Qualifying Referrals Using Inbound Webhooks

The ability to qualify your referred users when they convert will make managing your referral campaign easier because it allows you to see in real-time how many referrals you have, and how many of those have converted / qualified. 

We created an inbound webhook so that you can easily qualify your referred users - simply by sending their unique code the endpoint given to you in your account. You can find this by going to the SETTINGS tab, and scrolling down to the webhook section (see image below). Hit SHOW to see your webhook endpoint, and please remember to keep this endpoint URL private. 

You can automatically update the status of a referred user by sending their unique code to this endpoint, that means you will be changing this:  

Qualified = No

to 

Qualified = Yes

Important To Note 

In order to use the inbound Webhook, you need to make sure you first send the new referred users CODE out when they join the campaign. This means that when a new 'referred user' joins your campaign, you save or document that users CODE in your own system. Once you have saved it, you can then send it back (using the inbound webhook), when that referred users converts or qualifies. 

How Do You Send The Referred Users Code OUT

You can do this many ways - for example by using outbound webhooks, or by using our API, or by using the redirect option in step 3, or simply by exporting your USER data (on the USERS tab) and importing it to your own system. 

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Below are two scenarios where you might use webhooks to automate your referral campaign. We've also created a step-by-step guide with screenshots to show exactly how to set this up. 

Scenario 1: You want to reward a person referring only after a person invited spends $200 on your platform. 

Create a webhook for your referral campaign that sends the information about the referred lead or person invited to Zapier, from Zapier you can send it to a Google sheet. Now that you have the details of the person invited, you can create another Zap that updates the Google sheet everytime the person invited does a transaction in Stripe. You can then create an automation in the Google sheet that sends the code of the person invited back to Referral Factory once they spend $200. This will then qualify that referral and assign that successful conversion to the person who referred them.

Scenario 2: You want to send the referred lead ie the person invited to your own platform or CRM. You then want to qualify that referral once the person invited converts on your platform.

Create a webhook for your referral campaign that sends the information about the referred lead or person invited to Zapier, from Zapier you can send it to your own CRM. You can then create an automation or Zap that sends the code of the person invited to a Google sheet once they convert. (Each business is different so you will need to determine what that conversion is before hand) Once in the Google sheet, you can use an inbound webhook to send the code of the person invited back to Referral Factory which would qualify that referral. This will allow you to identify which referrer needs to be rewarded in real time. 

Step By Step Guide To Creating your Zap

Here is a step by step guide explaining how you could send data from the referral lead from a Google sheet back to Referral Factory so we can qualify the lead status in your Referral Factory account. Essentially enabling you to automate your entire referral program from a Google sheet or Airtable. 

Firstly, you need to make sure you have a Zapier account. You can create one here.

Once you have that set up, you can create your zap. Go to the Zapier Dashboard and click ‘Create Zap’.

Make sure you give your Zap a name you will easily recognize. Select Google sheets as your trigger. 

Then you need to select the trigger event. In this example, we have chosen: “New or Updated Spreadsheet Row In Google Sheets. 
Click Continue. 

Choose which account you want to connect your Zap to.
Click Continue. 

Set up the trigger by selecting the spreadsheet, worksheet, and what column should trigger. The default column for Referral Factory qualifying is ‘Code’. Make sure that you select this one for the ‘Trigger Column’.
Click Continue.

You can then test this trigger to make sure it is set up correctly. 

When Zapier can identify the account, sheet, and row it will say: “We found a spreadsheet row!’. So well done! That's how you know your setup is working. 

After you've set up your Zap trigger, the next step is to add an action to your Zap. An action is an event your Zap performs when your trigger event occurs. Select the ‘Webhooks by Zapier’ action. Then, select ‘POST’ for the ‘Action Event’ 
Click Continue.

In this step, you will need to go to your Referral Factory account to get the URL for your "Inbound webhook".

Navigate to the Settings tab on the left-hand side of your dashboard. Scroll down and copy the URL. Be careful not to share this URL with anyone else as this URL gives you the ability to qualify referred users without authentication, using our webhook functionality.

Paste the Inbound Webhook in the URL field below. Select ‘form’ for ‘Payload Type’ and make sure the ‘Data’ is set to ‘code’.  Click on the field next to code, select the ‘Code’ field from the drop-down menu.

These next fields will not affect your setup so you can leave them as the default or as-is.
Click Continue.

Now that you have set up your Zap, it's time to test that it all works.
Click ‘Test & Continue’ or ‘Retest & Continue’.
If everything in your setup has been done correctly and the test works, you will see a ‘Code: 200’ and ‘Test was successful!”

Once you've tested your Zap and everything is working, make sure you switch it on in order for your zap to keep firing. 

Every time you send the code for the person invited back to Referral Factory, our system will qualify that referral so you can see which of your referrers need to be rewarded.