Referral Methods
How your customers share decides where your referrals come from. A referral program only spreads through the channels your sharing method fits, so the choice between a link and a code is really a choice about where your customers talk about you — in inboxes and group chats, or face to face. Bloop gives you both, and the right answer is usually a deliberate mix rather than a default.
The two methods trade off the same way every time. A referral link captures the friend's email before issuing a discount, which means you can keep marketing to them, but it only works in digital channels. A referral code is short enough to say out loud and needs no email step, which makes it perfect offline — at the cost of that follow-up data. You set both in the Referral method section of your campaign; at least one must stay on, because turning off both disables the program.
Best practice: Turn on both methods unless you have a specific reason not to. Forcing every customer through one channel suppresses shares from people who would only ever recommend you their own way — over email, or in person. Let referrers pick the channel that fits their relationship with the friend.
Referral link vs referral code
Referral link
Each referrer gets a unique link. The friend visits it and enters their email to receive a discount code for checkout.
Email, chat, and social sharing.
Referral code
Each referrer gets a unique referral code. The friend enters the code to get a discount at checkout.
Word-of-mouth and offline channels.
What you gain and give up with each
The deciding difference is the email step. A link asks the friend for their email before the discount appears; a code does not. That single step is both the link's biggest strength and its only real cost.
Friction for the friend
One extra step (enter email)
None — just type the code
Captures the referee's email
Yes — enables onboarding and follow-up emails
No
Works offline / spoken aloud
Poorly — it is a long URL
Yes — short and memorable
Attribution
Precise, per-link
Precise, per-code
Best channels
Email, DMs, social, chat
In-store, phone, podcasts, creator captions
The email the link captures is more valuable than it looks. A referred friend you can email is a friend you can convert with an onboarding sequence even if they do not buy on the first visit — and the share moment is the rare time customers willingly hand over a contact. Where that follow-up matters most — subscriptions, considered purchases — lead with the link. Where the recommendation happens out loud, the code is the only thing that travels.
What tends to work
Two patterns hold up across most stores:
How you present sharing matters as much as which method you offer. Adding social proof to the share prompt — a reminder of what the friend gets, or how many people have joined — can meaningfully lift results. Make the share prompt clear, friendly, and trustworthy.
The channel itself is the most trusted you have. Nielsen's global survey of 28,000+ people found 92% trust recommendations from friends and family above all other advertising, and McKinsey estimates word-of-mouth drives 20–50% of purchasing decisions. Your sharing method is the pipe that carries that trust — the less friction in it, the more of that trust converts. This is the case for enabling both methods rather than betting on one.
Turn a method on or off
Open the Campaign tab and go to the Referral method section.
Turn on Referral link, Referral code, or both.
Save.
Turning off the referral code also deactivates the underlying share discount in Shopify. Turning it back on reactivates it. Turning off both methods stops the referral program entirely.
Set a code prefix
Generated codes start with a prefix so they are easy to recognize on orders and in Shopify discounts. The prefix defaults to BLOOP and can be changed per store. A full code is the prefix followed by a random string and the referrer's ID, for example BLOOP-A1B2C3-1042.
A good prefix is your brand, kept short. Use something a customer would recognise on their order and would be happy to say out loud — LUNA-A1B2C3-1042 reads as "from Luna" and reinforces the brand at checkout, whereas the generic default tells the friend nothing. Keep it letters-only and brief so codes stay easy to dictate over the phone or read off a card.
How sharing is tracked
Each referrer is assigned a unique 8-character share code automatically when they join. Whether they share by link or code, Bloop records the share so you can measure channel performance in Referral analytics.
Because both methods are tracked per referrer, you can see which channel actually drives conversions rather than guessing. If links convert far better than codes for your store, that is a signal to push email and social sharing harder; if codes lead, your customers are recommending you offline and you should make codes more prominent. Read the channel split before you decide to turn anything off.
A worked example
A homeware brand sells both online and through two physical stores. This is an illustrative scenario, not measured data.
Online customers recommend the brand in group chats and Instagram DMs, so the referral link fits — and the captured email lets the brand send a welcome offer if the friend does not buy straight away.
In-store customers recommend it at the counter, where a long URL is useless. The referral code — branded
HAVEN-…— is something a customer can read off the receipt and a friend can type at checkout, online or in store.The brand turns on both methods, prints the code on receipts, and surfaces the link in post-purchase emails.
After a few weeks they check analytics: links drive most online conversions, codes punch above their weight from the physical stores. Neither would have worked alone — and turning either off would have cut a real source of referrals.
Common mistakes to avoid
Picking one method to "keep it simple." Forcing every referrer through a single channel silently loses the shares that would only have happened the other way. Enable both unless you have a concrete reason not to.
Leaving the generic prefix. A branded prefix earns trust and reinforces who the referral is from; the default tells the friend nothing. Set your brand as the prefix.
Treating the code as second-class. Offline and spoken recommendations are some of the most trusted there are. If your customers talk about you in person, the code is not a fallback — it is a primary channel.
Never reading the channel split. Both methods are tracked, so leaving that data unread means optimising blind. Check which channel converts before you change anything.
Next steps
Compare link and code strategy in depth: referral codes vs referral links.
Set what each side earns in Referrer and referee rewards.
Decide who can refer in Target audience.
Make the program easy to find with best practices: program visibility.
Track which channel wins in Referral analytics.
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