Automate your referral programs end-to-end through Referral Factory’s integration with Intercom. So you can grow your business without adding to your workload.
In this guide👇
- What you can do with Intercom and Referral Factory
- Get Started
- Configure Intercom
- Uninstall your Intercom Integration
1. What You Can Do With Intercom and Referral Factory
👉 Sync your Intercom users to generate their referral links.
👉 Send your new referred leads or users straight into the Intercom.
👉 Qualify the referred leads and users that convert simply by changing the users data in Intercom (works with standard data attributes and custom data attributes)
👉 Automatically issue rewards to the Intercom users who refer friends.2. Get Started
You Will Need
- Any Referral Factory plan.
- Any Intercom account.
- A draft or published referral campaign in Referral Factory.
Please note: You cannot connect multiple Intercom accounts to your Referral Factory account at the same time.
Connect your Intercom Account with Referral Factory
- In the left-hand navigation bar of your Referral Factory dashboard, click the Settings tab.
- Click Connect under the Intercom logo.
- A pop-up will appear. Review the permissions and then click Allow and Install.
3. Configure Intercom
Once your Intercom account is connected to Referral Factory, you will need to configure your integration inside your campaign(s).
Please note: There are two main functions to configure:
1. Sending users from Referral Factory into Intercom.
2. Qualifying successful referrals when a user detail gets updated in Intercom.
Sending Users from Referral Factory to Intercom
- In the left-hand navigation bar, click Campaigns.
- Select the campaign you want to connect to Intercom.
- In the bottom navigation bar, click Integration.
- Select which Referral Factory users to send to Intercom
- Select Direct if you want to send the Person Referring.
- Select Referred if you want to send the Person Invited.
- You can select both Direct and Referred users!
Tip: If you’re only asking your existing Intercom users to refer, there is no need to send Direct users.
Please note: If a Referral Factory user is already an Intercom user, don’t worry! Referral Factory will check the user’s email address against your contact list and will only create new leads.
Setting a Qualification Trigger
What will change in Intercom when you consider a referral successful? Select to trigger a successful or converted referral in Referral Factory: When custom Intercom user details would update.
Please note: Your Intercom contacts will not sync until your campaign setup is complete.
Tip: The fields available in these settings pull directly from your Intercom account. So, if you have standard or custom user data attributes, these will be available for selection.
👉 When custom Intercom user details would update
- Set the custom data attribute for us to track.
- When Referral Factory first creates the user in Intercom, What should the first status of the user be? For example, ‘New’.
- Then, choose which user status you’d like to categorize them as when you consider them a successful or converted referral. For example, ‘Connected’.
Mapping User Data from Referral Factory ➡️ Intercom
- Before you map user data, decide which data you want to sync between Referral Factory and Intercom.
- Create relevant form fields in your campaign Pages for Person Referring and/or Pages for Person Invited.
- Create relevant custom data fields/attributes in Intercom. You will likely want to create properties like ‘Campaign name’, ‘Referral link’, ‘Referrer first name’, ‘Referral Count’, and ‘Converted Referral Count’. For assistance, read Intercom’s help guide article.
- Click ‘Map the below fields to the fields in Intercom’.
- Use the dropdown options to match the relevant data between Referral Factory and Intercom. The options in the dropdowns will pull from your Intercom account.
Please note: Keep in mind that Referral Factory requires the default field ‘Email’. If this is not mapped, the integration will not work.
- Map any additional Intercom values that you want to sync. Click ‘Choose your default Intercom values from the fields below’. These options will pull from your Intercom account.
- Click Next.
- Once you have configured Email Notifications, complete your Intercom configuration in the final step: ‘Promote your Campaign’.
Syncing Intercom Users with Referral Factory
- Select ‘Generate referral links for your CRM contacts’.
- Scroll down to ‘Sync Your Contacts’.
Tip: Remember that Referral Factory’s integration lets you send data in both directions 🔄 from Referral Factory to Intercom and from Intercom to Referral Factory. In the Integrations step of the campaign builder, you configured sending user details from Referral Factory ➡️ Intercom. In this step, you configure how to send data from Intercom ➡️ Referral Factory.
- Choose whether to sync all your Intercom users or specific lists.
- If you selected ‘Sync from Specific List’, use the dropdown option to select the list. The options will pull from your Intercom account. Note that you can select from active or static lists.
- Select whether you want to make the sync between Intercom and Referral Factory ongoing or once-off.
- Click ‘Next’.

Automatically Generate Referral Links for Users in Intercom
- Before you map user data, make sure to have created a custom data attribute in Intercom for the ‘Referral link’, ‘Referral Count’, and ‘Converted Referrals Count’.
- Use the dropdown options to match the relevant data between Referral Factory and Intercom. The options in the dropdowns will pull from your Intercom account.
- Click ‘Save’.
Please note: Your users will NOT be notified unless you choose to in the next step.
4. Uninstall your Intercom integration from Referral Factory
- Navigate to the Settings tab on the left-hand side.
- Under the Intercom logo, select 'Disconnect'.
Please note: Once disconnected, no user data will sync between Intercom and Referral Factory or vice versa. However, any data that was synced before will still be available in both systems.