Referral program

The referral program rewards your subscribers for sharing your publication. Every subscriber has their own referral link. When enough new readers join through it, they reach a milestone and earn the reward you've attached to it.

You'll find it under Grow > Referral program.

How referral links work

• Each subscriber's link points to your publication's subscribe page with their personal code on the end.
• When someone opens the link, your website remembers the code for 60 days. If they subscribe within that time, the referral is credited, even if they browsed other pages first.
• The first referral link a visitor opens is the one that counts.
• If your publication asks new readers to confirm their email, the referral counts towards milestones once the new reader confirms. A Referral Made automation may start earlier, when the reader signs up.
• Only people who are new to your publication count. Someone who was already on your list, or who rejoins after unsubscribing, doesn't count as a referral.

Create a reward

1. Go to Referral program and click New Referral.
2. Under Setup Reward, fill in:
   • Name: what the reader earns, for example "Sticker pack".
   • Description: a short explanation of the reward.
   • Number of referrals needed for milestone: how many referrals unlock it. Use a whole number of 1 or more. A reward set to 0 is never given.
   • Prefixed Article (optional): a word like "a" or "an" that's placed before the reward name in emails, for example "a Sticker pack".
   • Disclaimer (optional): small print shown under the reward.
   • Reward Image (optional): a picture of the reward.
3. Under Setup Milestone Email, write the email the subscriber gets when they reach the milestone: Subject Line, Preview Text and Content. If you leave Content empty, the email says how many people they referred and which reward they unlocked.
4. Under Additional Settings, choose whether to turn on Auto Fulfill (see below).
5. Click Create Reward.

You can add several rewards at different milestones, for example 3, 10 and 25 referrals.

What happens when a milestone is reached

When a new reader joins through a subscriber's link, Inkwave counts how many of that subscriber's referrals are still subscribed and checks your rewards.

• For each reward the subscriber has now reached and hasn't earned before, they get the milestone email.
• Each reward is earned only once per subscriber.
• Referrals who have since unsubscribed don't count towards the total.
• Rewards are checked when a new referral joins. If you add a reward with a lower milestone than some subscribers have already reached, they'll earn it the next time one of their referrals joins.
• Subscribers who have opted out of all email don't receive the milestone email, but the reward is still recorded.

Fulfilling rewards

Every earned reward appears on the Fulfillment tab with the subscriber's email, the reward and when the milestone was reached.

• With Auto Fulfill on, the reward is marked fulfilled straight away. Use this when the milestone email itself is the reward, for example a download link.
• With Auto Fulfill off, the reward is Pending and you'll get a notification. Send the reward yourself, then choose Mark as fulfilled. If you decide not to send it, choose Mark as ignored. Reopen (mark as pending) puts it back in the queue.

You can filter the list by Pending, Fulfilled or Ignored, sort it, and click Download referrals to get a file of the list.

Show the program in your posts

Add the referral block to a newsletter so readers see their link and progress. In the newsletter editor, type / and choose Referral ("Embed your referral program").

When the newsletter is emailed, each subscriber sees their own link and their own referral count. On the web version, readers see a general invitation to share instead of a personal count.

Set up how the block looks on the Configuration tab:

• Email Description: the text shown at the top of the referral block in your emails.
• Referral Template Shown in Post: the layout of the block.

The Preview on the same tab shows how the block will look. Changes save automatically.

Seeing how it's going

The Overview tab shows:

• Breakdown by rewards: how many times each reward has been earned.
• Subscribers Engagement: how many of your subscribers have made at least one referral, and how many haven't.
• Referral Program Leaderboard: your top referrers.

Troubleshooting

• Someone signed up through a link but the referrer got no credit. They may already have been on your list, or opened a different referral link first. If your publication asks readers to confirm their email, the referral counts only once they confirm.
• A subscriber reached a milestone but got no email. They may have opted out of all email. The reward still appears on the Fulfillment tab.
• The referral count went down. Referrals who unsubscribe no longer count towards future milestones. Rewards already earned are kept.
• My new reward wasn't given to people who already qualified. Rewards are checked when a new referral joins, so they'll get it after their next successful referral.