How to Implement a Referral System

Encouraging your users to refer their friends to your chatbot is one of the most effective ways to grow your contact list. ChitChatBot has a built-in referral system that automatically tracks referrals and triggers specific actions when a user successfully refers a new or existing contact.

🔔 Note: A user cannot refer themselves.

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Steps to Set Up Your Referral System

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1️⃣ Create a Shareable Referral Link

To track referrals, you need to create a unique shareable link for each user.
Let’s use WebChat as an example, but the same steps apply to all supported channels (Facebook, Instagram, etc).

✅ Suppose your Entry Point Link is:

https://app.chitchatbot.ai/webchat/?p=xxx-account-id-xxx?ref=giveaway2025

✅ To make it unique for each user, append -c{{user_id}} to the end:

https://app.chitchatbot.ai/webchat/?p=xxx-account-id-xxx?ref=giveaway2025-c{{user_id}}

Here’s what’s happening:

• giveaway2025 is your referral campaign name.
• {{user_id}} is dynamically replaced with the current user’s ID.

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2️⃣ Share the Referral Link

Your chatbot should send this unique referral link to users, so they can easily share it with their friends.

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3️⃣ Track Referrals and Reward Users

When a new contact joins via a referral link, ChitChatBot automatically fires one of these triggers:

• User referred a new contact
• User referred an existing contact

To configure these, go to:
Menu > Tools > Triggers & Actions

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Increase Points and Trigger Rewards

Each time a referral is successful, you typically increase (not set) a custom field that stores the user’s points.
For example, if your custom field is called total_users_refer, you will increment its value by 1.

➡️ To do this:

• In your flow, click +Action.
• Choose “Set Custom Field”.
• Set it to increase the points field by 1 (not to overwrite it!).

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Check and Reward Users

Next, create a separate flow that checks if the user’s total points meet the required threshold for a reward.

Here’s a typical setup:

✅ Flow 1:

• Sends the user their referral link.

✅ Trigger:

• User referred a new/existing contact – increments the points.

✅ Flow 2:

• Checks if the user’s referral_points match the reward criteria.
• If yes, send a reward (e.g., coupon, thank-you message, or exclusive content).

You can create two separate triggers if you want to give different points for referring a new user vs. an existing user.

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Example Summary

• ✅ Users get a unique link: https://app.chitchatbot.ai/webchat/?p=xxx-account-id-xxx?ref=giveaway2025-c{{user_id}}
• ✅ Chatbot sends this link to users.
• ✅ User shares it with friends.
• ✅ When a new or existing contact joins via the link, the trigger fires.
• ✅ Points are incremented, not overwritten.
• ✅ Another flow checks if the user is eligible for a reward.

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This referral system setup makes it easy to turn your users into ambassadors—boosting your contact list and engagement with minimal effort! We have a very robust and expansive platform which means many use cases can implemented using different methods and techniques, experiment and see what works best for you.