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Set up a referral campaign from the dashboard

This guide walks a referral campaign end to end using only the dashboard: creating the program, choosing the reward, issuing a unique link per referrer, tracking the funnel on the program page, and approving payouts. The Referral programs guide covers the same surface through the API instead — pick whichever flow you run.

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1. Where referral programs live

Referral programs live under Outbound → Referrals at /marketing/referrals. The canonical module moved into the marketing namespace; an old /outbound/referrals bookmark redirects to the canonical list, and /outbound/referrals/[id] deep links redirect to the matching program page, so either entry lands in the same place. The page is role-gated to owner, admin, and billing roles. Program configuration exposes reward amounts and payout rules, so restricted roles do not see the screen, and read-only roles cannot open the create dialog or the pay controls.

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2. Author the campaign

On the list page, click Create program. The dialog asks for the same configuration the API accepts, broken into these fields: After the program exists, open it from the list and use Edit to update any field. Delete removes the program together with its issued codes and recorded conversions — it is a cascade, so prefer toggling Enabled off for a dormant program you might relaunch. Every referrer gets their own code rather than one shared link:
  1. Open the program and click Issue code.
  2. Search your contacts and pick the person who will share the link.
  3. The dialog mints the code (or returns the existing one for that contact — re-issuing is idempotent) and shows the public short link with a copy button.
The link points at the public redirect, for example https://api.orbit.devotel.io/r/AbCdEf23. Because each contact carries a separate code, per-channel offers work by issuing codes to different cohorts — your SMS push list, your email list, an ambassador group — and reading their funnel numbers separately on the leaderboard. A channel that underperforms shows up as its own low-visit row, not as noise blended into one shared link. Distribute the links however you send: drop the URL into an SMS or email campaign, or hand it to the contact from their Contact 360 record. The usual send gates — quiet hours, suppression lists, frequency caps — still fire before any message carrying a link goes out.

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4. Read the campaign’s counters

Open a program from the list. The detail page answers three questions: Stat cards. Total referrers, Signups, and rewards paid, aggregated across every issued code in the program — the whole program, not just the visible leaderboard entries. Leaderboard. Each referrer’s code with its own Visits, Signups, and Rewards paid counters, ranked by conversions, with resolved contact names and a Copy button for the share link. This is where you compare the cohorts from section 3. Conversions. Every recorded signup with when it happened, referrer, referee, and its reward status — pending, paid, or rejected — plus the reject reason when the built-in fraud guards declined it.

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5. Approve payouts

Payouts are an operator decision: a recorded conversion sits at pending until you approve it.
  1. In the Conversions table, find a pending row.
  2. Click Pay reward — the confirmation states the reward and the recipient before anything moves.
  3. Confirm. The conversion flips to paid and the reward fulfills:
    • Credit — the configured amount is applied per side.
    • Discount code — a redeemable code is minted and delivered through the incentives engine.
    • Custom (webhook) — a tracked payout record is created for your own fulfillment process.
Every payout is audit-logged with the referrer, referee, and reward summary. Rejected conversions are never payable — the reject reason stays on the row so a suspicious burst is visible instead of silently dropped.

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6. Worked example: a send-to-redeem ladder

“Acme Wellness” runs a member referral promotion where the reward grows with engagement:
  1. Create the program. Reward type Discount code, label “20% off next month”, referrer amount 20, referee amount 10, fulfillment provider on auto, landing URL https://acme.example/join, enabled from day one.
  2. Issue codes per channel. Open the program, click Issue code, and mint codes for three cohorts separately: the members you contact via SMS push, the email newsletter list, and the front-desk ambassador group. Each member picks up their personal link from their cohort send.
  3. Watch the ladder. The leaderboard separates the channels: SMS push shows 480 visits and 63 signups, email 310 visits and 21 signups, ambassadors 190 visits and 40 signups. The numbers say the SMS cohort wins on volume but the ambassadors convert per visit — so next quarter’s promotion leans into the personal-share motion.
  4. Approve weekly. A weekly ops pass filters the conversions table to pending rows, sanity-checks that rejection reasons are sparse, confirms the payout dialog, and clicks Pay reward. Each referee walks away with a minted 10% code; each referrer collects 20% off their next month.

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7. Limits and when attribution is not possible

  • Anti-abuse guards run on every conversion. Visit and signup from the same IP, or a referrer and referee created within minutes of each other, are recorded as rejected with a structured reason rather than counted toward a payout. A high rejection rate on a program is a signal of link scraping, not random noise.
  • The public redirect is rate-limited per client IP, so a circulated link picked up by a scraper farm does not inflate visit counts.
  • Role gating is always on. Only owner, admin, and billing roles see the referrals surface; the penalty for an off-role user is that the page does not exist for them.
  • Attribution needs the link to be clicked. If a new contact is created without the referral code context — a direct signup on your site with no click-through, a import, an API integration that never passes the parameter — there is no referrer to credit, and no retroactive correction is offered. Issue links per channel whenever possible so a missing click does not show up as “the campaign underperformed.”