Using ReferralCandy, your customers can refer friends and earn rewards to go towards their next order. Your customers will see referrals and rewards within their ReferralCandy portal. Once your customer has applied a discount, you can view it on the customer's subscription order page that a discount has been applied to a future order. This guide provides a walkthrough on how to set up your referral program in ReferralCandy and ReCharge, as well as common questions and steps to troubleshoot the integration.
ReferralCandy API Integration
- Make sure your ReferralCandy and Recharge apps are installed on your Shopify store.
- Go to the Integration page in ReferralCandy and give ReferralCandy the permission to manage your coupons
- In the ReCharge Dashboard, allow customers to apply coupon on existing subscriptions.
FAQ
What if I offer the first month free - can I make it so points can only be applied for the second subscription interval?
ReferralCandy simply works by converting via the discount codes that are generated through its system. It doesn't measure the lifecycle of a customer and reward conditionally. The ReCharge team has been exploring how something like that would work but at this point that is not something that is possible.
However, you can reward manually in PayPal using the cash reward option. You would need to track who has been referred in ReferralCandy, and then check in ReCharge to see if those referrals have surpassed the first order in ReCharge. If so, you can issue a cash reward in Paypal to the referrer.
How do I test ReferralCandy?
First, you must have ReferralCandy configured with the integration steps below. You will then need to complete a test purchase to share it with a friend. Once you have run the test you can 'pause' the referral campaign.
What rules or limits can I set for my customers?
Within your ReferralCandy account, you can set the number of times a person can refer a friend in order to get a reward. You can also set order sizes for referred purchases to count towards a reward. For details on how to configure this, reach out to their dedicated support team.
How and when are rewards applied?
Rewards earned for a customer are applied automatically as percentage discounts to their next subscription order. If you choose to pay customers via PayPal, then rewards will be applied outside of ReCharge.
Debug ReferralCandy
Configuration
Make sure you've added your ReferralCandy API key, Secret Key and App ID correctly in ReCharge. The naming conventions are different between apps - below is a key to compare if the keys are correctly input in ReCharge.
ReferralCandy API Key in ReCharge = API Access ID under API Tokens in ReferralCandy.
ReferralCandy secret key in ReCharge = API Secret Key under API Tokens in ReferralCandy.
ReferralCandy app ID in ReCharge = App ID under Plugin Tokens in ReferralCandy.
Discount name
You will also need to confirm you have a ReferralCandy discount in ReCharge and that the name of the discount code is the same as the Reward Name in ReferralCandy. The discount is automatically created when you input the Reward Description.
Reward Type
The Reward Type must be Custom or Referral Candy's API will block the ReCharge code. This requires merchants to fulfill the reward directly with the advocate. In this case, ReCharge's integration serves the role of the merchant, as the custom configuration allows for open API calls.
Missing advocate reward
In the ReCharge Dashboard, click the Integrations tab and open the ReferralCandy app from the enabled Integrations menu. On the following page, click View all rewards. This will show a list of all rewards pending and fulfilled. Search for the customer based on email and confirm if they appear on the list.
In addition, you should check an advocate's individual ReCharge account to see if a reward has been applied. A ReferralCandy advocate reward should apply to the advocate's next queued charge in ReCharge. Check the Address ID page and see if a discount code with the same title as the Reward description has applied to the next queued charge.
If the reward is not present, the customer has not received a reward. It is recommended that you check in ReferralCandy to see if the reward has been blocked due to fraud.
If the reward is present in the View all rewards page, but is not applied to the next queued charge in ReCharge, it could be for the following reasons:
- The reward description in ReferralCandy is different than the ReCharge ReferralCandy discount that is set up in ReCharge. For example, ReferralCandy displays the discount name as fifty_off but in ReCharge the discount is fifty_percent_off. It must match exactly for the discount to work.
- The customer has canceled. No reward can be applied when a customer is inactive but it will be applied if they re-activate.
- The customer already has another reward discount applied to their upcoming charge, so the reward will be applied to their next charge. There is no way for us to know if the current discount is greater or less than the existing discount, and we do not have the ability to apply two discounts at once.
- The reward has already been applied. In this case, it will appear as delivered.
- The reward type in ReferralCandy is set to coupon or cash instead of custom.
If you find out that you need to manually set a reward as fulfilled or unfulfilled, this can be done on the View All Rewards page by clicking Set as Pending or Set as Delivered.
Support
For help with the ReferralCandy integration, reach out to the ReferralCandy support team. You can also view the ReferralCandy Help Center.