How to setup a newsletter referral program

A newsletter referral program is an email marketing strategy where you incentivize your existing subscribers to refer your newsletter to others. You can read more about this program type, it's benefits, examples, and best practices in our blog post.


Create a newsletter referral program

  1. Sign up or log in to Partnero.
  2. Go to Programs and click Create program. Select Newsletter referral program type:
  3. Enter the program name and choose what email service provider you're using. Currently, you can choose from MailerLite, Mailchimp and Custom. ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign will be launched soon:
  4. Click Create.

Program settings

The Program Settings page contains the following:

  • Program name - this name will be visible internally as well as for your subscribers.
  • Reward - the option to set up the rewards that will be issued for your subscribers
  • Subscriber approval - option to manually approve each referred subscriber.
  • Email notifications - option to send email notifications for referring subscribers when they reach the goal.
  • ESP integration - option to connect your ESP with Partnero.


Set up rewards

  1. Go to Settings under Program.
  2. Click Create a reward under the Reward section:
  3. Add the reward name and description. Then add how many new subscribers should be referred in order to get this reward, e.g.:
  4. Set the reward Fulfillment based on the reward type:

     - Link/PDF download - enter the URL where the file can be downloaded; - Generic coupon - enter any generic coupon that you've set up within your app that can be used to claim the reward; - Amazon Gift card - enter the amount of the gift card (your Amazon account needs to be connected to use this feature);
    - Stripe Coupon - coming soon.
  5.  At this step, you can set up additional rewards - e.g., you might want to offer another reward when someone refers 20 or 50 subscribers. Here's an example of a reward setup:
  6. Click Update.

Connect your email service provider

You can connect using existing integrations or manually synchronize your subscriber list.

Read how to connect MailerLite.

Read how to connect Mailchimp.