Once your community setup is complete, it’s time to bring people in. New members can join via unique invite links, through our Login API integration, or by having existing members send invites and earn referral rewards. You can also pre-create accounts for current clients using the bulk import feature, allowing them to claim access without needing a traditional invite.
If you're looking to bulk invite your clients, check out this article here.
Invitation Links
One of the simplest ways to invite new users into your community is with community links. Clicking on this links will automatically take these new potential members to set up an account and join your community. There are 2 different types of invite links;
Referral Invite Links
Referral Invite Links are personalized links automatically available to any user with invitation permissions enabled. When a member uses their link to invite friends into the community, each successful signup is recorded as a referral for that member.
If you’re looking to go further, you can also create a multi-stage Referral Program with tiered rewards that only unlock when a referred user meets specific milestones. For detailed instructions on configuring your Referral Program, check out our article on setting up multi-stage referral campaigns.
Invite Link Permissions
To configure which members have access to invite links, head into the Roles tab of your community settings. Under community permissions for each role, find the ‘Create Invites’ toggle and turn it on. To prevent anyone from inviting unvetted users or bots into your community, we recommend disabling the ‘Create Invites’ permission for the '@all' role and enabling it only for members with roles that require time and engagement to earn. This ensures that only designated, trusted users can generate invite links.
Users assigned roles with this permission enabled will be able to access their invite links and view their progress in the referral program by clicking on the referral icon on their left-side navigation bar.
Custom Invite Links
Custom Invite Links are trackable URLs that only community owners and administrators can generate. You can track and create them under the ‘Invite Links’ tab in your community settings. These links offer flexible customization—so you can tailor each invite and monitor who joins through each link.
Note that a custom domain is required for you to create Custom Invite Links. If you have yet to set-up your custom domain, you can read about how to do so here.
When creating your custom invite link, you can configure the following fields;
Invitation Name: Pick a name that helps you identify your invite. This is not shown to community members.
Custom Invite Link: Input your desired URL path.
Login and Registration: Check the fields that you will require members joining with this link to provide at sign-up.
Assign Roles: Check the roles that will be automatically assigned to members who join using this invite link.
Joining Limit: Decide the maximum of users who can use the link because it becomes invalid.
Link Expiry: Decide when the invite link expires and becomes invalid.
Utilize these fields to track incoming users, set-up timed invite campaigns with automatically assigned roles for segmenting purposes, or simply keep your invitations organized. A complete list of your created custom invite links as well as the amount of clicks, joins, expiry dates and other information associated with each link will be displayed on your Invite Links page.
Simply copy the invite link you would like to use and distribute it to your clients through email, embedded buttons on your website, direct messages, or any other communication channel you prefer.
Login API
Returning.AI’s Login API lets members sign into your community directly from your website using single sign-on, eliminating the need to send out invite links to clients. You can configure your Login API to apply preset criteria to automatically assign roles, so, for example, VIPs on your site can receive a VIP role as soon as they join your community.
Your API key can be found by heading into the 'Login Management' tab in your community settings. This API key then needs to be configured on your client-side portal. On your portal, assign a value to each tier you’ve defined (for example, Bronze or VIP). Then return to Returning.AI, click the plus button next to 'Login API', enter the tier value, and map it to an existing role that you would like to assign created. From then on, any user who logs in for the first time will automatically receive the role tied to their tier.