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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.

Types of rewards

Percentage Reward – Apply a percentage off the next recurring order. For example, you may want to offer a customer 100% off their next subscription order when they refer 5 friends.

Cash Reward – Offer a cash reward for referral directly to the customer. For example, give your customer $20 off when they refer 5 friends. When they achieve this goal, you will see within ReferralCandy that you will need to PayPal the customer $20.  The cash payout would be handled by ReferralCandy directly. This can be applied to one-time orders only.

Warning: The reward type must be Custom, otherwise ReferralCandy's API will block our code.

Set-up example 

Note: Only the percentage reward type can be applied to a recurring order. A cash amount cannot be applied to a recurring subscription and can only be distributed through Paypal.

Step 1 - Integrate ReCharge and ReferralCandy

Once you have installed ReferralCandy on your Shopify store, you will need to enable ReferralCandy directly in ReCharge.

1. Go to the ReferralCandy integration page.
2. Click the Third party integrations drop-down.
3. Select ReCharge and click Save Changes.

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Step 2 - Create a reward in ReferralCandy

1. Go to the ReferralCandy rewards page.
2. Click the Give advocates... drop-down.
3. Choose Custom as Type of Reward and enter in the reward description. The reward description can be any description, but make sure you save this description for use later.

Note: As stated earlier in this article, you can only apply a percentage off subscription orders in ReCharge with ReferralCandy. If you wanted to give a cash payout, that is handled on your end with a PayPal transfer.

Step 3 - Set the reward conditions

You can set up conditions so the rewards are triggered for advocates based on the number of referred purchases or the total value of purchases. To set this in ReferralCandy, go to the Reward page and find the Advanced Settings section. Under Rewards Settings, configure the conditions for the reward. 

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Step 4 - Configure the coupon

For Friend Offer coupons used on subscriptions, you need to create the discount within ReCharge. If you're selling one-time products as well as subscriptions, you will also need to create these discounts within Shopify.

Step 5 - Set up your coupons in ReferralCandy

You will need to set up coupons with ReferralCandy if you're planning to offer a coupon for your subscriber's referrals.

  1. In ReferralCandy, go to the Reward page and select Give friends....
  2. Select the coupon.
  3. Enter the description and click Next.
  4. Paste the coupon code you created in the discount field. ii_15e6fc6af5c1bd2aIf the coupon is for one-time purchase items, enter the Shopify Discount Code you have created. If the coupon is for subscription items, enter the ReCharge Discount Code you have created.

    Note: Ensure the discount code name matches exactly with the name of the discount created in Shopify and ReCharge or it will not work.
  5. Set an expiration date (if applicable) and click Add Coupon Code when finished.

Step 6 - Locate your app ID and secret keys 

  1. In ReferralCandy, click on the account owner name on the left navigation menu.
  2. Click My Profile.
  3. Under API tokens, copy the API Access ID and API Secret Key.
  4. Under the Plugin tokens, copy the App ID.

Step 7 - Configure ReferralCandy integration

In the ReCharge Dashboard, click the Integrations tab.

  1. Click Get.
  2. Enter your API key, secret key, and app ID.
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  3. Enter your Reward description based on what you set up in ReferralCandy for the advocate reward. You'll want to paste the exact same Reward description as entered in ReferralCandy. Otherwise, it will not work.
    Note: Entering the Reward description will automatically generate a discount code in ReCharge for your customer advocates. This is a different code than the one you created for your referrers to send to friends. This code is designed to apply to a referrers' existing subscription after the referral conditions are met.
  4. If applicable, enter the Discount percentage off next purchase. You only need to do this if you're offering a percentage off. If you aren't, you will instead be rewarding people cash via PayPal.
Tip: You can review the list of referrers' by selecting Advocates under Manage in ReferralCandy. This is useful when issuing cash rewards.

Step 8 - Test ReferralCandy

To test subscription items, you'll need to create a referral link with a referral qualification of 1. Send the referral link to a friend to run a checkout purchase. After testing, check to see if the advocate's upcoming order has been discounted properly in ReCharge. 

Note: You cannot run test orders in ReCharge. It is recommended you refund the purchase after running the test with the referral link.

Tip: When conducting a ReferralCandy test, we recommend using a different computer on a different network to make the referred purchase. Otherwise, you can risk the referral being blocked by ReferralCandy's fraud detection measures. It is also advised to clear your cookies before making the purchase as well.

Referral reward redemption for customers

When new customers are referred, they will get a coupon code from the ReferralCandy page. They can copy the coupon code and paste it in the discount field at checkout, either on a subscription order or a one-time order.After making a successful referral, existing customers will receive an email with a unique coupon code. They can copy the code and enter it in the discount field at checkout or in their Customer Portal in ReCharge.

ReferralCandy API Integration Beta 

If your Shopify store offers both one-time products on Shopify and recurring subscriptions on ReCharge, you should use the Recharge API Integration.

Note: This is currently in Beta because Recharge API is in beta and not fully available yet to all merchants.

Enable the ReferralCandy integration API beta

  1. Make sure your ReferralCandy and Recharge apps are installed on your Shopify store.
  2. Go to the Integrationpage in ReferralCandy and give ReferralCandy the permission to manage your coupons
  3. 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. 

Note: Only one reward per order can be applied. 

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.

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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.

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