$49 paid per referral, $294 a month
Against $294 of referred revenue at $49 per month.
How a referral program works
Four steps. Your software does three of them. The one that decides whether partners trust you is attribution, and that is what the cookie window covers.
Identify the customer
They are signed in to your product. No forms, no friction.
Hand them something trackable
A personal link, a discount code, or both, generated for that account.
Attribute the sale
The referral stays attached for your whole attribution window. 60 days is the default.
Hold, then reward
The reward waits out a holding period, so a refund reverses it before money moves.
In Referly
The widget that turns customers into referrers
It lives inside your product. Customers grab their link, share their code, and watch the rewards land. You control every word, color and page it appears on.
See how referral programs run in ReferlyReferral programs vs affiliate programs
Same tracking, same payouts, different people. The software cannot tell them apart. Your reward structure should.
- Who promotes
- Customers who already bought
- Typical reward
- Credit, a free month, or a flat amount
- Two-sided rewards
- Standard here
- Where it lives
- Inside your product
Affiliates promote for income and compare your rates first
Affiliates usually earn a percentage, often recurring
The friend gets a discount, the customer gets the credit
Affiliates work from a separate partner portal
What you need to run one
Four pieces, and every one of them ships in Referly. The reward rule is the only real decision you make.
A way to identify customers
The referral widget lives inside your product, where they already are.
Something to share
Link and coupon tracking, so the referral survives any channel.
A reward rule
Percentage, flat amount, or account credit. Credit keeps the cash in the business.
A way to pay
PayPal, Wise, bank transfer, credit or a coupon. Refunded sales reverse on their own.
60 days
Attribution window
The default. Set it in days, per program.
Cash or credit
Reward types
Percentage, flat amount, credit or a coupon.
Reversed
Refunded sales
Detected automatically, on every plan.
Programs in the wild
What these programs pay out
Referral and affiliate programs share the same machinery. These three run it at scale.
“Affiliates drive a serious share of our revenue across three countries. Since we moved to Referly everything runs from one place, tracking has been spot on, and our partners get paid without me chasing spreadsheets.”
Alexander Koppers
Affiliate Manager, Moov
$6.9M
in total affiliate-driven revenue
- 1,154
- active affiliates
- 19,017
- affiliate sales
- 1,240,030
- clicks tracked
“We have been running affiliate programs for over a decade, and ours is one of the biggest parts of how OptimizePress grows. Referly is the first platform where an operation with thousands of partners actually feels manageable, from recruiting new affiliates to tracking every sale they send.”
James Dyson
Founder & CEO, OptimizePress
- 7 figures
- in affiliate-driven sales
- 4,554
- active affiliates
- 10,536
- referrals
“This platform is quite simple and easy to use, and you can start attracting people to your affiliate program very quickly. A big plus is that the founder, Ayo, is super responsive.”
Ilfat Khayrullin
CMO & Co-founder, Letterly
- 300K+
- app users
- 689
- active affiliates
- 24,114
- clicks tracked
Related terms
All ten termsAffiliate vs referral program
An affiliate promotes you for income; a referrer recommends what they already bought.
Recurring commission
Commission paid on every renewal a referred customer makes, not just the first.
Cookie window
How long after a click a sale still counts for the affiliate who sent it.
Affiliate vs influencer marketing
Affiliates are paid for the sales they cause; influencers are usually paid for the post.