How to Generate Personalized URLs (PURLs) for Advocates

William Harper Updated by William Harper

Use the Personalized URL (PURL) self-service tool to generate a list of unique referral links for your Advocates so they can share their PURL with Friends to drive additional referrals. This is an easy way to increase conversions through an influencer or ambassador campaign. You can also use this feature to generate PURLs and then upload the links into a Customer Relationship Management platform or Email & SMS Marketing platform to personalize your communication and grow referral program awareness. Follow the steps below to get started!

This feature is available for users with the following role-based permissions: Admin, Developer, or Designer

You can generate a list of PURLs by going to Referral > Overview tab > Select the three dot button next to the desired campaign > Generate PURLs

  1. Upload a CSV file containing a list of Advocate email addresses. The CSV file must contain a column header for ‘email’ in the first row. Download a sample file here.
  2. Select a widget to associate with the PURLs to track analytics.
    1. Option 1 (Recommended): Assign to a new 'placeholder' widget designated for PURL analytics tracking. You can create a 'placeholder' widget within the Additional Widgets section of your campaign before generating the PURLs.
    2. Option 2: Assign to an existing widget. This will result in all PURL analytics generated through manual upload to be combined with PURLs analytics generated within the widget together in the Analytics > Placements dashboard.
    3. Option 3 (Not Recommended): Select None if you do not want to track analytics for PURLs generated through your manual upload.
  3. Click Generate PURLs to start the process
  4. An email will be sent to your inbox containing a link to download your PURL Generation export after the process is completed successfully.

Note: Review important notes below to successfully generate PURLs.Reach out to your Customer Support Manager or support@friendbuy.com to learn more about best PURL generation best practices!
  • The file upload must contain a list of Advocate email addresses within a single column. Column headers are required in the first row. The column header 'email' is required, all other column headers are optional. Note: If you require Customer ID to issue customer rewards, then 'customerId' is required (in the case you are rewarding with account credit or custom webhooks).
  • All file uploads must be in CSV format and no larger than 1 GB.
  • Larger files can take several hours to process, which will delay receipt of the export email until the process is complete. PURL generation exports must be downloaded within 7 days of receiving the email.
  • If the CSV upload file contains an invalid, blank, or malformed email address within a row, then the output for the corresponding row will be skipped and a validation error will be displayed in the row.
  • PURLs will include a randomly generated referral code unless you have set up Referral Code Personalization in your Referral Campaign settings and provided the optional fields (firstName or lastName) as a seed in the CSV file. Example: https://fbuy.io/alias/prefixseed
  • If a PURL does not exist for the Advocate associated with the requested campaign, one will be created. If a PURL already exists, the link will remain the same.
  • If a PURL already exists for an Advocate when creating a new widget for a new PURL campaign, the Analytics for their PURL will not be tracked in the new widget, and will only be tracked in the original widget.
  • You can create an Additional Widget in your campaign to assign in Step 2 for tracking PURL analytics independent of existing widgets. Reach out to your Customer Support Manager to learn more about best practices!

Example Upload CSV file format:

email

customerId

firstName

lastName

advocate1@gmail.com

abc123

John

Smith

advocate2@yahoo.com

abc456

Jane

Doe

Example Output CSV file format:

email

link

referralCode

advocate1@gmail.com

https://fbuy.io/D42s1

D42s1

advocate2@yahoo.com

https://fbuy.io/Z7a2V

Z7a2V

Tip: Consider using PURLs to send personalized referral marketing campaigns by including the customer's personal referral link in an eblast. Take a look at the below PURL campaign example from one of our customers, Metromile, for an idea of how you can create your own PURL campaign!

How did we do?

How to Generate Personalized URLs (PURLs) through Our API

How to Configure Tiered Rewards

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