Offer referral discounts
Referrals are one of the most effective ways to grow your membership business. Memberful allows you to offer rewards to members who refer others to join your membership program. These rewards come in the form of a discount that will be applied to a member’s active subscription. This discount operates like a coupon except that it is applied automatically, so no coupon code is needed.
In this help doc:
Admin experience
- Enable the referral program.
- Set up referral link redirect.
- Select which plans award referral credits.
- Set up referral milestones.
- Disable or delete a milestone.
- Track referral coupon usage.
Member experience
- Where can members find their referral links?
- How can members track their referrals and rewards?
- How do members apply their reward discount?
- What happens if a referred member cancels their subscription?
- Can members stack coupons and referral rewards?
Enable the referral program
Navigate to Discounts → Referrals from your Memberful dashboard, and enable the referral program.
You'll have the flexibility to choose the discount amount and the minimum number of referrals required for a member to qualify for the discount.
- Purchasing a paid plan
- Signing up for a paid trial
- Making the first payment after a free trial
- Free registration
- A free trial
- Signing up using a 100% discount coupon
Set up referral link redirect
After opening a referral link, members can be redirected to your landing page, website URL, or a custom URL. You might not see all these options if you haven’t set them up.
Select an option from the list and enter a custom URL if applicable.
Select which plans award referral credits
Members earn credit for referring purchases of all plans and downloads, or only for some of them. If you choose Selected Plans and Downloads, you’ll be able to select the eligible plans and downloads.
Set up referral milestones
Milestones define when a member has accumulated enough referral credits to earn a reward, and they also define what that reward will be.
To create a milestone, click Add Milestone.
- Enter the referral count that will unlock this reward.
- Choose between a percentage-based discount and a currency amount-based discount.
- Enter the discount amount.
- Select a coupon type
- Click Create milestone.
Disable or delete a milestone
When editing an existing milestone, you’ll also be able to delete or disable it.
Disabling a milestone stops any members from reaching it in the future. This action is reversible and members that have already reached it won’t lose their reward.
Deleting a milestone, on the other hand, is not reversible, and will result in all members losing their reward if they had already earned it.
Track referral coupon usage
The statistics button for each milestone displays a counter of how many members have reached that particular milestone.
You can click the button to see a report of all the members who have had your milestone reward applied to their subscription.
Where can members find their referral links?
Members can find their unique referral link, and share it via multiple apps, by visiting the referrals section of their member account.
The link will also appear on payment receipts and posts.
- For posts, the link will appear on the email but not the Memberful-hosted website.
- For receipts, the link will appear in the email and web version ("View invoice" button) but not the PDF download.
- You can include members' unique referral links in the emails sent from our email newsletter integrations: Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, Drip, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Sailthru.
How can members track their referrals and rewards?
Members can keep track of their referral credits and rewards from the referrals section of their member account.
How do members apply their reward discount?
Once a member has earned a referral reward, it will be automatically applied to their next renewal charge, and every renewal if it's a recurring reward or for X number of renewals if it's a limited reward.
If a member upgrades or downgrades their plan, their referral reward discount will not be carried over.
Should the referrer decide to cancel their subscription, their referral link will remain active; however, any progress will be paused until they have an active subscription again.
What happens if a referred member cancels their subscription?
If a referred member later cancels their subscription, the member who referred them won't lose their credit toward the referral milestone.
Can members stack coupons and referral rewards?
Memberful allows you to offer your members discounts on their subscriptions in the form of coupon codes, referral rewards, and retention discounts. Referral rewards will be calculated based on the plan purchase price and automatically added on top of existing discounts. Retention discounts (also known as loyalty discounts) work the same way.
Related help docs:
- Learn how members can keep track of their progress toward rewards.
- Reduce churn with retention discounts.