Referral marketing is a strategy where you encourage existing customers to recommend your brand to friends and family in exchange for a reward. Instead of relying only on ads, you use trust between people to drive new sales. With referral software like ReferralCandy, you can turn casual word of mouth into a structured referral program that tracks referrals, rewards customers automatically, and shows exactly how much revenue referrals generate.

For ecommerce brands, referral marketing usually means giving each customer a unique referral link or code they can share via email, social media, or messaging apps. When a friend clicks the link and makes a purchase, a tool like ReferralCandy tracks the order and applies rewards such as discounts, store credit, or cash. This helps you build a steady flow of new customers at a lower acquisition cost while ReferralCandy handles the tracking, emails, and payouts in the background.

The best way to run a referral program on Shopify is to use a dedicated Shopify referral app that plugs directly into your store and checkout. ReferralCandy is built for Shopify brands, so it automatically generates referral links, shows post-purchase referral popups, sends referral emails, and tracks referral revenue in one dashboard. That means you can launch a “refer a friend” program quickly without custom development and keep rewards, tracking, and reporting aligned with your existing Shopify workflows.

Referral marketing often brings in warmer, higher-intent customers than paid ads because the recommendation comes from a trusted friend rather than a cold impression. While paid campaigns can spike traffic, referrals usually have a lower acquisition cost and stronger repeat purchase behavior. With ReferralCandy, Shopify stores can treat referral marketing as a sustainable, performance-based channel that runs alongside paid ads, helping keep overall acquisition costs under control as the brand grows.