Understanding the referral journey

The referral journey is the path two people take through your program. A customer (the referrer) shares a personal link or code. A friend (the referee) uses it to get a discount and buy. Then the referrer earns their reward. Knowing this journey from both sides helps you design an offer people want to share, and helps you read your dashboard.

This page explains the experience, not the settings. For setup, see How to launch a referral program. In short: the friend is rewarded when they buy, and the referrer is rewarded after the order is paid.

flowchart LR
    A["Your customer shares<br/>a link or a code"]
    B["Their friend buys<br/>with a discount"]
    C["The order is paid and<br/>the review period ends"]
    D["Your customer<br/>gets their reward"]
    A --> B --> C --> D
    D -. "the friend can now share too" .-> A

The two people in every referral

• The referrer is anyone in your target audience. By default that’s every visitor, including guests. They get a unique share code and want a reward worth recommending you for.
• The referee is the friend they invite. They trust the referrer and are deciding whether to try you.

Both benefit. The referee gets a discount on something they were already curious about. The referrer is thanked for the introduction.

Step 1: The referrer discovers they can share

A customer sees an invitation in your storefront widget, on the thank-you page, in their account or in an email. The message is simple: give your friends a discount, get a reward when they buy. A clear offer gets shared. A confusing one gets ignored.

If you use customer segments or exclusions, you can hide the program from logged-in customers who don’t qualify. Guests and your referral page are not affected. See Target audience.

Step 2: The referrer shares a link or code

Links suit email, chat, and social posts. Short codes suit word of mouth and offline conversations. Either way, the share carries the referrer’s unique code, so Bloop credits the right person. See Choose a referral sharing method.

Step 3: The referee arrives and claims a discount

With a link, the friend lands on your store, enters their email, and receives the discount. That email gives you a contact to follow up with. With a code, the friend types it at checkout. See Choose a referral sharing method for the trade-off.

The friend receives the referee reward you set up, usually a discount on a first order. If they don’t get it, see Referrals & rewards troubleshooting.

Step 4: The referee makes a qualifying purchase

The referral succeeds when the referee completes an order. Only real purchases count. A share alone earns nothing. The new order appears on the Orders tab of Referral program.

• Minimum purchase and item rules apply to discount codes, not to store credit or cash. Your minimum number of referees sets when the referrer reward is issued. See Set up referrer and referee rewards.
• The friend must be new. An existing customer who types a referrer’s code earns no reward for that order.
• Self-referrals are blocked. If the friend uses the referrer’s email, including Gmail variations, the referral is rejected while the self-referral check is on in Fraud center. Keep that check on.

The referral discount is applied at checkout.

The order then appears on the Orders tab of Referral program with the status Reward sent.

Step 5: The referrer earns their reward

Once the purchase qualifies, the referrer reward is issued. It can be a discount code, store credit, cash, a free product, or a custom reward you fulfill. If you set a review period, approval waits for it. Orders flagged as suspicious are held for 14 days. The referrer gets an email and sees the reward in their referral hub.

Use this map when a referrer asks where their reward is. Cash rewards move into the payout queue after Reward sent. You settle them on the Orders tab of Referral program.

stateDiagram-v2
    state "Reward sent" as Sent
    state "Reward declined" as Declined
    [*] --> Pending: the referee's order is paid
    Pending --> Suspicious: a fraud check flags it
    Pending --> Sent: the review period ends
    Pending --> Declined: you reject it, or the order is cancelled or refunded first
    Suspicious --> Sent: you approve, or the 14-day hold lapses
    Suspicious --> Declined: you reject the case
    Sent --> Used: the referrer redeems it
    Sent --> Expired: the code reaches its expiry
    Sent --> Revoked: the order is cancelled or fully refunded

• A refund of 90% or more of the order counts as a full refund. A smaller partial refund keeps the reward.
• A reward the referrer has already used is never taken back.
• Declined or revoked referrals don’t count toward FlexiTiers progress.

Best practice

The faster and clearer the thank-you, the more likely a referrer shares again. A reward that arrives promptly with a friendly note turns a one-time advocate into a repeat one. Tune the timing in Settings → Reward review period (reward timing) and the message in your referral emails.

Step 6: The referee becomes a referrer

The journey is a loop. The new customer can now invite their own friends. A program that makes Step 1 feel natural for every new customer turns single referrals into steady growth.

How the journey shows up in your dashboard

Each step leaves a trace: shares and clicks, referee orders, rewards issued, and revenue. Read them together to find where the journey stalls:

• Many shares but few orders: the referee offer is weak.
• Few shares: the referrer reward or where the offer appears is weak.

See Referral analytics and Activity log.

Where to go next

• Set up referrer and referee rewards
• Choose a referral sharing method
• The affiliate journey