How To Automatically Qualify Referrals Using Intercom

Automate your referral program with Intercom and Referral Factory! Use your regular Intercom workflows and pipelines to automatically qualify successful referrals, which, in turn, could trigger a reward to the person who referred them.

Step 1 (Optional): Create Custom Data Attributes in Intercom

 → Should you wish to store additional referral data related to your referred user, create the relevant data attributes inside Intercom. You could, for example, create data attributes to house information like:

• {Referrer First Name}: The name of the person who referred them
• {Referrer Email Address}: The email address of the person who referred them
• {Referral Campaign}: The name of your Referral Factory campaign (useful if you're running multiple campaigns)
• {Referral Link}: The referral link automatically generated for the new user (useful if you will enroll newly referred leads into your referral program)

Step 2: Configure How Data Should Be Sent in Referral Factory

→ Click Edit Campaign to enter the campaign builder. 

→ Navigate to the Integrations step in the bottom navigation bar.

→ Scroll down until you see the option to configure settings for the Person Invited. 

→ Select whether you want to create a Lead or a User in Intercom.

Step 3: Set Your Qualification Rules

→ To automatically qualify the Person Invited when they convert in Intercom, select the data attribute that will change from the dropdown list. 

→ Select what the data attribute's value should be when Referral Factory creates the contact inside Intercom.

→ Select the data attribute value(s) that mean the referral has been successful or converted (i.e., the value that should trigger a qualification in Referral Factory).

 Step 4: Map Your Fields

→ Map the data fields from Referral Factory to your Intercom data attributes using the dropdown select options. If a recently created Intercom attribute is unavailable for selection, click the refresh button. 

Step 5 (Optional): Define Your Default Fields

→ You also have the option to define any default data fields for when the Lead/User is created inside Intercom. 

Step 6 (Optional): Attach Information About The Person Referring

→ You also have the option to attach information about the person who made the referral. Remember that you may need to create custom data attributes inside Intercom to house this data. 

Step 7: Choose How To Handle Duplicates

→ Choose whether Referral Factory should update existing contacts. Please note that choosing to update existing contacts could override data inside Intercom.

→ Click Save or Next.

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How To Test Whether Your Integration Is Working

Step 1: Sign Up As the Person Referring

→ Open your campaign link in a private window or incognito mode and sign up as the Person Referring. Please note that Referral Factory uses cookies, so if you have already visited your campaign link, you may see the incorrect step. 

→ Be sure to use an email address that does not already exist as a user in your referral campaign and, depending on your settings, does not already exist in Intercom. We recommend using plus addressing to make sure that each email address is unique and easily searchable. For example, yourname+personreferring+date@yourdomain.com.

Step 2: Sign Up As the Person Invited

→ Next, open the referral link generated for the Person Referring and sign up as the Person Invited. 

→ Be sure to use an email address that does not already exist as a user in your referral campaign and, depending on your settings, does not already exist in Intercom. We recommend using plus addressing to make sure that each email address is unique and easily searchable. For example, yourname+personinvited+date@yourdomain.com.

Step 3: Check For New Users In Referral Factory

→ Navigate to the Users tab and check that both the Person Referring and the Person Invited have been created in Referral Factory.

Step 4: Check For The Person Invited in Intercom

→ Check that the Lead/ User for the Person Invited is created in Intercom with all the data you have chosen to map across. Note that it can take up to 30 minutes for the data to pass from Referral Factory to Intercom. Be sure to check the correct module (Leads/Users).

Step 5: Test Your Qualification Trigger

→ Update the data attribute of the Person Invited inside Intercom as per the settings you configured.  

→ Return to Referral Factory to check the status of the contact you just converted in the Users tab. Note that it can take up to 30 minutes for the data to pass from Intercom to Referral Factory.  

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