What is the referral credit expiration window?

The referral credit expiration window is the timeframe in which a referred friend must perform a qualifying action in order for the referrer to receive credit.

Example:

Let's say your referral credit expiration window is 6 months. When someone signs up to your campaign using a participant's referral link they will have 6 months to trigger a referral (e.g, make a purchase).

If this time gets exceeded, then triggering a referral will only result in the referred participant's referral status getting updated to be Credit Expired, and no rewards will be unlocked or issued out.

More information:

• Participant activity logs will denote the credit expiration status.
• If you have a CRM/ESP integration connected (such as Mailchimp), the referred participant's referral status will show up as Credit Expired.
• You can view expired referrals from your GrowSurf admin dashboard by clicking the View Referrals button, then filtering by Referral Expired:

Important note about manual referrer assignment:

If you manually assign a referrer to an existing participant, the referral credit expiration window is based on the time that the participant was initially added to your campaign, and not when you manually assigned the referrer.

This means that if you trigger a referral, it must not exceed the referral credit expiration window based on the date that the existing participant joined.

If you must reset a participant's join date, you must delete them and re-add them to your campaign. This way, the referral credit expiration will be reset.

Difference between referral credit expiration window and cookies:

GrowSurf uses cookies that live for 365 days so that people who visit your site using a participant's unique referral link do not have to use that same link when they return. The referral credit expiration window commences when the referred friend signs up and gets added to your campaign as a participant. They must perform the qualifying action (which triggers a referral) within your set referral credit expiration window; otherwise, their referrer will not receive credit, and rewards will not be unlocked.