Member referrals

Member referrals give each person in the community their own link to invite others. Whoever joins through the link is recorded as referred by them: the team sees who brought whom, and the community can give points and badges for referrals and fire workflows when someone refers.

#What it's for

#Who can

#Where it is

Whoever opens the link and signs up in the app counts as referred: the app keeps the code for 30 days, and the Referred someone trigger is in the workflow editor.

#How it works

#Turning it on

Referrals start off. When on, each member has their own code, created the first time they ask for the link, and the link is the community's address with ?ref= and the code (https://yourcommunity.memberfy.net/?ref=ana7k2). When off, nobody has a link, and a received code does not count.

#When a referral counts

A referral counts once, when the referred person becomes a member, and only if:

• referrals are on in the community at that moment;
• the code belongs to an active member of this community;
• whoever joins is not the person who referred (neither by profile nor by e-mail);
• whoever joins never had a profile in this community before;
• the link was opened at most 30 days ago.

The code never blocks a sign-up nor opens the community to someone who could not get in: sign-up follows the usual rules (see Sign-up and access). In a community with sign-up approval, the code waits along with the request and counts when the request is approved.

#What happens on a referral

• The new person gets the Referral source, which shows on the Dashboard growth card, among the sources of new members in the last 7 days.
• Whoever referred does the Refer a member action of gamification: it is worth 0 points by default (the community chooses how much) and counts toward badge rules and level requirements that use this action.
• The Referred someone event goes out, about whoever referred, with the name of whoever joined: a workflow trigger (with the referred.name variable) and the member.referred webhook.

#The report

For the owner, the admin and the moderator: each person who referred, with how many referrals and the date of the last one, and the total, over a period. It also comes as CSV. Someone who left the community stays in the report, marked as removed.

#Example

The community turns referrals on and gives 50 points for Refer a member. Ana gets her link and sends it to Bruno, who opens it, signs up the next day and becomes a member. Ana gets 50 points, Bruno shows up with the Referral source, and the workflow with Referred someone sends Ana: "Thanks for bringing Bruno!".

#Common errors and how to fix them

#Frequently asked questions

Does the referred person know who referred them? Not here. Whoever referred shows only to the team (owner, admin and moderator).

Does turning it off erase the referrals? No. The referrals that already counted stay; new ones just stop counting.

Can I refer someone to a paid community? Yes. The link leads to the community, and the person gets in by the usual rules, including the purchase. The referral counts when they become a member.

#In the API

GET and PUT /api/referrals/settings (owner and admin; other roles get 403) turn it on and off (enabled). GET /api/referrals/me (any member) returns enabled, code, path (/?ref=<code>) and count. GET /api/referrals/report (owner, admin and moderator; finance gets 403) returns, per person, memberId, name, avatarUrl, removed, count and lastReferredAt, with totals, pagination, from/to and format=csv.

At sign-up, POST /api/auth/register and POST /api/auth/signup-request accept referralCode and referralSeenAt (when the link was opened; more than 30 days, ignored). GET /api/members/{id} returns referredBy (memberId, name, avatarUrl, removed, referredAt) on someone else's profile, only for owner, admin and moderator, and source can be REFERRAL. The Dashboard growth card returns extra.bySource. See Referrals in the API reference.

#Through the assistant (MCP)

Ask the assistant for your link ("what is my referral link?", get_my_referral), for the report ("who brought the most new members this month?", get_referral_report, for the owner, the admin and the moderator) or to turn referrals on (update_referral_settings). Who referred a member shows in get_member.

#Related

• Invite members
• Sign-up and access
• Gamification
• Workflows
• Webhook events