Referral forms help your list members to invite their friends to join your list. You may track how many friends were referred by list members, how many opened or clicked on a tracking link in the invitation, and how many ultimately joined the list.
Here's how it works:
1. You send out a mailing to your list with a referral link asking members to invite their friends to join the list.
2. List members click on the link, and enter the email addresses of those they'd like to invite, and an optional message for them.
3. The invited members receive an email message telling them how to join the list. If they follow the instructions in the invitation, they become a list member.
To use the referral feature, you must first create an invitation—a message that will be sent to those referred telling them how to join the list. This can be accomplished easily using the Invitation Template in Content, which can be customized to fit your needs. Next, you must create a referral form—the web page members are taken to when they want to invite a friend to join the list. Finally, you must insert a referral link into your mailing (or into the mailing content).
See Referral Tracking for step-by-step instructions on how the referral feature works. To insert an invite link manually, you must use the invite command.
The syntax for an invite link is:
%%invite 1 2 -detect_open -detect_html -dest_url http://www.example.com%%
invite
The command to insert a referral link.
1
The DocID_ in the Docs_ table of the invitation document that should be sent to those who are invited.
2
The DocID_ in the Docs_ table of the referral form referrers should be taken to when they click on this link.
-detect_open
If included in the command, the invitation will detect opens of those who are invited.
-detect_html
If included in the command, the invitation will detect whether or not those who are invited can see HTML.
-dest_url
If included in the command, the destination URL referrers will be taken to after referring friends to the list. If none is specified, they will be taken to a generic page thanking them for referring friends.