Overview
Lootly makes it easy to launch your own fully customizable referrals program in just a few clicks. This guide is meant to give an overview of the basics, so you can get started.
Referral Basics
At the core of every referral program is the ability for existing customers to refer their friends & family to buy from a store they enjoy. Customers are given a link that is often shared to social media, such as Facebook to make it easy for people to click and visit the store.
When a customer visits the store and makes a purchase, that is attributed as a successful referral. With Lootly, we have a similar process but tools to automate these items to make it easy for everybody.
Rewards
We offer two types of reward options that are meant to incentivize not only the sender (ie: existing customer) of the referral link, but also the receiver (ie: new customer) to follow through.
You can see these reward options by going to:
Referrals > Rewards
We recommend to create a unique reward for the Sender, and a unique reward for the Receiver. Often, the Sender is rewarded with points or a $5 discount for example off their next order. Whereas, the receiver is often given a larger discount to push them towards the purchase, such as a "$10 off your first purchase" type of reward.
The rewards offered here are setup the same way as Points & Rewards.
Sharing Options
Within the Lootly widget, existing customers are given their own referral link to share with friends & family. In addition to this, there are pre-defined buttons they can click to share on social media or via email. You can customize these options by going to:
Referrals > Sharing
The Referrals Sharing screen allows you to do the following:
Enable sharing options (Facebook, X, Email, SMS, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger)
Customize the design of the social share post (share text, title, description and image)
Tip: Use the variables on the right to customize the messaging to best match the offer & your unique program.
Understanding Referral Activity
Navigate to Referrals -> Activity tab to track the activity in the referral program.
Here, you're able to see how people share referrals, who is clicking on the referral links and more up to the final purchase made by your new customers.
You can filter your data by different parameters.
Display - choose how many data rows to display on the screen at a given time
Referral status - filter the data by several different events that mark the referral process. These are:
Shared link - sender shared a referral link. In the detailed table you can also check the source
Clicked link - receiver clicked the referral link. The popup is displayed for them to verify their email address
Email entered - receiver has entered email address in the popup
Redeemed coupon - assuming fraud detection is enabled (highly recommended) and email address has passed all fraud checks, a coupon code is generated and displayed to the receiver. Yay!
Order w/out coupon - receiver can place an order with or without the coupon code. If there's no coupon code applied on this order, the sender will not get their reward.
Reward sent - sender received their reward. Please note, you must mark the receiver order as your trigger status ( this is found in your integrations settings or in the plugin configuration) for the sender reward to be issued.
Blocked -fraud - receiver tried to conduct fraud (check fraud rules)
Blocked - URL rule - there's a URL rule setup that the receiver doesn't match
Blocked- UTM rule - there's a UTM rule setup that the receiver doesn't match
Sort data - sort the data by different criteria
Source - filter your referral data by source
Settings
The last part of setting up your referral program is figuring out where the customer will land upon clicking the link. Typically, referral programs will guide the new customer towards a special landing page versus the homepage.
This way you can craft a special story to help them better understand your brand, and present them with the wonderful coupon they can use on their new order. To start, you will need to go to:
Referrals > Settings
Enter in a URL next to "Landing Page"
Click Save
By default, the referral link will be: lootly.io/{unique-code}, however you can customize the "lootly.io" domain to match your domain with the "Custom Referral Domain" feature.
In addition to this, you can also configure your referral program to block referral traffic from particular URL and UTM parameters. Users coming from a blacklisted parameter won't be eligible to receive a referral reward and will not be counted in your referral program.
Note: The Advanced plan is required to use the URL & UTM Blacklist feature.