By creating a referral program that rewards referrals, you encourage existing community members to invite their friends while ensuring each referral meets a certain quality. Similar to the Milestone program, Returning.AI's referral system lets you define conditions that new referees must complete before the referrer is rewarded. This helps prevent abuse and makes sure referrals are meaningful.

Your community members can track their referees' progress by heading to their 'Referral' page on the left-hand navigation bar. Anyone with invite permissions will see a personalized page showing everyone they’ve referred, each referee’s progress through the referral program, and the referral conditions, split by stages, for each program. This gives referrers full visibility and lets them follow up with referees who haven’t made much progress.

The first step is to make sure your invite link permissions are configured. Only users with roles that allow them to create invites will be able to take part in your referral program. Check out this article to learn how to set invite permissions.

Once that's been done, head into the 'Referral Conditions' tab in your community settings.

The Process of setting up Referral Conditions is similar to that of Milestone Conditions.

To get started, create a new condition group. A condition group serves as a container for a single referral journey, allowing you to build and manage different referral journeys that make up your referral program.

After creating your condition group, you’ll start defining your conditions and key settings for each stage. First, enter a clear name and a concise description for your first stage.

Next, under 'Select Condition', choose one of the available fields from the dropdown menu, this might be something like “Profile Picture added” or “Messages sent.” As soon as you pick a field, rule-specific options will appear, allowing you to fine-tune the exact requirements referees must meet. Combine these rules with your chosen field to set the conditions referees need to fulfill. Here are some examples of how your conditions could look like:

If you need more complex requirements, such as requiring referees to both send messages and stay logged in for a week, click 'Add Nested Condition'. You can then join multiple conditions together using AND (both must be true) or OR (either can be true) logic, crafting exactly the challenge you envision.

Once you've created your conditions, you'll next configure your display settings and condition rewards.

Under ‘Display Setting’, choose how much detail members see for each referral condition. If you select ‘Condition’, members will see the exact rule you defined (for example, “Messages sent is more than 100”). If you select ‘Description’, only the narrative you wrote will appear, hiding the raw rule. Choosing ‘Condition and Description’ shows both the rule itself and your explanatory text. This gives you control over whether members see the precise referral requirements, your friendly explanation, or both.

Define the rewards referrers earn when their referees complete a stage by toggling on each reward type and entering its value. You can grant or remove roles and tags automatically, which is useful for tiered systems where you want your referrers to gain visual recognition as they increase their referral rates. For example, you might assign the "Referral Champion" role while removing the "Referral Scout" role, or use an override role that replaces all others. This flexibility ensures that as referees invite in more quality members, their roles and tags always reflect their current referral accomplishments.

Once you're done configuring your first stage, you can choose to add more stages by selecting "Add Stage 2". There’s no limit to the number of stages you can include in a condition group, and each stage can have its own unique conditions and rewards. This allows you to create long-form progression systems that scale as a referee interacts more within the community.

Once you're satisfied with your referral conditions, click on 'Save Condition Group'. Your referral conditions groups can be activated or deactivated at any time by toggling them on in your Referral Menu.

This referral program is centered around rewarding your community referrers. Referees, by default, do not get insight into the referral conditions they need to complete or gain any rewards for completing them.

However, you do have the ability to configure your referral program to reward referees alongside referrers. If you'd like your referral program to be more of a team effort, where referees are kept in the loop about what conditions they need to fulfill in order for both them and their referrers to earn rewards, you can do so by configuring your Community Milestones.

You can set up a Milestone Group targeted at new referees, with conditions and stages that mirror the ones you've created in your referral program. That would allow both sides to gain rewards when the conditions of the referral are met. In summary;

Referral Conditions: Conditions that, when completed by Referees, rewards their Referrers. Trackable by Referrers.

Milestone Conditions: Conditions that, when completed by Referees, rewards Referees. Trackable by Referees.

​