Referrals

Referrals turn your existing customers into an acquisition channel. Each one gets a personal shareable code, and when someone signs up with it and completes their first qualifying order, both sides are rewarded automatically. You pay only on a real completed order, never on a sign-up that goes nowhere.

Where to find it

Dashboard → Growth → Loyalty → Referral (/features/referral) — Admin, Co-Admin

Setting it up

1. Open the referral settings and switch the programme on.
2. Configure both incentives — what the referrer gets and what the new customer gets.
3. Save. Every customer immediately has a code in the app.

There is nothing to issue or distribute: codes are generated for every customer automatically. Your work is the incentive design and the promotion.

Two incentives, two jobs

The newcomer’s welcome benefit is what gets the link tapped. The referrer’s reward is what gets it sent. Budget both against what you normally pay to acquire a customer — referrals usually undercut it comfortably, because the reward only lands on a completed first order.

How a referral plays out

1. A customer opens Customer app → Accounts → Referral and shares their code.
2. The new customer signs up with it.
3. The new customer completes their first qualifying order. A cancelled order triggers nothing.
4. Both rewards are granted automatically.

There is no approval step and none is needed — eligibility is checked automatically, and the same benefit cannot be claimed twice.

Where customers find it

Customer app → Accounts → Referral holds the code, the sharing options and the status of past referrals. Do not rely on customers finding it: a Broadcast to your active and VIP segments announcing the programme is the single highest-leverage thing you can do for it.

Making it perform

Referral programmes fail on discovery and momentum far more often than on mechanics.

1. Announce repeatedly, not once. A launch message plus periodic reminders to active and most-active customers — the people ordering this week are the ones with somebody to tell.
2. Make the ask local. “Get your street on it” is a real argument, not just a discount: more customers nearby means better service for all of them.
3. Reward your champions. Review top referrers monthly and send the top handful something through Marketing Autopilot.
4. Protect the first order. The welcome benefit buys a trial; onboarding, menu quality and delivery decide whether the trial becomes a habit — and whether that customer becomes a referrer too.

Referrals compound

Every referred customer is a potential referrer, so a steady programme outgrows a one-off push. Judge it on the summary report quarterly, not in launch week.

Reports

Under Dashboard → Reports, in the referral reports:

Report	Route	Shows
Referral Codes List	/reports/referral-reports/codes-list	Every code and its usage
Referral Orders List	/reports/referral-reports/orders-list	Orders acquired through referrals
Top Referrers	/reports/referral-reports/top-referrers	Your best advocates, ranked
Referral Summary	/reports/referral-reports/summary	Programme performance at a glance

Use the summary to work out your effective cost per acquired customer — total rewards paid divided by new customers with a completed order — and compare it against whatever you pay elsewhere.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Try this
A customer cannot find their code	It is in Customer app → Accounts → Referral
The referrer’s reward never arrived	Check the referred customer’s first order completed — cancelled orders never qualify
A code “did not work”	Codes apply at sign-up; check it against the codes list
The reward seems delayed	It triggers when the first qualifying order completes, not when it is placed
Suspected self-referral	Double claims are blocked automatically; review the orders list for patterns
Almost nobody is referring	Revisit both incentives, then promote it — discovery, not the offer, is the usual bottleneck

Related: Broadcast · Coupons · Wallet · What customers experience