Referrals

The referral program turns your existing customers into a growth channel: each gets a shareable personal code, and when a new customer signs up with it and completes their first qualifying order, both sides receive their configured reward automatically. For a marketplace, referrals are acquisition with built-in quality control — the reward only pays out on a real, completed first order, not on a sign-up that never converts.

Where to find it

Dashboard → Settings → Features → Referral (/features/referral) in your admin dashboard. Requires an admin or co-admin account.

Setting up the program

1. Open Dashboard → Settings → Features → Referral.
2. Enable the program and configure both incentives — the referrer’s reward and the referee’s welcome benefit.
3. Save. Every customer immediately receives a shareable code in the app.

No codes to create or distribute

Codes are generated automatically for every customer — nothing is issued from the dashboard. Your work is the incentive design and the promotion; the mechanics are built in.

Two incentives, two jobs

The referee’s welcome benefit gets the link tapped; the referrer’s reward gets it sent. Budget both against your normal paid acquisition cost per customer — referrals usually undercut it comfortably, since you pay only on a completed first order.

How a referral plays out

1. An existing customer opens Customer app → Accounts → Referral and shares their code.
2. The new customer signs up with the code.
3. The new customer completes their first qualifying order — anywhere on the marketplace, any vertical. Cancelled orders don’t qualify: an order that’s placed and then cancelled triggers nothing.
4. Both rewards are granted automatically.

No staff approval step exists or is needed — eligibility checks and payouts are automatic, and safeguards prevent the same referral benefit from being claimed twice.

A concrete example

A weekly grocery customer shares her code with a neighbor. The neighbor signs up with it and orders dinner from a restaurant on the marketplace two days later. When that order completes, the neighbor’s welcome benefit and the referrer’s reward are both granted automatically — the referral didn’t even need to happen in the same vertical.

Where customers see it

The customer-facing surface is Customer app → Accounts → Referral — personal code, sharing options, referral status. Don’t rely on customers finding it themselves: a marketing campaign to your active and VIP segments announcing the program is the highest-leverage way to switch it on in practice.

Making the program perform

Referral programs fail on discovery and momentum far more often than on mechanics:

1. Announce repeatedly, not once. A launch campaign plus periodic reminders to active and most active customers — the people ordering this week are the ones with a friend to tell.
2. Localize the ask. A marketplace’s referral pitch is strongest where density matters: more customers in a zone means better merchant selection and faster delivery for everyone. “Get your neighborhood on it” is a real argument, not just a discount.
3. Reward champions. Review top referrers monthly; a targeted voucher to the top handful keeps the flywheel spinning.
4. Protect the referee’s first order. The welcome benefit buys a trial — onboarding, catalog quality, and delivery experience decide whether the trial becomes a habit and a future referrer.

Referrals compound

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

Reports

Referral performance lives under Dashboard → Reports in the referral reports:

Report	Route	What it shows
Codes list	/reports/referral-reports/codes-list	Every referral code and its usage
Orders list	/reports/referral-reports/orders-list	Orders acquired through referrals
Top referrers	/reports/referral-reports/top-referrers	Your best advocates, ranked
Summary	/reports/referral-reports/summary	Program-level performance at a glance

Use the summary to compute your effective cost per acquired customer (total rewards paid ÷ new customers with a completed order) and compare it against paid channels. Use top referrers to identify advocates worth rewarding further — a targeted voucher campaign keeps them sharing.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Try this
Customer can’t find their code	It’s in Customer app → Accounts → Referral
Referrer’s reward never arrived	Check the referee’s first order in the orders list report — it must have completed; cancelled orders don’t qualify
New customer’s code “didn’t work”	The code is applied at sign-up; verify it against the codes list report
Reward appears delayed	Payouts trigger when the first qualifying order completes, not when it’s placed
Suspected self-referral or gaming	Double claims are blocked automatically; review the orders list for patterns and escalate systematic abuse to support
Low program uptake	Re-examine both incentives, then promote with a marketing campaign — discovery, not the offer, is the usual bottleneck

Related: Marketing campaigns · Coupons · Wallet · Customer experience