How to set up referrer and referee rewards

Every Bloop referral has two rewards:

• Referee reward — what a new customer gets for using a referral link or code.
• Referrer reward — what an existing customer earns after their referee buys.

Configure both from the Referrer reward and Referee reward sections of the Campaign tab. The referrer reward can be switched off by choosing No reward; the referee reward is always on.

Best practice

Match the reward type to how often people buy from you — store credit works well if customers return; cash or a discount works better for one-off purchases. Keep the combined reward value below your profit on a referred order. Always give the referee something too — two-sided rewards work better than referrer-only ones. See designing your offer.

Choose a referrer reward type

Reward type	How it works	Payout
Discount coupon	A Shopify discount code — fixed amount or percentage; can be restricted to specific products or collections	Automatic in Shopify
Store credits	Shopify Store Credit applied directly to the customer’s account	Automatic in Shopify
Free product	One or more products you pick, given free on the referrer’s next order	Automatic in Shopify
Cash	Tracked in Bloop; you process the payment yourself	Manual payout
Custom	A reward you describe in your own words (a gift, swag, a service) and fulfil yourself	Manual — held for your approval

Pick a type based on how often customers buy from you: store credit if they’re likely to order again, cash or a discount if not. See best practices: choosing the right referral reward for the full breakdown by industry.

Free product

Choose up to five products, each with a quantity between 1 and 999. The customer gets those products free on their order: there is no percentage to calculate, and the perceived value is the product’s full retail price, not your cost.

The reward is a code that only applies when the email at checkout matches the customer it was issued to. On your storefront, Bloop adds the free products to the cart as soon as the code is applied, so the customer doesn’t have to find them first. You can also give a free product as the referee reward.

It works best when the product is small, cheap to ship, and gives a reason to come back: a sample size, a refill, an add-on to something they already own. Pick a product that’s reliably in stock; a free-product reward pointing at a sold-out item is a broken promise.

Cash

Cash rewards are tracked in Bloop and paid by you — Shopify never issues them. Two things have to be in place before you can turn one on:

1. Payment methods on your side. In Referral → Settings → Payment method, pick the methods you’re willing to pay out through (PayPal, bank transfer, and so on) and fill in the details each one needs. Add more payments creates a method of your own. These apply across every campaign.
2. A way for referrers to give you theirs. Add the Reward Payment Method app block to the Profile page in your Shopify customer account editor, then add the block under Apps. Without it, referrers have no way to tell you where to send the money.

Referrers who haven’t entered payment details see a prompt on their referral hub, and the order shows a Referrer hasn’t added payment details yet warning in referral orders. Pay out from the cash payout tab once details are in.

Custom

A custom reward has no value, minimum, or expiry — just a short description (up to 500 characters) of what the referrer gets. It’s never issued automatically: it stays Pending until you approve it in referral orders, once you’ve arranged to fulfil it. Use it for rewards outside Shopify; otherwise a discount code, store credit, free product, or cash is simpler since it issues on its own.

Choose a referee reward type

The referee reward is what persuades a friend to place their first order. It can be one of two types:

Reward type	How it works
Discount coupon	A Shopify discount code, fixed amount or percentage, that the friend uses at checkout
Free product	Up to five products you pick, given free on the friend’s first order. See Free product

Only first-time customers can claim a referee reward. See who can be referred.

Set the discount value

Choose a fixed amount (best for a narrow price range) or a percentage (best for a wide price range, since it scales with order size). The referee reward uses the same options. For store credit and cash rewards, a percentage is calculated on the referee’s order total.

The margin rule

Add the referrer and referee rewards together, and keep that combined cost below your profit on a referred order. That keeps every referral profitable. Refine the value with A/B testing once you have traffic.

Apply to products

A discount reward can cover all products, or only specific products, product collections, or specific product variants. Narrowing the scope protects margin on the lines you can’t afford to discount, and steers referred customers toward what you actually want them to buy.

Narrowing has a catch worth knowing: reward text in emails and widgets renders from a variable that shows the discount value — a referrer sees “30% off” whether it applies to everything or to one collection. Spell out the restriction yourself in reward display, or expect support tickets at checkout.

Discount code prefix

The codes Bloop generates carry a prefix you control, on both the referrer and referee side:

Prefix type	Code looks like	Use it when
Custom text	BLOOP12345	You want every code to read as one campaign
Referrer’s first name	SARAH12345	You want the code to feel personal when shared

A first-name prefix falls back to your custom text when the referrer has no first name on file. The prefix applies to every tier and to the code your referrers share, so changing it changes the whole campaign’s codes.

Purchase type and subscriptions

Set whether a reward applies to one-time purchases, subscriptions, or both. Only choose Both if your store genuinely sells both ways — otherwise the discount silently fails to apply.

When subscriptions are in scope, a recurring cycle limit appears: the number of recurring payments the reward applies to, from 0 to 99. 0 means unlimited — the discount rides every renewal forever, which is rarely what you want on a referral reward. A limit of 1–3 cycles gives the referrer a real benefit without discounting the subscription for its lifetime.

Minimum requirements

You can add one minimum requirement to a reward: a minimum purchase amount, a minimum quantity of items, or a minimum quantity of referees. Default is None.

• Minimum purchase amount and minimum quantity of items are conditions on the reward code at checkout. The referrer still receives the code; it only works on an order that meets the minimum. They apply to discount and free product codes, not to store credit or cash.
• Minimum quantity of referees is the only one that decides when a referrer reward is issued. Rewards come in cycles: with a minimum of 5, the referrer earns a reward on their 5th successful referral, then on the 10th, and so on.

Most stores should leave this off at launch and only add one if margin becomes a problem.

Tiered rewards

The settings above pay a flat reward. If you want to pay more as a referrer brings in more friends, use FlexiTiers — see FlexiTiers.

When the reward lands, expires, or is taken back

Expiry, the review period, what counts as a successful referral, and the revoke triggers are all in how to control when a reward is issued and revoked.

Change a reward after codes are issued

When you save a new reward value, product scope, or other reward setting, the change applies only to rewards issued after you save. Codes your referrers and their friends already hold keep the settings they were created with, so a code someone is about to use doesn’t change value or stop working at checkout.

If you need the codes already issued to follow your new settings, contact support from the app and we’ll switch that on for your store. Once a reward has issued codes, a reminder banner on its edit page says the same thing; dismissing it hides it on every reward page.

Rewards are locked during an A/B test

While an A/B test is running on a campaign, its reward settings are read-only — changing the reward mid-test would invalidate the result you’re paying traffic to collect. End the test to edit rewards again.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Rewarding only the referrer. Always give the referee something too — it converts better.
• Setting rewards without checking your margin. Add both rewards together and compare to your profit per referral.
• Restricting a reward to some products and leaving the text generic. “30% off” that only works on one collection reads as a bait-and-switch at checkout. Set the display text.
• Leaving the recurring cycle limit at 0. An unlimited subscription discount costs you every renewal, not once.
• Turning on cash before the payment method block is live. Referrers earn rewards you have no way to pay.
• Never testing your reward. Use A/B testing to check if a different value works better.

Next steps

• Spell out how the reward reads to customers in Reward display.
• Decide how referrers share their reward in Referral methods.
• Prove which reward wins with A/B test your referral rewards.
• Match the reward to your economics with best practices: choosing the right referral reward.