Using Prefinery to Run Your Newsletter Referral Program

Prefinery's referral system can be used to help boost your newsletter subscription program. 

A typical setup would be people signing up for your newsletter through the Prefinery-powered signup form to get their unique Prefinery referral link, earn rewards, move up the leaderboard and more for referring friends to joining your newsletter as well. 

The Prefinery users are automatically added to your newsletter delivery service (like Mailchimp or ConvertKit) via different integration options.

Why use Prefinery?

A standard newsletter program to a user starts with a plain email input form that a user submits. After that, it's just a series of emails going into their mailbox. No further action is available for the user. 

With a referral system, each new user that joins your newsletter program is an opportunity for getting more users. You can add in rewards and/or run a leaderboard contest (e.g. top 1 referrer wins a prize) to further motivate users to refer their friends. Perhaps give the user access to a VIP newsletter mailing list if they earn 10 referrals? You can do that too. 

A newsletter referral program using Prefinery with your newsletter delivery software is a great way to quickly ramp up your subscriber count, and these users are likely to be more engaged as is the nature of referred users.

How to setup a Newsletter Referral Program

1

Install the Prefinery signup form on your website. This form will serve as your newsletter signup form. It could be in a page where you also place all the details about the newsletter referral program like letting the visitor know what they'd get if they join your newsletter and the rewards if they get their friends to join as well. 

2

Optionally, you can setup rewards for when users reach certain milestones (e.g. for referring 5 of their friends to join your newsletter too). 

3

Make sure your newsletter campaign is setup and ready at your newsletter service provider. For example, you've already prepared which email list Prefinery users will get added to, or what tags or segments they'd belong to. 

4

Lastly, you'd setup integration between your Prefinery project with your newsletter campaign. 

Here's how: 

A. Direct Mailchimp Integration

If you're already using Mailchimp, great! If you're still scouting for a newsletter service, we recommend it. 

Prefinery supports direct integration with Mailchimp allowing you to automatically add each new signup in your Prefinery project as new subscribers in your Mailchimp mailing list. 

Check out our complete guide on how you can setup direct integration with Mailchimp here: Running a script to add Prefinery campaign user as Mailchimp subscriber

B. Integrating with Any Newsletter Service

If you'd rather use or are already using a different newsletter service, or would rather use a no-code integration tool like Zapier to have control over how you're sending data from your Prefinery project to your newsletter service, we got you covered! 

With Zapier as an example, you can connect Prefinery to MailerLite so that when a new user signs up in your Prefinery project they also get added as a subscriber in your MailerLite newsletter list:

To learn more about the no-code automation tools that Prefinery supports, please see: Integrating Prefinery with Other Apps

C. Integrating with Your In-house Newsletter Setup

If you have your own in-house newsletter system and would like to integrate your Prefinery project with it, you can utilize our webhooks and API. 

You can check out our comprehensive API documentation here: Prefinery API Developer Resources

Why can't I send newsletters using Prefinery?

Currently, Prefinery emails are transactional in that they can only be triggered by events based on a change in the user's status (when user joins your campaign) or actions taken by the user (e.g. when user refers a friend). This means you can't manually send an email to your users or schedule an email to be sent to them regardless of triggers. You can find more in-depth details about this topic here: When are Emails Sent?

While Prefinery can’t manage your newsletter (to send the emails), it can power your newsletter referral program. It would just be an integration with MailChimp or ConvertKit or any newsletter service of your preference.