Referral campaigns help you grow through word of mouth by letting your existing customers share your brand, products, or offers with friends. You can reward both the referrer (the person sharing) and the friend (the person who joins), creating a simple and motivating way to drive new signups and sales.
Triggerbee’s Referral Campaigns are built directly into the onsite experience platform, making it easy to design, launch, and track referrals.
How Referral Campaigns work
Each referral campaign consists of two connected campaigns:
Referring Campaign: This campaign includes a share element that lets visitors share your brand or offer via a native share dialog or by copying a referral link.
Friend Campaign: This is the campaign seen by the person who clicks the shared link. It can include a signup form, a reward, or any other offer you’d like to show new visitors.
The link shared from the Referring Campaign is automatically tagged, so anyone who visits through that link will see the correct Friend Campaign.
Sharing element behavior
On mobile devices (and supported desktop browsers), the native share dialog opens automatically, allowing users to share through messaging apps, email, or social channels.
On unsupported browsers, a copy-link field appears instead, letting the user copy the link manually and share it wherever they prefer.
How to set up a Referral Campaign Triggerbee
Navigate to Referral Campaigns in your Triggerbee dashboard.
Click + New Referral and name your campaign.
Select your Referring Campaign template.
Select your Friend Campaign template.
Customize both campaigns as you would any onsite campaign.
Configure your targeting rules, triggers, and goals.
Publish both campaigns when ready.
Once live, your referrers can start sharing immediately, and their friends will automatically see the correct campaign when visiting via the referral link.
The Sharing Element
The sharing element has two variants, one displayed for browsers that have share dialog support (all phones and some desktop browsers) - and one variant for browsers without share dialog.
For both variants, you may select a text and link to share:
The share element looks like this in browsers that have the share dialog (most phones and some desktop browsers):
The share element looks like this in browsers that do not have the share dialog. For them - the link and text are visible and can easily be copied and shared in any preferred channel.
How to share your Referral Campaign in an email
Triggerbee’s Referral Campaigns can’t send emails directly, but you can easily include your referral campaign link in an email you send through your marketing platform (like Klaviyo, Brevo, Mailchimp, or Rule).
Set up a Manual Trigger link
To include your referral campaign in an email:
Open your Referring Campaign.
Go to Campaign Settings → Triggers.
Click Add Trigger → Manual.
Copy the Share link, which looks like this:
https://example.com?tb-open=123456
Paste that link into your email.
When recipients click the link, your referral campaign will open directly on your website — exactly like any other popup or banner.
This approach works not only for referral campaigns but also for any campaign you want to trigger from an external link or button.
Campaign Performance
Referral Campaigns automatically track views, shares, signups, and revenue across both the Referring and Friend campaigns.
Note: For Revenue to be displayed, you must log revenue together with the Completed Purchase goal. Read more about Revenue logging here.
Metric | Description |
Revenue | Calculated from visitors who interacted with the referral campaign and later purchased — including referred friends. For accurate tracking, ensure you log purchases and revenue to Triggerbee. |
Signups | Number of form responses collected from new visitors. Existing subscribers are excluded. |
Referrer | Signups from the Referring campaign. |
Friend | Signups from the Friend campaign. |
Shares | Counted each time a user clicks the Copy-Link or Share button (Triggerbee can’t confirm if the link was actually shared). |
Views | Number of times each campaign was displayed to users (Referrer and Friend counted separately). |
Best practices for Referral Campaigns
Keep your offer simple and clear (e.g., “Give 10%, Get 10%”).
Customize the Referring and Friend templates to match your branding.
Use attractive visuals and short copy to encourage shares.
Combine referral campaigns with email automation for best reach.
Track Assisted Sales in your analytics dashboard to measure performance.