Set up your referral cycle
Decide what a parent earns for each family they bring you — and what that programme will cost.
Word of mouth is the cheapest channel an academy has and the hardest to administer. This turns it into a programme that runs itself.
1. Open the referral settings
Settings → Configs → Referral Rewards, under Pricing & Commerce.
2. Understand the cycle before you fill it in
A parent earns a reward for every family they refer who signs up and pays. What each one earns depends on its position in the cycle, and the pattern repeats.
Set three positions and the fourth referral starts again at position one. The screen shows the cycle laid out, and totals what a full cycle costs you in classes — read that number before you commit to it.
3. Add each position
Add Position, then set:
- Which referral — the position in the cycle.
- Reward — the package type that position earns. Its catalogue value is what
the programme is booked at.
- Label — optional, for your own reference. "Bronze referrer", "Big one".
Leave a position out and it simply pays nothing at that point in the cycle.
4. Sanity-check the cost
The classic shape is small, small, then a bigger one — enough to acknowledge each referral, with something worth working towards. Multiply the classes in a full cycle by your cost per class, and ask whether you would happily pay that to acquire that many families. Usually the answer is yes by a wide margin, which is the point.
5. Make sure referrals are actually being recorded
The programme only works if the referrer is captured when a family enquires. That field is on the trial and student forms, and it can be filled in later — the system re-checks every parent nightly, so a referrer attached a month after the fact still pays out.
Related: Referral rewards · Book a trial · Read the marketing dashboard.