A Referral Scheme can help incentivise participants to recommend your events to friends or family, increasing ticket sales by enabling you to reach a wider audience. By offering a reward in the form of credit, participants are encouraged to share your events with others and become loyal customers in the process.
How Does A Referral Work
A participant can refer others by sharing their personal referral link for a specific event. If a referred user visits the link and completes entry (without navigating away from the site), the referring user will be recorded as successfully completing the referral.
If the referred user navigates away from the site and returns via a new tab they will not be using your referral link
Types Of Referral Schemes
Single Sided - A single-sided referral is when just one of the referrer or referee will receive the financial incentive. You can choose it to go to either the referrer or referee.
Double Sided - A Double-sided referral is when both the referrer and the referee receive a financial incentive.
Locating this Feature
From the left menu, click Referral Schemes
Creating a Referral Scheme
Click “Create Referral Scheme”
Enter the details of your referral scheme
Name - give your scheme a name.
Note that this name will be visible in the online profile of participants who earn credit via successful referrals.
Description - Include a description (for internal reference only).
Currency - Select the currency of the credit to be offered (this will usually be fixed depending on the currency of your connected Stripe account).
Who do you want to reward for the referral? - Choose if you want this to be a single-sided referral (Just the Referrer) or double-sided (Both the Referrer & Referee)
Set the referrer reward (applies to both single and double-sided referral schemes)
This is the reward that the person who does the referral will get.
Amount to credit referrer per signup - This is the amount of credit the person doing the referral will earn. For example, if you set this to £2, for every referral
Period of time any credit earned remains valid - Set how long any credit earned for a referral will last i.e. 3 months
Note: If you want a different expiry date select ‘other’ and you have the option to add a specific number of days.
Important
Each new referral credit earned by a user will extend the validity of all credit currently outstanding on their account by this duration.
All credit earned will remain valid for the duration applicable when their last credit was earned (i.e. older referral credits will not separately expire or 'drop-off')
Example
You create a £2 referral credit scheme with a validity period of 6 months
A user completes a referral in March. They earn £2 credit which is valid until September (March + 6 months)
In May, you update the scheme to £3 and 9 months. The validity of the user's original £2 credit doesn't change and will still expire in September
In July, the user completes a new referral. Their referral credit now totals £5 (£2 + £3), all of which will now be valid until April of the next year (July + 9 months).
Set the referral reward (If using a double-sided referral)
This is the price reduction that the person using the referral code will benefit from i.e. You could give 10% off or £2 off an entry when someone enters using a referral code
Type of discount to offer the referral - Either percentage or absolute
Percentage - The resulting discount will be a % of the ticket price
Absolute - The resulting discount will be a fixed amount
Amount (Either percentage amount or absolute amount) - The amount of discount the referral will benefit from
Activating a Referral Scheme
You can activate a specific scheme in one of two ways:
From the All Referral Schemes dashboard, select Activate next to the scheme you wish to activate.
If you wish to review the details of a scheme before activating, select Edit next to the relevant scheme, review and/or update the details, check the box at the bottom to set this as the active scheme and click Submit.
Note that completing either of the above will deactivate any scheme that is already active
Deactivating a Referral Scheme
If you don’t want to switch to a different scheme, but just want to deactivate the one currently active, you can do so in two ways:
From the All Referral Schemes dashboard, select Deactivate next to the scheme you wish to deactivate.
Alternatively, select Edit next to the relevant scheme, uncheck the box at the bottom to deactivate this scheme, and click Submit.
Note that completing either of the above will deactivate the scheme. You will need to activate another separately.
Reporting on Referrals
Reporting on all referrals
Once you have setup a referral scheme, you will want to see how many of your participants have been referred by someone else. To do this:
Click All Signups > Referrals
Successful referrals can be viewed and exported for offline data management
If you don't plan on creating a referral scheme that specifically automates credit for successful referrals, you can use this page to manage any other rewards/incentives you wish to offer.
Search
Free Search (Referred participant)
Free Search (Referring User)
Event - You can select from the dropdown of events. This option only allows you to look at one event at a time.
If you use the filter to search by referring/referred user and/or a specific event, ensure you click Regenerate Report to apply the filters before exporting.
Reporting on an individual participant profile
Each participant has an acquisition source so the referrer name will appear here
For more information on managing participants see our guide here
How a customer can share their referral link/code
Each customer is given a unique referral link and code. They can share this link or code with their friends. Customers can find their referral link in a number of places
On an event page under the Invite Your Friends button
In their profile under the Invite Your Friends buttons
By utilising the %referral_url% merge field when editing email templates (e.g. Entry Confirmation), and including details of any scheme or rewards that may be applicable, you can draw attention to the scheme and encourage recipients to invite others to participate (friends or family etc.) by sharing their link contained within the email.
Notified via email
Successful referrals will trigger an email to the referring user confirming details of the referral, the amount of credit applied to their account, and a link to their profile to view their current total.
This email can be customised and is found under General Emails when viewing System Options > Email Templates.
Further guidance on customising email templates can be found here <link>
Viewing credit balance
Their current total can otherwise be located under their Gift Cards/Credits tab, and viewed using the Receipt button.
Copying the relevant code and applying it to their basket will discount their current basket total by the amount currently outstanding or, if the amount outstanding is higher than their basket total, the basket will be discounted in full and the outstanding total reduced accordingly.
How a referee uses the referral code
Once a customer has shared their code with someone else, that someone else can benefit from the referral discount (if a double-sided referral scheme has been setup), by entering their code in the “Discount code” box at checkout