Referral Program Definitions

To better understand how referral programs work in GrowSurf, learn more about the key definitions below.

  • Admin: This refers to the GrowSurf campaign owner or an admin of the GrowSurf team.
  • Campaign: A GrowSurf campaign is simply a referral program.
  • Impressions: Any subsequent visits to your website on pages visited by referred friends that have the GrowSurf Universal Code installed. Impression counts can increase while unique impression count stays the same. See "Unique Impressions" definition as well.
  • Invitee: Invitees are email addresses that were sent "Invites" by participants (see "Invites" definition). Invitees are not yet a part of your referral program. Invitee email addresses are encrypted and obfuscated for privacy reasons because they did not opt-in to your referral program.
  • Invites: Also known as "email invites", an invite is when a participant uses the Embedded Invite to choose contacts from their Google Contacts list to send an email invite out to. See more details here. Note that "invites" are different from email shares.
  • Landing page: This has two different meanings in a referral program:
    • Referrer landing page: This is the landing page for a referrer, also known as a referral portal. See "referral portal" definition.
    • Referral landing page: This is the landing page for a referred friend, also known as the campaign Share URL. This page can contain referred friend motivators.
  • Participant: A participant is someone in your referral program who has their own unique referral link to share. Participants are based on unique email address, and include both referrers and referred friends.
  • Pending referral: A referred friend who signed up using someone's unique referral link, but has not yet completed a qualifying action.
  • Qualifying action: This is what a referred friend needs to do in order to count as a successful referral and unlock rewards. See "referral trigger" definition.
  • Referral: This generally means anyone who was referred to your business, but primarily means a successful referral. For example, this is a referred friend who first became a pending referral, then performed a qualifying action to trigger a referral.
  • Referral code: The participant's unique identifier. For example, in a referral link "https://yourwebsite.com?grsf=abc123", the referral code is "abc123". Referred friends do not need to enter a referral code because they are typically automatically tracked in GrowSurf, however if you use the JavaScript SDK or REST API to track referrals you would expose an input field where website visitors can manually enter a referral code.
  • Referral credit: When someone signs up using a participant's unique referral link and performs a qualifying action, their referrer will receive referral credit.
  • Referral credit expiration window: The timeframe in which a referred friend must perform a qualifying action in order for the referrer to receive credit. If referral credit expires, the referrer will no longer be eligible to unlock their reward(s). See more details here.
  • Referral link: Also known as "unique link" or "unique referral link", referral links are unique to each participant in your GrowSurf campaign. Referral links are made up of your campaign Share URL and a unique identifier that is used to track referral attribution back to the referrer. Example: "http://yourwebsite.com?grsf=abc123".
  • Referral portal: A dedicated webpage or section in your web app where participants can go to track the status of their referrals, grab their unique link, and check their reward progress. See more details here.
  • Referral status: When someone is referred to your business, they can be in four different referral stages:
    • Invited: This status means that a person was sent an email invite by a referrer. Invited people are not yet added to your campaign as pending referrals. (see "Invitee" definition)
    • Pending referral: This status means that a referred friend signed up but still has to perform the qualifying action to count as a successful referral
    • Referral: This status means that a pending referral performed the qualifying action, so the referrer received credit
    • Referral expired: This status means that a referred friend signed up but did not perform the qualifying action in time, so the referrer did not receive credit
  • Referral tracking: When a person visits a unique link, there will be a unique referral code saved as a cookie and the referral is automatically tracked when they sign up (so that their referrer gets attributed with the referral).
  • Referral trigger: This is what a referred friend needs to do in order to successfully count as a referral. See more details here. There are two options you can choose for your GrowSurf campaign:
    • Sign Up + Qualifying Action: A referred friend needs to submit their email address on your website AND perform a qualifying action to count as a referral (e.g, they make a first-time payment or if your sales team updates a CRM deal).
    • Sign Up: A referred friend needs to submit their email address on your website to count as a referral.
  • Referred friend: Also known as "referee", a referred friend is someone who joined your campaign by signing up through someone's unique referral link.
  • Referred friend motivators: When a referred friend visits someone's unique referral link, referred friend motivator elements warm up the landing experience by making the referral signup offer clear in order to increase conversion rates. There are two types of referred friend motivators:
    • Welcome banner: Display a fixed banner at the top or bottom of the referred friend landing page that says something like "You were referred by {{referrerName}}. Sign up today!"
    • Inline welcome message: Append an inline message to the main heading on the referred friend landing page so that referred friends get a warm welcome.
  • Referrer: A participant who refers their network (family, friends, or colleagues) to your business. All participants are referrers in your GrowSurf campaign.
  • Reward: Also known as "offer" or "incentive". Rewards are earned by referrers when they make referrals. Some examples include gift cards, discounts, or swag. There are four different types of rewards that a participant can earn:
    • Single-sided: Reward the referrer after their referred friend performs a qualifying action
    • Double-sided: Reward both referrer and referred friend after a qualifying action is performed
    • Milestone: Reward the referrer after they make a certain amount of referrals
    • Leaderboard: Reward the top referrers within a certain timeframe
  • Share URL: The webpage that referred friends land on. See "referral link" definition.
  • Shares: When a participant clicks a social share button [like Facebook, Twitter, or Email], this will count as a share for the participant.
  • Source: This is how a participant joined your referral program. There are four different source types:
    • Referral: Referred by another participant
    • Direct: If they signed up or were added as a participant without a referrer
    • Imported: Uploaded from a CSV from the GrowSurf admin dashboard
    • Manually added: Added from the GrowSurf admin dashboard
  • Unique impressions: Every time a participant's referral link (e.g., https://yourwebsite.com?grsf=d218xJ) is visited for the first time, a unique impression is registered. See more details here.
  • Vanity ID: Also known as "vanity code", a participant can choose a custom unique idenitifer for their referral link. See "vanity link" definition.
  • Vanity link: A unique referral link that contains a participant's vanity ID (participant's first name + GrowSurf ID). Vanity links make referral links easy to remember. See more details here.
  • Webhooks: Webhooks send data to your server when important events occur in your referral campaign. This lets you automatically fulfill rewards or update users in your database. See more details here. Here are a few scenarios in which you would use webhooks:
    • If you want to have an internal points system for your users, webhooks let you add credits to users in your database every time a referral happens.
    • Every time a new participant joins your referral campaign, webhooks lets you save their unique referral link (and other information) into your database or CRM.
  • Winner: A participant who has become eligible to earn a reward [where the reward has not yet been approved] or a participant who has unlocked a reward [where the reward was approved and/or fulfilled].
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