Campaign Setup
Your campaign is the strategy behind your referral program, written as rules. It answers four questions: who can refer, what each side earns, how people share, and when a reward lands. In Bloop, all of this lives in one place — one campaign record per store, applied to every referral. Edit it from the Campaign tab in the dashboard.
Best practice: Decide your reward economics before you open the campaign editor. Work out what a referred customer is worth to you, then set the combined referee + referrer reward below that number so every successful referral is still profitable. The configuration only takes minutes once the math is settled — see referral program best practices.
What a campaign controls
A campaign brings four decisions together. Each has its own doc, but they live under the same campaign:
Who can refer — the eligibility rule for becoming a referrer. See Target audience.
What both sides earn — the referrer reward and the referee reward. See Referrer and referee rewards.
How referrers share — referral link, referral code, or both. See Referral methods.
When rewards are issued — minimum requirements, a review period, and code expiry, all configured inside the rewards sections.
The four decisions, side by side
The four levers pull against each other. Widening the audience grows reach but can dilute trust; richer rewards lift sharing but cost margin; tighter timing rules protect you but add friction.
Who can refer
Target audience rule
More reach, more shares
Higher-trust referrals, less fraud risk
What each side earns
Referrer + referee rewards
More motivation to share
Better margin per referral
How they share
Link, code, or both
Reaches more channels
Simpler, but suppresses some shares
When rewards land
Review period, minimums, expiry
Fast, frictionless payout
More control, fewer bad payouts
At launch, lean toward the generous side of every lever to gather data; tighten selectively once you can see where the program leaks margin or trust. See referral program best practices for how to sequence those decisions.
Why these four rules carry the whole program
These four rules are the economic engine of a channel that consistently outperforms paid acquisition. Referred customers churn 18% less and carry 16% higher lifetime value than customers acquired by other means (Schmitt, Skiera & Van den Bulte, Journal of Marketing, 2011). And the channel runs on trust money cannot buy — 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family above all other advertising (Nielsen, global survey of 28,000+ respondents). Your campaign rules turn that trust into tracked, profitable orders. Spend the few minutes to set them deliberately.
Set up your campaign
Open the Campaign tab in the Bloop dashboard.
Open Target audience and choose who can join as a referrer — All customers, Members, Specific customers, Customer tags, or Customers with at least one completed order.
Open Referrer reward and set what an existing customer earns for a successful referral.
Open Referee reward and set the discount a referred friend receives.
Open Referral method and turn on a referral link, a referral code, or both.
Save the campaign.
What triggers a reward
A referrer shares their link or code.
A referee uses it and receives a discount on their order.
When the referee completes a qualifying purchase, Bloop processes the order from Shopify's
orders/paidevent.If the order passes your minimum requirements and fraud checks, the referrer reward is created.
A referrer reward is only created after the referee actually buys. Sharing a link alone never issues a reward — the referee's purchase is what counts.
Because rewards key off a real paid order rather than a click or sign-up, you only ever pay for referrals that became revenue. No purchase means no reward, by design.
When a reward is issued
Two settings inside the referrer reward control timing:
Reward review period — a delay (in hours) before a reward is approved. Enter
0for instant approval. This gives you a window to catch problems before a reward goes out.Minimum requirements — a referral can require a minimum purchase amount, a minimum quantity of items, or a minimum number of referees before the reward is issued. See Referrer and referee rewards for how each option behaves.
Orders that look suspicious are placed on a mandatory hold and reviewed before any reward is created, separate from the review period above.
A worked example
Here is a complete first campaign for a subscription coffee store, decision by decision. All numbers below are illustrative — they show how to reason, not measured Bloop results.
Who can refer. Set Customers with at least one completed order — active subscribers make credible referrers without opening the gates to guests who have never tasted the product.
What each side earns. A first month is $40 at roughly 50% margin, so each referred subscriber earns about $20 of profit. Give the referee 25% off their first month (~$10) and the referrer $10 in store credit toward their next box. Combined $20 against $20 of profit on the first cycle — and a subscriber stays for months, so lifetime value covers it comfortably.
How they share. Turn on the referral link (which captures the friend's email for onboarding) and leave the code on for occasional in-person mentions.
When rewards land. Set the review period to 0 for an instant thank-you, add no minimum so nothing blocks a first share, and give codes a 30-day expiry to nudge redemption.
Save and watch. Track results in Referral analytics and refine the reward with an A/B test once shares are flowing.
Common mistakes to avoid
Configuring rewards before knowing your numbers. Set values without working out the profit on a referred order first and you are guessing at the most expensive lever. Do the margin math, then open the editor.
Starting narrow to "play it safe." A tight audience or heavy minimums at launch starves the program of the data you need. Open wide first; tighten later with evidence.
Forgetting it is one campaign per store. Every change applies program-wide. Use the A/B test tool to isolate experiments instead.
Turning off both sharing methods. Disabling both the link and the code stops the program entirely. At least one must stay on. See Referral methods.
Treating launch settings as final. The first campaign is a starting hypothesis. Read your analytics and test changes rather than assuming the initial guess was right.
Next steps
Configure the two-sided rewards in Referrer and referee rewards.
Decide how customers share in Referral methods.
Set who can refer in Target audience.
Prove which setup wins with A/B test your referral rewards.
New to referrals? Start with Getting started with referrals.
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