Your Customers Are Your Best Marketing Channel. Now There's a System for It.

The problem is it happens by accident. There's no structure, no nudge, and no reward for the customer who sent you that booking. So a lot of referrals that could have happened… just don't.

That's exactly what the Referral Campaign is designed to fix. And today, we're relaunching it — rebuilt from the ground up.

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What's new

The original Referral Rewards campaign has been a part of Occasion for a while, but it had some real limitations. Rewards were issued as gift cards, the mechanics were clunky, and the feature broke when we launched Checkout v3 in 2024. We heard your feedback, ran a survey, and rebuilt it properly.

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Here's what's different:

- It's two-sided now. The old campaign only rewarded the person doing the referring. The new one rewards both — your customer gets a coupon when their friend books, and the friend gets a discount applied to their checkout automatically.

- Coupons instead of gift cards. Rewards are now issued as coupon codes — cleaner, simpler, and easier for your customers to redeem.

- A mobile-first share experience. Most customers open email or book on a mobile device. We redesigned the share experience to be mobile-first - Text, WhatsApp driven.

- Analytics that actually tell you something. You can now track referral links issued, conversions, reward redemption rates, and revenue generated — right down to individual customer behavior.

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How it works

When a customer completes a booking at your business, they see a prompt on their order confirmation page and in their confirmation email inviting them to share their referral link.

When they click through, they land on a share page that makes the value crystal clear: "Your friend gets $X off their booking. You get $X when they book." They copy their referral code and send it — via WhatsApp, email, or text.

When the friend uses that code at checkout, their discount is applied automatically. No friction, no manual entry. Once the booking is complete, your customer receives their reward coupon by email. The whole thing runs without you lifting a finger.

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Setting it up takes two minutes

Go to Campaigns > Referral Campaign in your Occasion workspace. Set your referrer reward, your friend discount, and how long the coupons stay valid. You can also customize the email your customers receive when they earn a reward.

That's it. Turn it on and let it run.

Not sure what amounts to set? A good starting point is 25% of your average order value for the referrer reward. If your average booking is $40, a $10 reward works well.

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The best part — you can actually track it

Under Campaigns, you'll see a live dashboard showing how the campaign is performing: how many links have been shared, how many friends have booked, your conversion rate, and total revenue generated through referrals.

You can even drill down to individual customers — see exactly who's referring, how many of their friends have booked, and how much revenue each referral has generated. That kind of visibility makes it easy to see the campaign is working and to keep it running.

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Word-of-mouth has always been your best marketing channel. The Referral Campaign just gives it a system.

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Set up your Referral Campaign →

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