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A reward is typically triggered when a lead is marked as Qualified. Qualification is how you tell Referral Factory that a referred lead has met your criteria — for example, they made a purchase, signed a contract, or completed a specific action. You can choose to reward then a Lead submits their details but we don’t recommend it as it can lead to fraud.
How qualification works
Each lead in your campaign has a status: Pending or Qualified. By default, all new leads come in as Pending. When a lead is moved to Qualified — either manually or automatically — any active reward rules for that campaign are evaluated and the appropriate reward is created.
Ways to qualify a lead
- Manually — go to the Leads tab, find the lead, and use the action menu to set their status to Qualified.
- Automatically via a CRM or integration — connect Referral Factory to HubSpot, Intercom, Stripe, or others. When a contact's data changes in your CRM (e.g. a deal is marked Closed Won), Referral Factory detects the change and qualifies the matching lead automatically.
- Via API — send a qualification event directly from your system using the Referral Factory API.
What happens when a lead is qualified?
- The lead status changes to Qualified in your Leads tab.
- A reward is generated based on your reward configuration (who gets rewarded, the amount, and the issuing method).
- The reward appears in your Rewards tab with a status of Due (waiting to be issued) or is issued automatically if Auto Issue is enabled.
- Notification emails are sent to the referrer and/or lead (if configured).
Reward Only For Qualified Referrals
When configuring a reward, you can choose whether it applies to all new referrals or only to qualified referrals. Setting it to Reward Only For Qualified Referrals means a reward will only be generated once the lead is qualified — not simply when they sign up. This is the recommended setting for most campaigns.
Reward delay
It is strongly recommended to build in a delay before issuing rewards — typically 30 to 60 days. This gives you time to catch refunds, chargebacks, or fraudulent referrals before any reward goes out. Rewards in the Due state have not been issued yet, giving you a window to review them.