Advocates

What is an advocate?

An advocate is an existing customer you trust to refer new business. Each advocate is enrolled in a specific campaign and gets a unique personal referral link. When someone submits via that link, the referral is credited to that advocate.

Advocates have no Recomly account — they interact with the platform through a portal link delivered by email, SMS, or both.

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Inviting an advocate

1. Open a campaign and click the Advocates tab
2. Click Invite advocate
3. Enter the customer's name, and at least one of email address or phone number
4. Click Send invite

Recomly sends the advocate a personalized invitation containing their referral link and a link to their personal portal. The delivery channel depends on what contact information you provided and your plan:

• Email — sent if an email address is on record (all plans)
• SMS — sent if a phone number is on record and SMS is included in your plan (Growth and above)
• Both — sent on both channels if both fields are on record and SMS is enabled

Phone-only advocates

If you only have a phone number for a customer and SMS is included in your plan, Recomly will send SMS notifications to that number. If SMS is not part of your plan, no invitation or notifications are sent — you are responsible for sharing their referral link and portal URL directly until an email address is added to their record.

Duplicate invite prevention

You cannot invite the same person to the same campaign twice. Recomly matches on email address or phone number — if either signal already belongs to an enrolled advocate on that campaign, the invite is blocked and you are shown the existing advocate's record.

• Same email, different phone → blocked (email matches)
• Same phone, different email → blocked (phone matches)
• Different email and different phone → allowed (treated as a different person)

The invite is also blocked if the person already has a pending referral on that campaign. Allowing both roles simultaneously would bypass the referring advocate's attribution. To proceed, you have two options:

• Convert the referral — marks the referral as converted, credits the referring advocate, and automatically enrolls the referral as an advocate
• Delete the referral — permanently removes the pending referral without crediting anyone, after which you can invite them directly as an advocate

If you need to re-invite someone (e.g. they lost the original invite), remove them and invite them again — they will receive a new referral link and portal token.

Advocates are per campaign, not per account

The same customer can be an advocate in multiple campaigns simultaneously. This is intentional — you might run a "lawn care" campaign and a "snow removal" campaign at the same time and want the same loyal customers in both.

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What advocates receive

The channel used for each notification depends on the advocate's contact record and your plan. Email is always available; SMS requires a phone number on record and is only included on Growth and above.

Invitation — explains the program, shows the campaign reward, and includes their personal referral link and portal URL. Sent when you click "Invite advocate".

Activity notification — sent each time a referral is submitted via their link. Lets the advocate know someone is interested without revealing the referral's details.

Reward notification — sent when a referral is marked converted. Confirms the reward earned on that conversion and shows their updated credit balance.

For full details on how delivery channels are determined and how notification preferences work, see Notifications & Communication.

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The advocate portal

Every advocate has a personal portal URL (e.g. recomly.com/portal/<token>) accessible without a password. The portal shows:

• Their unique referral link with a one-click copy button
• Their total credit balance
• The reward they earn per successful referral
• A history of all their referrals with statuses (pending, converted)

The portal token is long-lived and does not expire unless the business owner revokes the advocate's enrollment.

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Advocate credit balance

Each advocate accumulates a creditBalanceCents total as their referrals convert. This is a running ledger maintained by Recomly — it represents what you owe the advocate in aggregate. The actual payout mechanism (cash, gift card, discount, etc.) is handled outside Recomly.

When a referral is converted and auto-enrolled as a new advocate, their starting credit balance reflects any reward they earned from that conversion. All subsequent conversions they generate add to the same balance.

Advocates can see their running balance in their portal at any time.

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Advocate quotas

Your plan limits the total number of currently enrolled advocates across all campaigns (not per campaign). Advocates who have been removed do not count — the quota reflects how many advocates are active right now, not how many you have invited in total. The advocate count on the Advocates tab shows your current usage against this limit. When you reach the limit, the Invite advocate button is disabled on all campaigns until you upgrade or remove an existing advocate.

Advocate quota is measured across all campaigns combined. If you have 3 campaigns and each has 20 advocates, that counts as 60 against your quota. The same customer enrolled in multiple campaigns counts once per campaign — enrollments are counted, not unique people.

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Removing an advocate

Open the Advocates tab, find the advocate, and click the delete icon. Removing an advocate:

• Deactivates their referral link immediately (new referral submissions are rejected)
• Preserves their existing referral and conversion history
• Frees up one slot toward your advocate quota

Removal cannot be undone. To re-enroll the same customer, invite them again — they will receive a new referral link and portal token.

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Referrals who become advocates

When you mark a referral as converted, Recomly automatically enrolls the referral as an advocate in the same campaign. They receive:

• Their own unique referral link
• Their own portal with a balance reflecting any reward from the conversion
• The same reward structure as other advocates in the campaign

From that point on, they can refer new people themselves — their earned bookings will accumulate in their credit balance just like any other advocate.

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How advocates share their link

An advocate can share their link with anyone, including by posting it publicly. People submit their contact info through the link — the advocate does not need to be involved in the submission itself.

If you want to prevent public sharing (for private programs), ask advocates not to post the link publicly and use an expiry date to limit the window.