In this help guide, we're going to show you what is a campaign default domain and how you can set your referral program on your own/custom domain.
In this guide 👇
- What Is A Campaign Default Domain?
- How You Can Set Your Referral Program On Your Own Domain
- How You Can Connect Your Own Domain To Your Referral Program
- Examples of DNS Settings For Different Providers
1. What Is A Campaign Default Domain?
A campaign default domain is a domain which is visible in your referral campaign join link. By default your campaign lives on a subdomain of Referral Factory.
your business name + referral-factory.com = default domain
An example of a campaign default domain 👇
2. How You Can Set Your Referral Program On Your Own Domain?
You can host your referral program on your own domain - this means that your referral program can be on a custom domain of your choosing.
Hosting your referral program on your own domain gives you more brand consistency because your campaign will not have referral-factory.com in the URL. This is one of the ways you can white-label your referral program.
Please Note: setting your referral program on your own domain is not a required option. You can continue using Referral Factory with the default domain option.
You’ll Need:
- A domain that you own and have access to.
- Administrative access to your domain's DNS with your domain hosting provider.
- An active Referral Factory subscription.
Let's start 👇
- Log in to your Referral Factory account.
- Navigate to the Add Ons tab on the left-hand side.
- Toggle on the option to add your own domain.
- A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm that you would like to add your own domain to your current subscription. Click Confirm.
Please Note: as this is an add-on feature when you enable this, you will be billed monthly for this feature in addition to the subscription plan you are on.
We recommend using something like referral.yourwebsite.com as your own domain.
Do not use your home page as the domain as this means your referral program will point to your own homepage and, therefore, when people navigate to your home page, they will see your referral program.
3. How You Can Connect Your Own Domain To Your Referral Program
You will be sent an email confirming your request to host your referral campaign on your own domain.
Follow the steps below in order to point your referral program to your own domain.
- Navigate to the hosting platform you use to host your website/domain.
- Navigate to the domain settings of the custom domain you have added to your Referral Factory account.
- Find and click on the Manage button, and from there you should be able to navigate to your DNS settings (this could be called DNS Settings or Manage DNS).
- In the DNS Manager section, look for the CNAME (Alias) records, then click Add Record.
- Fill in the form fields with the following values:
- The type will be CNAME.
- Host Record will be the subdomain you want to publish your campaigns to - this will be a subdomain on your own website. For example: if your custom domain added in Referral Factory is referrals.website.com, the Host Record value must be referrals).
- Points To or Will Redirect To value, this must be redirect.referral-factory.com
- TTL can be left as-is or set to a default of 4 hours, or 14400 seconds.
- Click Save to add the record.
Below is an example of what you will see 👇
Please Note: you will need to wait 24-48 hours for your record to update.
Once you have edited the DNS settings, it will take a few days for your new domain to be enabled on Referral Factory. If you would like to speed up the process, please send our support team an email, letting them know you have added your own domain to your subscription and updated the DNS settings. One of our support agents will be in touch with you to help you get set up.
4. Examples of DNS Settings For Different Providers
1. How to manage DNS settings on Cloudfare
Something to note - Make sure the Proxy Status to off “DNS Only” otherwise Cloudflare will attempt to redirect it incorrectly. Below is a screenshot to help you.
2. How to manage DNS settings from NameCheap
Something to note - Make sure the value in the CNAME entry is set to redirect.referral-factory.com
3. How to manage DNS settings in cPanel
The steps mentioned above may vary depending on which hosting provider you use. If you need help setting up your custom domain, please contact us.