Refer A Friend
Overview
The Refer A Friend Feature provides members with a unique URL to share with their friends, to get them to register and signup for a campaign on DoSomething.org.
We commonly use these terms (in the business, and in code) when describing this feature:
Alpha - The user who is sharing the URL with friends, prompting the friends to register
Beta - The friends that the alpha is sharing the URL with
Both the alpha and beta may earn a reward for the beta registering and signing up for the campaign.
We offer a second scholarship entry as the reward. Users who have refer-friends-scholarship feature flag set will see a Referral Page Banner after signing up for any campaign configured for this feature, which refers them to their Alpha Referral Page.
Details
To opt a campaign into the referral feature, its displayReferralPage field should be set to true.
Referral Page Banner
After signing up for the campaign, users who have the refer-friends-scholarship flag set will see a Referral Page Banner within the signup Affirmation, which links to their Alpha Referral Page.
Alpha Referral Page
dosomething.org/us/refer-friends?campaign_id=123The user's Alpha Referral Page prompts the user to share their Beta Referral Page with their friends. The Beta Referral Page URL will contain the user's ID as a user_id query parameter as well as the campaign_id containing the referral campaign.
If the campaign_id query parameter is missing completely, an ErrorPage component will displayed.
Beta Referral Page
dosomething.org/join?user_id=55767609a59dbf3c7a8b4571&campaign_id=123The Beta Referral Page links to the campaign that the beta should join (set via the campaign_id query parameter), in order to receive the reward along with the alpha (which is set via the user_id query parameter).
If the campaign_id query parameter is missing completely, an ErrorPage component will displayed.
The campaign URL that the Beta Page links to will include the alpha's user ID as a referrer_user_id query parameter:
https://www.dosomething.org/us/campaigns/teens-jeans?referrer_user_id=5547be89469c64ec7d8b518dThis referrer_user_id query parameter will be added to the source_detail of any new user accounts created by betas.
Iterations
The first iteration of Refer A Friend (RAF) offered a $5 gift card reward to any beta who registered and signed up for a staff pick campaign, as well as the alpha that referred them. The Referral Page Banner would only display for users with the refer-friends feature set.
The list of campaigns to display the Referral Page Banner for was hardcoded into the codebase. The Beta Referral Page URL would include a campaign_id query parameter, e.g.:
dosomething.org/us/join?user_id=:userId&campaign_id=9037If this campaign ID matched a hardcoded referral page campaign, we'd link to this campaign in the first block on the Beta Referral Page.
The second iteration of RAF allowed the list of campaigns (as well as the default campaign) to be configured via environment variable feature flags. This was deprecated in #1940 by the addition of the displayReferralPage field.
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