Referrals
How Referrals Work
An overview of the Recomly referral system — advocates, friends, campaigns, and conversions.
Overview
Recomly turns your existing customers into a word-of-mouth sales force. Each referral program runs inside a campaign, which defines the reward structure and the people participating.
There are four main actors in every referral:
| Actor | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Business owner | You — you create campaigns and confirm referral conversions |
| Advocate | An existing customer enrolled in your referral program |
| Friend | A new prospect the advocate refers to you |
| Platform | Recomly tracks everything and handles notifications |
The referral lifecycle
- Set up a campaign — define your reward structure (e.g. "$50 credit for the advocate, $50 off for the friend") and any expiry or limits.
- Finish a job and invite your customer — after completing a job, invite that customer to become an advocate. Recomly sends them an email or SMS with a link to their personal advocate portal.
- Advocate refers their friends — the advocate shares their unique referral link. When a friend clicks it and submits their contact info, a
pendingreferral appears in your dashboard and you receive a lead notification. - You work the lead and close the sale — contact the friend, do the job, get paid.
- Mark the referral as converted — once the job is done, mark the referral converted in Recomly. If your campaign uses a percentage-based reward, you'll enter the total job value at this step so Recomly can calculate the exact reward amounts for the advocate and the friend. Rewards are recorded and both parties receive a notification.
- The friend becomes an advocate — the referred friend is automatically enrolled in the same campaign with their own referral link, creating a self-sustaining referral chain.
Referral statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
pending | Friend submitted their contact info; waiting for you to close the sale |
converted | You marked the referral as a successful booking and paid job |
expired | This referral was superseded — another referral for the same friend was converted first, retiring this one |
What happens at conversion
When you mark a referral converted, Recomly:
- Locks in the reward amounts as they are right now — so if you later edit your campaign rewards, it won't change what this referral was worth. For percentage-based campaigns, the amounts are derived from the job value you entered at conversion.
- Adds the advocate's reward credit to their running balance
- Sends reward notifications to both the advocate and the friend
- Promotes the friend to an advocate — they are enrolled in the same campaign with their own personal referral link and portal, so they can start referring people themselves
- Expires any other pending referrals for the same friend on the same campaign (see Duplicate referrals)