Setting Up Referrals in Reorbit

Pay your customers for bringing you new ones. A referral rewards two people: the customer who shares, and the friend who buys.

What is a referral?

A referral is a link one of your customers shares with a friend. When the friend places a qualifying order, both sides get a reward.

Reorbit calls them by their roles, and the app uses these words throughout:

Role	Who it is	When they’re rewarded
Advocate	Your existing customer, the one doing the referring	When their friend’s first order clears
Friend	The person who followed the link	When they claim the offer, ready for their first order

Referrals pay a discount, not points. This is the one part of Reorbit that doesn’t run on your points economy — neither side spends points, and neither side earns any. A referral rule mints a Shopify discount code for whoever it pays.

Where customers find their link

Two places, both automatic once you have an active referral rule:

• The loyalty widget on your storefront shows a Refer a friend card to logged-in customers. It stays hidden until a referral reward is configured, so nobody is offered something that doesn’t exist yet.
• The checkout thank-you page shows the buyer their own referral link right after they order — the moment they’re most likely to share it.

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Before you start

• Decide what each side gets. Most stores offer both sides the same discount, because an offer you can explain in one sentence is the one that gets shared.
• Decide whether the friend has to be genuinely new to your store.
• Make sure the loyalty widget is on your storefront, or advocates have nowhere to get their link. (See Adding Reorbit to your storefront.)

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Step-by-step: build your referral program

1. Open the Referrals page

From the app, go to Settings → Referrals.

2. Create the friend’s reward

Click Create rule. The Choose a rule type window groups the options by role — Advocate and Friend — with two reward types under each:

Reward type	What it gives
Percentage Off Discount	A percentage off the order (e.g. 15% off)
Fixed Amount Discount	A set amount off the order (e.g. $10 off)

Pick one under Friend first: it’s the half a new customer sees before they’ve bought anything, so it’s the half that has to be attractive.

The role is fixed when the rule is created. You can edit everything else later, but a rule authored as a Friend reward can’t be turned into an Advocate one — create a new rule instead.

3. Fill in the reward

Field	What it controls
Rule Name	What customers see. Write the offer: “Give 15%, get 15%”.
Discount value	The percentage, or the amount in your store’s currency.
Minimum Order Value	Optional floor before the code can be used.
Discount Code Prefix	The prefix on the generated code — e.g. FRIEND gives codes like FRIEND-XXXX.
Coupon Expiry	Days before an issued code stops working.
Redemption Limits	Maximum uses per customer, and the frequency window.
Order Type Eligibility	Only one-time orders, or subscription orders too.
Discount stacking	Which other discounts this code may combine with. Nothing stacks unless you tick it.
Rule Status	Active or Disabled.

Save with the save bar.

4. Create the advocate’s reward

Repeat under Advocate. Same fields, same reward types.

Referral rules have no Discount Scope section — a referral code applies across your store. Scoping to specific collections or products is only available on ordinary reward rules.

5. Set the program’s guard rails

At the bottom of the Referrals page, Program settings apply to every referral rule at once:

Setting	What it does
Refund hold (days)	Days to wait before issuing referral rewards, in case the order is refunded.
Per-advocate daily cap	Maximum successful referrals one advocate can earn per day.
Per-advocate lifetime cap	Maximum over their lifetime. Leave blank for unlimited.
Referred friend must be a new customer	Only reward referrals where the friend has no prior orders.
Self-referral checks	Block referrals where the advocate and friend share an Email or an Address.

Click Save. These are the settings that decide whether your referral program is a growth channel or a discount leak, so set them before you launch rather than after.

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The two emails a referral sends

Reorbit emails the friend when their link works, and the customer when their reward is ready. Both are on by default, and both are switched on the Automated messages screen under Referral messages — see Get started with retention triggers.

They send the moment each thing happens rather than on the daily run, so there’s no timing to set, and they need Klaviyo connected like every other Reorbit message.

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Managing referral rules

Each rule has a ⋯ (More actions) menu with Edit and Delete. Below the list, a line tells you how many rules are active — disabled rules stay listed but pay nothing.

Rules are grouped by role, so it’s easy to see at a glance whether you’ve built both halves. A program with only one half configured works, but it’s a lopsided offer.

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Tips and best practices

• Reward both sides, and reward them the same. “Give 15%, get 15%” is one sentence. Asymmetric offers need a paragraph, and don’t get shared.
• Turn on both self-referral checks. They cost you nothing and they block the most common abuse, which is a customer referring themselves at a second address.
• Set a refund hold that covers your returns window. Otherwise you pay out on orders that come straight back.
• Use a lifetime cap if you’d rather not discover one customer has become a full-time affiliate.
• Require the friend to be new. A referral that pays out on an existing customer’s next order is just a discount.

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FAQ

Do referrals award points?

No. Both sides get a discount code. Points come from earn rules; referrals are their own thing. (See Creating an Earn Rule.)

When exactly does the advocate get paid?

When the friend’s qualifying first order clears — plus your Refund hold if you’ve set one. Not when the link is clicked, and not when the friend claims the offer.

Can I restrict a referral discount to one collection?

Not today. Referral codes apply across the store. If you need scoped discounts, build them as reward rules instead.

Can I change a Friend rule into an Advocate rule?

No — the role is set when the rule is created. Create the rule you want under the right heading and delete the other.

Where does a customer find their referral link?

In the loyalty widget on your storefront, and on the checkout thank-you page after they place an order.

Nothing appears in my widget’s Refer a friend card.

The card stays hidden until a referral rule is active. Check that at least one rule’s status is Active.

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Next steps

• Next: Program setups that work — including a complete referral offer with numbers.
• Related: Creating a Reward Rule · Adding Reorbit to your storefront