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Getting Started With Okendo Referrals
Getting Started With Okendo Referrals

Getting Started With Okendo Referrals - Learn Terminology and How to Install Referrals on Your Shopify Store or Headless Environment

Norma Cooper avatar
Written by Norma Cooper
Updated over a week ago

Okendo Referrals is a great way to implement a cost-effective, word-of-mouth marketing strategy into your customer acquisition strategy. Creating a Referral strategy lets you reward loyal customers for recommending your brand to friends and family ultimately driving repeat purchases.

In this article, you’ll learn:

  • Terminology and User Journey

  • Configuring the Referral Program

  • Installing Referral widgets

  • Fraud Prevention

Terminology

Referrer - a customer who can refer friends and family to the brand

Recipient - a prospect who uses the referral link to make a purchase from the brand

Coupons - a reward granted to both referrer and recipient in the form of a checkout code

Known referrals (emails) - Known referrals are created when a referrer enters a recipient's email address to send a referral

Anonymous referrals (Unique URL) - Anonymous referrals are created when a referrer shares their unique referral URL through a medium of their choice (Example: Instagram messenger)

User Journey

A Referral user journey is represented below

Configuring a Referral Program

  1. Open the Okendo app.

  2. Go to Referrals > Settings.

Step 1: Configuring Referral Rewards

In this step, you will define how much to reward a Referrer for sharing the brand and a Recipient to make their first purchase. You can choose to offer different rewards for the Referrer and the Recipient.

To edit the rewards, click on the “Rewards” tab. This section allows you to configure:

  • The type of coupon offered

  • Expiry

  • Minimum purchase amount

  • Products the coupon applies to

  • Value of the coupon

The description is automatically generated based on the value but can be personalized to include your own text.

The “Delay Referral Sender Reward Days” setting refers to how long it will take before the Referrer gets their reward after a recipient has successfully placed an order.

Recipient reward settings are similar to that of the Referrer.

The “Recipient Offer Validity” setting refers to an honor period that you can define in case the referral program is amended after a recipient has received their coupon link.

Step 2: Customizing display prompts

In this step, you will configure the overall look and feel of the Referral prompts that will display on your store’s website. Colors, fonts and text can all be modified within the “Forms'' and “Styling” tabs to suit your brand.



Step 3: Customizing Emails

Pre-built email templates that power communication with customers throughout the Referral process are available out of the box. They can be customized further to match your brand. Navigate to Mail > Mail Templates > Referral…” to find all the relevant emails.

You can edit the color makeup and copy of each email in the referral user journey.

Step 4: Installing Referral widgets

The final step is to enable the Referral prompts at various customer touchpoints.

Referrer prompt

Option 1: Create a Referrals landing page

A Referral landing page serves as the place to direct customers to make referrals and also provides more detailed information on how your program works.

To create a landing page:

  1. Add a new page to your store

  2. Embed Okendo’s referral widget on the page by navigating to the Pages > App embed section within the Shopify theme

Note: If your website is headless, please refer to this help article.

3. Link to the page from the Header or Footer

The Referral landing page URL can be easily purposed in marketing campaigns and flows to encourage customers to make referrals at various points in their journey.

Option 2: Create a Referrals pop-up

Add a CSS class oke-open-referrals to a button or link that will initiate the pop-up
Example: <button class="oke-open-referrals">Open Widget</button>

Option 3: Embed in the Review capture form

The referral prompt can be embedded in the Review response form as a post-review module.

To embed the referral prompt:

  1. Go to Reviews > Response Form >Post Review Module > Refer a Friend:

You can configure the review rating so it will only show to customers who rate above a certain number. We recommend setting that to 4 or 5-star reviews. To get the most engagement, It is also best to position the prompt at the top of the page.

Recipient prompt

The recipient prompt is the landing experience for recipients when they click on referral links. To configure the page that you want recipients to land on go to Referrals > Settings and insert the landing page URL. If nothing is configured, recipients will land on the home page by default.

The recipient prompt will display as a modal on the configured landing page unless the landing page already has the referral widget embedded

Fraud Prevention

Okendo has implemented various protocols to minimize fraud where possible, including:

  • Self-referral - if Referrer and Recipient email addresses are the same

  • The recipient must be a first-time buyer

  • Emails with a + Suffix structure (Example: jane.doe+test@gmail.com) are not allowed

  • Automated fraud prevention through the use of Google reCAPTCHA

  • Preventing the use of disposable email domains

  • Ability to add Referral actors to a block list

When fraudulent activity is detected, the system will automatically reject the referral. Merchants also have the option to manually reject referrals through the Referral Activity tab.

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