Referral is an incredibly powerful feature to promote your brand and bring in new customers, but without the right data, you have no way to know how well your referrals are actually paying off.
Referral analytics gives you visibility into how much revenue referrals bring in, what you are spending to reward both sides of a referral, and how many of your customers are actively bringing in new business. Use it to fine-tune your referral incentives and confirm the program is covering its own cost.
Overview
To view your referral analytics, navigate to Loop admin → Loyalty → Analytics → Referrals. The referral analytics dashboard is grouped into two sections: Revenue Performance and Program Performance.
1. Revenue performance
Every referral order is split into two contributions: the purchase made by the person who referred, and the purchase made by the friend they brought in. Looking at both sides separately shows you whether the incentive is working better for existing customers or for the new customers arriving through them.
The lifetime value of a customer and their acquisition cost work together. If a referred customer's LTV is higher than what you spent acquiring them, the referral channel is generating real profit, not just shifting revenue around.
Metric | Definition |
Referral revenue | The gross revenue generated via referrals, including both the referrer and the referred friend revenue. |
Referral acquisition cost | Total referral rewards used (including referrer + referred friend) / Total number of successful referrals. |
Referred friend LTV | Total Gross Revenue from Referred Friends / Number of Referred Friends |
Gross revenue trend | The gross revenue generated via referrals excluding the referred friend discount. |
2. Program performance
This section shows how much activity your referral program is generating. It counts how many referrals were completed and how many unique customers made them, so you can tell whether growth is coming from a wide base of referrers or from a small number referring repeatedly.
Referrer by user type shows which segment, active subscribers, non-active subscribers, or non-subscribers, is engaging with your referral program and which is not. Use it to spot the segments that are underperforming and adjust your incentives or messaging to target them better.
Metric | Definition |
Total referrals | Number of completed referrals in a given period, which will be determined by your configuration in the Preferences section. |
Unique referrers | The count of distinct customers who have generated at least one successful referral within a given period. |
Referred friend subscription rate | Percentage of referred friends who converted to a subscription order, out of all referred friends who completed a purchase. |
Referrer by user type | Breakdown of referrer by their user type at the time the referral was completed. |
Referred friend by order type | Breakdown of referred friend by the order type they placed after completing the referral. |
FAQs
Can I see how this period's referrals compare to an earlier one?
Yes, use the compare option next to the date range at the top of the dashboard to set a prior period as a baseline. Every metric on the dashboard then shows the percentage change against that period.
Why is revenue broken down by referrer and referred friend separately?
Referrers and referred friends usually respond to different incentives, so combining them into one number would hide which side is actually driving better results. Separating the two lets you tell how well your reward structure is pulling in enough new customers.
Why doesn't referral revenue match what I see in Shopify?
This is expected behaviour because referral analytics only counts orders tied to a completed referral, unlike the revenue you see on Shopify, which shows your total store revenue.
Need help?
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Regards,
Loop subscriptions team 🙂