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CRM permissions and administrator access
Before connecting your CRM, it helps to decide how referral data should move between the two systems. A few choices — such as which CRM record to create, how duplicates should be handled, and what should qualify a Lead — can affect your CRM data once the integration is live.
Use this checklist before connecting your CRM so you know what needs to be configured and can test the integration safely.
Make sure you have the correct access to both Referral Factory and the CRM you want to connect.
You will generally need:
Some CRMs have additional requirements.
Check the platform-specific help guide before connecting so you know which account permissions are required.
- Access to the Referral Factory campaign you want to configure.
- Permission in Referral Factory to connect and manage CRM integrations for that campaign.
- Permission to connect third-party apps to your CRM.
- Access to the CRM fields, properties, pipelines, stages, lists, or other records you plan to use.
- Permission to create custom CRM fields if you need somewhere to store information such as a Referral Link.
Data model and object choice
Decide where Referrers and Leads should live in your CRM before you configure the integration.
The options depend on the CRM. For example:
Choose the record type that fits the workflow your team already uses.
For example, if your sales team manages every new prospect as a Contact in HubSpot, creating Contacts may make more sense. If your referral process is managed through Deals, you may want the integration to create or work with Deals instead.
This choice can also affect which qualification rules are available later.
- HubSpot can create a Contact for a Lead or, depending on your setup, create a Deal and associated Contact.
- Salesforce can create Leads or Contacts.
- Other CRM integrations may use their own contact, person, item, booking, or deal structure.
Field mapping
Decide what information should move between Referral Factory and your CRM.
First Name and Email should always be mapped. Some CRMs and record types have additional mandatory fields, so check the help guide for your specific CRM before completing the setup.
For example, Salesforce requires Last Name and Company when creating a Lead, while a Salesforce Contact requires Last Name.
You can also map optional information such as:
Depending on the integration, mappings can use Dynamic Values, which change for each person, or Fixed Values, which remain the same for every record. For example, Email → Email would be dynamic, while Lead Source → Referral Factory could be fixed.
If you need to store referral-specific information in your CRM, create the required custom field or property in the CRM before setting up the mapping.
- Last Name
- Phone Number
- Company Name
- Referral Link
- Campaign information
- Referrer information
- Custom fields you collect in your campaign
Duplicate rules
Decide what Referral Factory should do when a Referrer or Lead already exists in your CRM.
Depending on the integration, you may have options such as:
This is an important decision because updating an existing record may overwrite CRM data.
Duplicate handling can also affect automatic qualification. For example, if your integration is configured to Do nothing when an existing HubSpot contact is found, that referral will not be able to qualify through the HubSpot integration.
Think about how existing customers and contacts should be treated before turning the integration on.
- Do nothing and leave the existing CRM record unchanged.
- Update the existing record with the mapped Referral Factory data.
- In some CRMs, create a new record even when the email address already exists.
Qualification criteria
Decide what event in your CRM means that a referral has successfully converted.
In Referral Factory, we call this qualification. When the event happens, the Lead can change from Pending to Qualified.
For example, you might qualify a Lead when:
Choose a milestone that your team already updates consistently. Your qualification rule must match the CRM field, property, stage, or value exactly.
You can change qualification rules later, but changes apply going forward and do not retroactively re-evaluate existing Leads.
- A HubSpot Lifecycle Stage changes to Customer.
- A Deal reaches Closed Won.
- A Salesforce Lead converts.
- An Opportunity reaches a specific stage.
- Another supported CRM field or status changes to the value you use for a successful customer.
One-time and ongoing sync
If you want to bring existing CRM contacts into Referral Factory as Referrers, decide whether you need a one-time sync or an ongoing sync.
A one-time sync imports the selected contacts once. No automatic updates happen after the initial sync.
An ongoing sync keeps the sync active so that new contacts that meet your selected criteria can automatically be enrolled as Referrers. Supported changes in the CRM can also be reflected in Referral Factory.
For example, use a one-time sync if you want to launch your referral program to your current customer list once. Use an ongoing sync if new customers regularly become eligible to join the referral program and you want them enrolled automatically.
This sync choice relates to syncing CRM contacts into Referral Factory as Referrers. It is separate from the settings that send new Referral Factory Leads into your CRM.
Test records
Before using the integration with live customers, test the full workflow with new records.
We recommend using unique test email addresses that do not already exist in the campaign or, depending on your duplicate settings, in your CRM. Plus addressing, such as name+test1@company.com, can make test records easy to identify.
Test that:
Allow up to 30 minutes for data to pass between Referral Factory and your CRM during testing.
- A Referrer can join and be created or updated correctly in the CRM, if you have enabled Referrer sending.
- A new Lead is created in Referral Factory.
- The correct CRM record is created or updated for that Lead.
- All mapped fields contain the expected values.
- Your duplicate rules behave as expected.
- If you configured automatic qualification, changing the CRM field, status, or stage qualifies the correct Lead.
Backups and rollback considerations
Before enabling an integration that can update existing CRM records, review the fields you are mapping and consider backing up or exporting important CRM data first.
If you allow Referral Factory to update existing records, mapped values may overwrite information already stored in those CRM fields.
Do not assume that disconnecting an integration will undo previous changes. For example, disconnecting the Salesforce integration stops future syncing but does not delete records that were already created in Salesforce.
For that reason, we recommend:
Once your test records behave as expected, you can confidently enable the integration for your live campaign.
- Testing with a small number of records first.
- Reviewing every mapped field before enabling updates.
- Keeping a CRM export or backup if the fields contain important existing data.
- Testing duplicate behavior before syncing a large contact list.
- Starting with a small CRM list or segment before running a large ongoing sync.