Zoho And Referral Factory: A Full Guide

If you are a Zoho customer, it’s even easier because you can connect your referral program to your Zoho CRM. Reading this guide, you'll learn how to get the most out of Referral Factory and Zoho working together so that you can run a fully automated referral program!

Referral Factory is compatible with Zoho CRM, but the setup process requires detailed attention. If you follow this guide step by step, your referral campaign will seamlessly integrate with Zoho CRM.

Syncing your referral program with Zoho CRM lets you automatically send through all your new referred users (referrals) as new leads straight into Zoho, and qualify them with a simple stage status update that counts as conversions. It greatly simplifies your referral program behind the scenes and helps you keep track of which of your referred leads (or referrals) have qualified, as well as which referrers need to be rewarded.

Build a referral program that is fully on-brand (using our drag-and-drop builder).

👉 Generate a referral link for all or some of your Zoho contacts.

👉 Send all your new referred users (leads) directly into the Zoho workflows you already use.

👉 Automatically qualify these referred users when they convert - simply by changing leads status, leads conversion, or adding custom data attributes to that lead or contact in Zoho. It depends on what you want your Zoho CRM to consider regarding the referred users (referrals) leads or contacts when they arrive.

👉 Automatically reward referral sources for their referrals - if your campaign offers rewards. 

Referral Factory and Zoho work together to run hassle-free referral campaigns, enabling you to grow your business - through referrals!

 

In order to launch a referral campaign and integrate it with your Zoho account, you will need the following:

• A Referral Factory Basic or Pro subscription.
• A published referral program (if you're not sure how to make one, watch this video)
• Any Zoho account and already built workflow inside.

First, you'll need to build your referral program using the campaign builder inside of Referral Factory and create workflows using your Zoho CRM. Once your referral program is up and running, you can be ready to integrate it with workflows inside your Zoho CRM  👇

In this guide, we will show you how to:

1. Connect Zoho to Referral Factory
2. Create a workflow in Zoho
3. Build and set up your own custom referral campaign
4. Set up your Zoho Integration in your campaign
5. Map what data you send to Zoho (when you get new referred users/leads) 
6. Automatically qualify your referrals using the Zoho workflows you already use 
7. Sync Zoho Contacts with your referral campaign - generating referral links for all your Zoho contacts
8.  Uninstall your Zoho integration from Referral Factory

In order to set up your Zoho integration correctly, you need to follow the steps in this guide. Point two is particularly important as your integration will only work if this is set up correctly. After you have connected your Zoho integration, and have created the workflow documented in point two of this guide, you'll be ready to connect your referral campaign to your Zoho CRM. 

1. Connect Zoho to Referral Factory

Click on the settings tab on the left-side navigation bar. Then click the ‘Connect’ button on the Zoho integration option. Choose the Zoho account you wish to connect to Referral Factory. 

*Note you can only connect one Zoho account at a time. 

Please make sure that you accept giving Referral Factory permission to access your Zoho account by clicking "Accept".

 

Once your Referral Factory account is connected to Zoho, you will need to create a workflow in your Zoho account then to configure your integration inside your referral campaign.

2. Create a workflow in Zoho

In your Zoho account, click on the Settings icon in the top right-hand corner. Under Automation, select Workflow Rules and click "Create Rule".

 

Identify the module you'd like to use from the dropdown menu - Leads or contacts. It is here that you decide whether the referred users will arrive as leads or contacts in your Zoho account. Here, I will choose leads; if you choose contacts, your referral campaign will be configured differently. Name your rule and describe it so your team will be able to easily recognize it. Click "Next".

Now you need to select when you want to execute this rule. The below screenshot will show you how to set this up. When you're done, click "Next".

 

Then, select which leads would you like to apply the rule to. The correct setup for this is All Leads. Click "Next".

 

You'll now need to create a webhook in Zoho. Select Instant Actions and then choose Webhook from the drop-down.

 

Name your Webhook and give it a description. The method of the webhook must be POST. The URL to notify is https://referral-factory.com/zoho/webhook.

The Authorization type is General.

 

Scroll down to the Body section. The Type should be set to Form-Data. Put "id" in the first parameter name and "status" in the second parameter name, make sure they are in lowercase. Add the below module parameters and click “Save and Associate” when you're done. 

 

Your final settings should look like this - click Save when you're finished. 

*Note: If you create rules for leads, the referral program will automatically pull out the appropriate data fields. If you create contacts, then data fields will be displayed for contacts.

Now that your workflows are set up and your Zoho account is connected to your Referral Factory account, you can begin building your referral program. Go to the settings step inside your campaign builder and jump to the third section to learn how to do this. 

 

3. Create, Build and Edit Your Referral Campaign

With Referral Factory you can design, build and launch a referral campaign in just a few minutes. Without writing a line of code! You can customize your campaign to look and feel just like your brand too. Our drag-and-drop builder allows you to add your own logo, change the background, edit the font settings and add new content such as headlines, text, images, and videos. For more information on how to build a referral campaign, watch this video. 

 

Once your referral campaign is built, you can now integrate it with the Zoho workflows
you already created. 

4. Setting Up Your Zoho Integration

In your campaign settings, you'll see a block at the top that says: ‘Setup your campaign to send users out, and then qualify those users when they convert ’ - let's start here! 

When your campaign is built, you need to define what data you want to send from your referral campaign into your Zoho CRM. This is done in the Settings steps (Step 1 or Step 2) inside the campaign builder. Make sure the data you want to send to Zoho CRM 100% matches with the data you need your users or referred users to fill in to join your referral campaign. 

• Choose the property you want to use to qualify your referrals - leads or contacts? In your Zoho CRM workflow, you should already have the property you want to use to qualify your referrals (see section 2, image 2).
  
• Select the method you want to use: lead status, lead conversion, or custom data attribute. Your Zoho account needs to be configured with different workflows for each. If you have chosen contact property as a way to qualify your referrals, you should take another route.
  
  If you choose leads property
  

 

If you choose contact property, the route is different.

• Next, define ‘What will the status of the user change to when they are qualified”, in your Zoho account. This is the status that your customer or user will have once they convert. In the example below, we have chosen: "Not Contacted".
• Then, define ‘What will the status of the user change to when they are qualified”, in your Zoho account. Your customer or user will have this status / stage once they convert - in this case, it is "Pre-qualified".
• Lastly, you can also define what “Type” of Referral Factory user you want to add to Zoho - direct users, referred users, or users who have manually been added to a campaign from an existing database. In order to make sure your new referred users get sent to Zoho, select the "Referred" users option.
  
  
  
  
  *Note: If a contact already exists in Zoho with the same email address that they have used to join your referral campaign the contact will not be duplicated in your Zoho CRM.
  
  Once these five steps are completed, users that join your referral campaign will automatically be sent to Zoho.

 

*Note: If you want to Qualify your referred users using a different setup in Zoho (that means you don’t want to use our standard option: then we suggest sending the ‘code’ of each referred user into Zoho so that you have their unique identifier inside your Zoho CRM. When the user qualifies, you can then send their code back to Referral Factory using our ‘Qualify with code’ Zap. You can read how to do that in this Zapier help guide. In the next section you will see how to map the ‘code’ field to send it to Zoho. 

 

5. Map what data you send to Zoho (when you get new referred users / leads) 

Define the user data that you want to collect and send to Zoho. Keep in mind that Zoho requires default fields "First Name" or "Last Name" or "Email" fields so you will need to send these. 

Make sure that these fields have also been created in your Zoho account in order to successfully send the data points you've mapped out. If that field doesn’t exist in Zoho then the lead or contact will not be sent through.

You can also include the first name and email address of the referrer as a contact property when sending referred leads to Zoho. 

 

 

 

Once you've published your campaign and you start getting referrals, they’ll automatically be sent to your Zoho account with the lead status that you assigned. 

 

 

6. Automatically Qualifying Your Referrals In Zoho

 

Qualifying referrals makes it easy for you to see how many referrals you have. You will also be able to identify who needs to be rewarded for referring a new user. 

To qualify new referrals on Referral Factory, simply update the Lead Status in Zoho. You can decide in your campaign settings how you want to do this. 

When you do this, the status of the user in Referral Factory will change accordingly, letting you know that the lead has been qualified. The change will be as follows: 

Qualified = No

to 

Qualified = Yes

From the example below, we can see that Karen is referred by Daniel. Now that Karen has been qualified we can see that Daniel has a converted referral and needs to be issued a reward. 

7. Sync Zoho Contacts with your referral campaign - generating referral links for all your Zoho contacts 

You can sync all of your Zoho contacts or a specific list of contacts with your referral program. This will allow you to add those contacts to your referral program and issue them with their own unique referral links - this means you can include a contacts referral link in all your automated marketing efforts! 

This is how you generate referral links for all or some of your Zoho contacts: 

From the Outputs tab of your campaign, click on the Sync your CRM contacts button.

From here you can follow the prompts to sync your contacts. It's important to note that you can choose to sync ALL contacts. You can also choose to keep this sync ongoing, or to only do a once off sync. This depends on whether you simply want to generate referral links for the contacts you already have in Zoho today, or you want to generate referral links for the contacts you have in Zoho today AND the contacts you'll have in Zoho in the future.

 

 

Please make sure to map the Referral Link field to a field you create in Zoho. 

 

8. Uninstalling The Zoho Integration 

To uninstall Zoho from Referral Factory please navigate to the 'Settings' tab on the left-hand side.

Then select 'Disconnect'.

Once Zoho has been disconnected the sending of new user data from Referral Factory to Zoho will stop.

Any data that was sent before the deinstallation of Referral Factory and Zoho will be available in both places. Any new user data will still be available in Referral Factory as your campaigns will not be paused or stopped.

 

If you'd like more information on how to use Referral Factory and Zoho together - please book a demo with our team.