Tip #4 : Refer and Earn Workflow system for your Subscription Business

Tip #4 : Refer and Earn Workflow system for your Subscription Business

Hello everyone,

We've been coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which can be implemented for your business. In continuation to the previous post, this week we will be seeing about
how you can implement the Refer and Earn Workflow system to acquire more customers.

Why are Referrals important?


Customer Acquisition is crucial for any business to sustain itself in a constantly evolving

market. It involves persuading new consumers to purchase your products. Customers tend to buy products that are considered to be reliable and trustworthy. Therefore, it can be quite difficult to bring in new customers without proper marketing strategies.
 
Word-of-mouth referral campaigns is a proven strategy to help you acquire lots of customers effectively in a short period of time. 

What is a word-of-mouth referral campaign?

If a customer is satisfied with your product, he will become a regular subscriber to your product. He will eventually spread the word around. This is a free marketing strategy for your product. Once people start hearing positive feedback about your products, they will prefer your brand to your competitors. 

To make this strategy more effective, you can simply provide a referral incentive for your customers who are bringing in new customers through referrals. This will motivate them to spread the word and it will also help in customer retention.

A referral incentive can be anything from a discount (or) amount which you can credit to your customers who are bringing in new customers. Let us now see how we can implement a Refer and Earn workflow system in  Zoho Subscriptions.

Building a Refer and Earn Workflow system:


For this particular scenario, we will be raising a Credit Note (for fixed incentive amount) for a referrer who has referred a new customer. The Credit Note can be later applied during the next billing cycle of the customer. Let us look into a simple scenario to understand this better.


Assume that John is a long term subscriber for your product and he in turn is referring his friend Mark to your product. Here,

John -> Referrer
Mark -> Referred Customer

When Mark subscribes to your product, he will mention that John is the one who has referred Mark. Since John has made a successful referral, you will raise a credit note for John for a fixed incentive amount.

As you can see, the most primary requirement for this workflow is to identify the referrer. In this case, to identify the referrer, we will show a Custom Field of type Email Address in the Hosted Page, where the subscriber can mention his referrer's email address. Later when a new subscription is created, we will be using our Custom Function Workflow to raise a credit note for that referrer. 

The below explained custom function does the same.

Code Explanation:



You can refer to the code in this GitHub link. The code is written in Deluge Script which can be easily understood by non-programmers.

1) Paste your authtoken, Custom Field's label and incentive amount in their corresponding variables.

2) Once a new subscription is created, we can check if a referrer Email id is present. If it is present, we use that Email ID to get the customer (Referrer) details from our database.

3) Once the Referrer is identified, a credit note will be raised for the mentioned incentive amount.

 

4) In case, if the email address is not present in our database, the admin of the organization will be intimated with an Email regarding this.


Getting started with the Custom Functions:  

1. Go to Settings -> Automation -> Custom Functions. 


2. Create a new Custom Function. Provide a name for the function. 


3. Choose the module and event according to your need.


4. Copy the code which was given above. Do the necessary changes that are required.


5. Save the Custom Function and you are good to go.

Found this useful? Try it out and let us know how it works! If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask!


Cheers,

Sasidaran K,
Zoho Subscriptions.

    • Sticky Posts

    • Tip #4 : Refer and Earn Workflow system for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, We've been coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which can be implemented for your business. In continuation to the previous post, this week we will be seeing about how you can implement the Refer and Earn Workflow system to acquire more customers. Why are Referrals important? Customer Acquisition is crucial for any business to sustain itself in a constantly evolving market. It involves persuading new consumers to purchase your products. Customers

    • Tip #2 - Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a custom function workflow every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation of this previous blog, this week we will be seeing about Cancellation of Offline Subscriptions based on the Expected Payment Date. Business Scenario: In general, for any business, the customers make payments via online as well as offline. In case of subscription where the automatic collection of charge is enabled (aka online subscription), the customer's

    • Tip #3 : Send SMS Reminders for your Subscription Business

      Hello everyone, As you all know, we are coming up with a tip every week to address specific business scenarios. In continuation to the previous blog, this week we will be seeing how you can use SMS reminders for your Subscription Business. Using SMS messages for your Subscription Business: While managing your subscription business, more often than not, you need to keep your customers informed about upcoming renewals, payment reminders and cancellations. By keeping them informed in advance, you can

    • Tips And Tricks - Announcement

      Hello everyone, Every business is unique and each of them follows a specific workflow. While managing your customers' subscriptions with Zoho, you might have some needs unique to your business. Custom Functions helps you address such needs. This is a start to a series of posts, where we will be coming up with a custom function workflow every week that addresses specific business scenarios. Watch this space for further updates! Also, if you have any specific business scenario which needs to be addressed,

    • Tip #6 : Accessing external URLs from Zoho Subscriptions

      Hello everyone, We have been sharing a tip every week to address specific business scenarios which you can implement for your subscription business. Last week, we shared a tip about implementing the Approval Workflow system. This week, let's look at how you can access external URLs with the help of Custom Link. Business Scenario: Every business functions differently and has its unique requirements. At times, businesses might want to access other websites or applications by appending specific information

    • Recent Topics

    • Can't change form's original name in URL

      Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new

    • New in Cadences: Option to Resume or Restart follow-ups when re-enrolling records into a Cadence, and specify custom un-enrollment criteria

      Managing follow-ups effectively involves understanding the appropriate timing for reaching out, as well as knowing when to take a break and resume later, or deciding if it's necessary to start the follow-up process anew. With two significant enhancements

    • embed a form in an email

      Hello, how to embed a form in an email that populates Zoho CRM cases? I would like to send emails to a selected audience offering something. In the same email the recipients - if interested - instead of replying to can fill in a Zoho CRM form that creates

    • Zoho Bookings - Reserve with Google

      Does Zoho Bookings plan to to integrate with Reserve with Google?

    • How to add Zoho demo site page designs to my Zoho Sites website

      Hi, I would like to add the design from the following demo URLs into my current Zoho website. I have already created two new pages on my site, named “Menu2” and “Menu3.” For the “Menu2” page, I want to use the design from this demo: https://naturestjuice-demo.zohosites.com/menu

    • Digest Août - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community

      Bonjour chère communauté ! Voici le résumé tant attendu de tout ce qui a marqué Zoho le mois dernier : contenus utiles, échanges inspirants et moments forts. 🎉 Découvrez Zoho Backstage 3.0 : une version repensée pour offrir encore plus de flexibilité,

    • Global Sets for Multi-Select pick lists

      When is this feature coming to Zoho CRM? It would be very useful now we have got used to having it for the normal pick lists.

    • Text snippet

      There is a nice feature in Zoho Desk called Text Snippet. It allows you to insert a bit of text anywhere in a reply that you are typing. That would be nice to have that option in Zoho CRM as well when we compose an email. Moderation Update: We agree that

    • Kaizen #206 - Answering your Questions | Displaying Related Purchase Orders from Zoho Books in CRM Deals using Queries

      Hello everyone! We're back with another post in the Kaizen series. We're grateful for the feedback we received from all of you! One of the questions we received was "I would like to see the list of Purchase Orders in Zoho Books for a Deal in CRM." We

    • Add Analytics function for Title case (capitalising each word in a string)

      At present, you can only capitalise each word in a string in Analytics during data import. It would be really useful to be able to do this with a formula column, but there is no Title Case function.

    • How to conditionally embed an own internal widget with parameters in an html snippet?

      Hello everyone, I'm trying to create a dynamic view in a page using an HTML snippet. The goal is to display different content based on a URL parameter (input.step). I have successfully managed to conditionally display different forms using the following

    • Introducing AI-powered Assessments & Zoho's native LLM, Zia

      We’ve shipped a cleaner, faster way to create assessments in Zoho Recruit. 🚀 Instead of manually building question banks or copying old templates, you can now generate ready-to-use assessments in just a few clicks, all tailored to the role you’re hiring

    • Sync more than one Workdrive

      Hello Please I'm facing some difficulties since some days. In my company we have many zoho accounts in different organisations. And I have to find a way to sync all these Workdrives. I spend many hours to search it on zoho Workdrive but no solution. Could someone help me ? Any idea how I can achieve it ? Thanks in advance. Regards

    • Zoho writer unable to merge documents to PDF with basic fonts in Hebrew or fonts from my computer

      I created several forms that will be merged into PDF files through Zoho Writer and I am unable to receive the PDF in the basic fonts of the Hebrew language or in the fonts I have on my computer. The writer exports to PDF an exchange font that looks very

    • Base Currency Adjustment Reversal

      Two questions surrounding the base currency adjustments (BCA). I recently ported over from QB so I need to enter the base currency adjustments. In QB, it will calculate the BCA for you at the end of the year and then reverse it at the top of the following year. Makes sense. Does Zohobooks not do this as well? I created a BCA for Dec 31, 2016 but no reversing entry was made Jan 1, 2017. Am I supposed to manually do a reversal? I'm not even allowed to post journals directly to the 'exchange gain loss'

    • Please implement UAE Central Bank FX rates

      Hello, as I understand from your knowledge base, any UAE business account created from September 15, 2018 does not have foreign exchange rates fetched automatically. This is a serious inconvenience and I am not sure why ZOHO has not looked into the ways

    • Unable to enable tax checkboxes

      Hi Zoho Commerce Support, I'm writing to report an issue I'm having with the tax settings in my Zoho Commerce store. I've created several tax rates under Settings > Taxes, but all of them appear with the checkbox disabled. When I try to enable a checkbox,

    • Search Records returning different values than actually present

      Hey! I have this following line in my deluge script: accountSearch = zoho.crm.searchRecords("Accounts","(RS_Enroll_ID:equals:" + rsid + ")",1,200,{"cvid":864868001088693817}); info "Account search size: " + accountSearch.size(); listOfAccounts = zoho.crm.searchRecords("Accounts","(RS_Enroll_ID:equals:"

    • Making digital signatures accessible to all: Introducing accessibility controls in Zoho Sign

      Hi there! At Zoho Sign, we are committed to building an inclusive digital experience for all our users. As part of our ongoing efforts to align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we’re updating the application with support that will go

    • Super Admin Access to All Courses and Spaces in Zoho Learn

      Dear Zoho Learn Team, We hope this message finds you well. We are using Zoho Learn extensively for internal and agent training. While managing our courses and spaces, we encountered a significant limitation regarding admin access and course management.

    • Print checks for owner's draw

      Hi.  Can I use Zoho check printing for draws to Owner's Equity?  This may be a specific case of the missing Pay expenses via Check feature.  If it's not available, are there plans to add this feature?

    • [New Release 2024] Create and embed custom capabilities across CRM with Kiosk Studio, our latest no-code tool

      [Update | New series] We've started publishing a series of posts on Kiosk Studio. It's called Kiosk Studio Sessions and you can check out the first one here! [Update | 15 Oct} Session #2 is live! This one will look at how to create a kiosk for your call

    • Revenue Management: #10 Common Mistakes while Recognizing Revenue

      We are at the end of the series on Revenue Management, covering how different businesses recognise revenue. Even with clear standards like ASC 606 and IFRS 15 in practice, businesses often struggle with the nuances of revenue recognition. Especially growing

    • Windows Desktop App - request to add minimization/startup options

      Support Team, Can you submit the following request to your development team? Here is what would be optimal in my opinion from UX perspective: 1) In the "Application Menu", add a menu item to Exit the app, as well as an alt-key shortcut for these menus

    • integarting attachments from crm to creator

      when i tried to integrate pdf attachments from crm to creator via deluge i am getting this error {"code":2945,"description":"UPLOAD_RULE_NOT_CONFIGURED"} the code i used is attachments = zoho.crm.getRelatedRecords("Attachments","Sales_Orders",203489100020279XXX8);

    • Search Option

      🚫 Current Limitation: As of now (September 2025), Zoho FSM lacks a global search functionality, which makes it difficult to quickly: Find specific Work Orders by number or keyword Search for customer records or contact info Locate assets, jobs, or service

    • Mobile Chat Window - Full Screen

      Hello, The mobile chat window takes up the full screen, which is highly confusing for most customers! Using a desktop machine, I see the same happens when reducing the browser width to 800px or below. This suggests that it responsive web design, causing the switch to full screen. Can we fix this very annoying behaviour ourselves using a custom css file? If so, can you please let me know how? Thanks

    • Is it possible to customize ZC Themes?

      I understand you can choose a layout and customize Brand Color, App Header, Menu, and Sub-Menu components, but can you override some of the default theme settings with CSS or a config file? For example, - Table highlight color - Listview auto filter highlight

    • Is it possible to create Custom function-based Lookup field in Zoho CRM

      Is it possible to create a custom function-based lookup field in Zoho CRM? If so, how? Use case: Need to fetch users from Zoho Projects into a dropdown field in Zoho CRM.

    • @mention in comments no notification

      Hi, hope someone can help. When we @mention someone in the comments in Zoho Creator, how is that user notifed as we don't get anything on email or in the app notifications. 

    • Add "Running Balance" column to Account Transaction Reports

      Hello, Currently Zoho Account Transaction Reports give you the opening balance, then lists the transactions, then provides the closing balance.  It would be great if you could add a column on the far right that shows the "Running Balance" on the account after each transaction.  There are many times when analyzing or tie-ing out transactions that this would be very helpful.  I currently have to frequently run a tape on my adding machine to get balance totals after a specific transaction on the list.

    • Unified customer portal login

      As I'm a Zoho One subscriber I can provide my customers with portal access to many of the Zoho apps. However, the customer must have a separate login for each app, which may be difficult for them to manage and frustrating as all they understand is that

    • WhatsApp Channels in Zoho Campaigns

      Now that Meta has opened WhatsApp Channels globally, will you add it to Zoho Campaigns? It's another top channel for marketing communications as email and SMS. Thanks.

    • error : Object code : 6500

      b3 = map(); b3.put("name", "Test Project Name"); updateprojects2 = invokeurl [ url :"https://projectsapi.zoho.eu/restapi/portal/era0130/projects/169495000000928007/" type :PUT parameters: b3 connection:"in2" ]; info b3 ; info updateprojects2; ------------

    • How to book GST paid in zoho books

      hi, i am a new user to Zoho books and not able to book GST paid in books, kindly suggest how i can book it in books. thanks, siddharth

    • I got unknown charge from Zoho

      Good day, I need help disputing a charge I don't know from, zoho. I have ZohoMail and ZeptoMail. I purchase credits for ZeptoMail, and for ZohoMail I am not subcribed.

    • How can I see content of system generated mails from zBooks?

      System generated mails for offers or invices appear in the mail tab of the designated customer. How can I view the content? It also doesn't appear in zMail sent folder.

    • Function 56: Automatically enable the option for customers to pay via bank account

      Hello everyone and welcome back to our series! One of the key features of Zoho Books is its integration with multiple payment gateways, allowing you to receive online payments for your invoices. This ensures faster payments, automates payment tracking

    • Attach Files to Your Notecards and share them on the go!

      Hey everyone! We’re excited to share a feature many of you have been asking for — you can now attach files directly to your text notecards and share with ease! 🙌 This update was built with your feedback in mind, especially for those who wanted a simple

    • Can i connect 2 instagram accounts to 1 brand?

      Can i connect 2 instagram accounts to 1 brand? Or Do i need to create 2 brands for that? also under what subscription package will this apply?

    • Next Page