How to set up the in app referral program? (full guide)

In this guide will we walk through all steps needed for setting up our in-app referral program, which will allow you to generate referral links for all your users without them needing to leave the app. 

Terminology used; 

In-app referral program = Program itself.  
Advocate = User who is recommending you
Referral = new sign up via an advocate
Widget = pop up provided by Reditus, showcased in your app

Are you a developer? See our technical documentation here. See below how it will look when fully installed; 

1. Setup referral tracking

For our referral tracking to work, we require three three things. 

1. Installing a tracking script on your site + sign up page
2. Installing a snippet into your sign up form
3. Connecting your payment processor

These three steps will allow us to identify who signed up via an advocate or referral, so this tracking works for both programs. It will also make sure that we would never attribute a sign up twice. 

With the payment processor connection; we are able to calculate the appropriate commissions or reward and able to identify who moved to a paid plan. 

2. Setup the referral program benefits

When setting up an in-app referral program, you will need to set up the rewards your users can earn. With an affiliate program things are super straightforward; an affiliate will X % commission for X amount of months. For a referral program, you can have a lot more flexibility in the rewards you are going to give and if you want to give 'double-sided benefits'. 

1. Advocate Rewards

When an advocate (your user) refers you; what kind of reward do you want to give them? You could choice multiple options; 

• On sign up; so when someone signs up, they could receive a fixed fee or custom reward.
• On First purchase. When their referral does their first payment (interval doesn't matter), they would receive a reward. You can give them a fixed fee or a custom reward as well. 
• On recurring payment. This is similar to the affiliate program, where you can give them an % for a number of months. No custom rewards are possible here (yet). 

Set up your in-app referral program rewards here: https://app.getreditus.com/saas/referral_program/config/details 

Case Study; Snitcher’s Custom In‑App Referral Program: A SaaS Growth Case Study

2. New User reward 

When someone signs up via an advocate (your user), this is when this reward is being triggered. In the UI this is called a referral, technically we call this a lead (so it is different from referrals coming from affiliates). 

What we typically see is that you want to give them something extra which is related to your app; extra trial, discount for first x months, credits or something else.

Since the reward is always set within your application, you can use our webhooks to create these rewards. This means you can get creative with the rewards you want to give out. 

FYI: Webhooks are only available on our paid plans; see Reditus pricing. 

3. Install and Embed the Widget

For your users to be able to grab a link from our embed within your app, there will be 3 steps needed from your side to make this work. These steps have to be done by a developer, we would recommend to send them to the technical documentation. 

Loading the widget

To embed the widget into your app, you would need a developer to load the data into the widget programmatically and embed it into the site.

Loading the widget is essential because it brings in the necessary JavaScript and exposes the functions you’ll need to display referral information to your users.

Here is a guide on how to do that.

const authToken = await fetchAuthToken();

window.gr("loadReferralWidget", {
  product_id: PRODUCT_ID,
  auth_token: authToken,
  user_details: {
    email: "john@example.com",
    first_name: "John",
    last_name: "Doe",
    company_id: "1as2-3df4-5fg6-7hj8",
    company_name: "Acme",
  },
});

You can grab your Reditus Product Secret here. 

Authenticating the User 

We want to make sure each user’s referral activity is linked to the correct account. Authentication is handled on your backend to ensure your product secret remains private. You can find your Product ID, and Product Secret here;

https://app.getreditus.com/saas/referral_program/config/authentication 

​

See here the technical documentation to authenticate the user; https://docs.getreditus.com/referral-program/authentication 

Showing the Widget Modal

Displayi the in-app referral modal so users can share referral links and track referrals directly in your application. Now that you’ve loaded the widget (Step 1) and authenticated your users (Step 2), the final step is to present the referral interface inside your application.

See here how to show the Modal; https://docs.getreditus.com/referral-program/show 

See below how the widgets looks, the first screen is where users are asked to join the referral program and they can 'opt-in' to it. 

The second screen will allow them to see their unique referral link, their referrals (leads) and the rewards earned. 

4. Run a live test

When you have installed everything, we would recommend to run a full test yourself before pushing it out to your entire user base. Make sure the following works; 

• Tracking of sign ups into Leads 
• Generating the link for your users 
• Applying the rewards (if you have custom rewards) 

If everything works well, it is time to go live! 

5. Show the pop up and trigger it on WOW moments

1. Show a static text or icon in your app

You fully decide how and where you can trigger the embed, see below some idea's. 

• Add "Earn & Refer" to the top of your app
• Add a 🎁 icon to your app 
• Add "Share and earn" text to the side bar 
• Add "referral program" in your account settings

In the end; people who love your product should be aware of the referral program and rewards they could earn. 

Timeslines example on how they add it to the top of their app. See their case study on how they added $130k in revenue via affiliate & referral marketing. 

How we at Reditus have installed it, you can find it in the sidebar. 

2. Trigger the pop up on WoW moments - using URL parameters

When your users experience a WoW moment, or have achieved the value they were waiting for. Ask them to join your referral program! Use the pre-made links to trigger the pop up using your own tools. Y

The widget also supports deep linking using a query parameter like:?reditus-show-referral=programWhen the URL contains this parameter, the referral widget will automatically open and optionally switch to a specific tab:

Value	Behavior
program	Opens the Referral Program tab
referrals	Opens the Referrals tab
rewards	Opens the Rewards tab

Example URLs

• https://your-app.com/dashboard?reditus-show-referral=program
• https://your-app.com/account/settings?reditus-show-referral=referrals
• https://your-app.com/billing?reditus-show-referral=rewards
  
  

 

--

Want to test everything in staging first? 

• sign up with a (new) account at app.getreditus.net 
• Change our api endpoints from .com to .net 
• Folllow the steps above to setup the referral program
• Done testing? Change things to your production environment
  • Change the API endpoints to .com
  • Grab your production Product ID & change it
  • Grab your production Product Secret & change it
• Need access to the webhooks in staging? Ping us in support. 

---

Frequently Asked Installation Questions | In-app referral program

Can we use the same tracking as the affiliate program?

Yes, if you have the affiliate program already running you can skip the tracking installation steps. We use the same tracking for both programs, making sure you would never have duplicated referrals as well. 

What is the difference between the in-app referral program and affiliate program?

The in-app referral program is focused on your current user base, turning them into ambassadors. 

The affiliate program often also have people recommending you which aren't users. think about Consultants, Publishers, Agencies, Influencers etc. People outside of your own user base, but would have access to your Ideal Customer Profile. 

See more information about two here; In-app referral program | Affiliate program.  

Can I start using the in-app referral program for free?

Yes. The in-app referral program is available in our free plan. You will have the ability to generate up to $1,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue for Free. Once you surpass the treshold, you will be moved into a paid plan. 

If you want to use the affiliate program features, have access to the API, or webhooks you will be asked to move to a paid plan. See our full pricing + feature list here; https://www.getreditus.com/pricing/

What is possible with an referral program? 

Many companies have big plans for the referral program, and want to do custom rewards, which is completely different than the affiliate program. The referral program gives you a lot more flexibility, you could have other kind of rewards. Think about; 

• One time credit award for generating a sign up 
• One time cash or custom reward for generating a paid client 
• Swag gift(s) for generating X number of paid users 
• Give 10% discount to all people referred, and receive 10% credit yourself 

As you can see there are many options for the rewards, we have generated the custom rewards & webhooks, allowing you to be as creative as possible. We do recommend to keep things 'simple' so people understand what they are receiving. 

See the In-app referral program from Snitcher to get some inspiration what is possible, when you fully use our API to setup the program. 

---

Ready to start your in-app referral program? Sign up for free now.