What Is Product Referral?
Product Referral is a Mention Me feature that surfaces the organic sharing already happening around your brand — the moments when a customer copies a product link and sends it to a friend over WhatsApp, text, or social media, with no reward or referral programme needed.
The feature works passively in the background. It requires no customer enrolment and no changes to how your customers shop.
Think of it as an attribution layer. Rather than replacing your referral programme, it fills a gap: revealing the peer‑to‑peer sharing that was always happening but previously appeared in your analytics as anonymous organic or direct traffic.
You can see:
- Which products are being shared
- How much revenue those shares are driving
- Who your most active organic advocates are — even if they have never interacted with a referral campaign
How It Works
- A customer views a product page — a unique, anonymous fingerprint is added to the URL.
- The customer shares that link (no action required — simply copying and sending the URL is enough).
- Their friend clicks the link and makes a purchase — the connection between sharer and buyer is captured and revenue is attributed.
Common Questions
Value & Purpose
We already have Brand Referral — why do we need this too?
Brand Referral and Product Referral serve different purposes.
Brand Referral is an acquisition tool. It uses offers and campaigns to actively bring in new customers and claims incrementality.
Product Referral is an insight tool. It reveals the sharing that is already happening, with no campaign or incentive required.
Many of your most active advocates may never have engaged with your referral programme — but they could be sharing product links regularly and generating meaningful revenue. Product Referral makes those customers visible for the first time.
What kind of insights will we actually get?
The dashboard shows:
- Views
- Orders
- Revenue
- Average order value driven by shared links
You can also see the split between:
- Organic shares (someone copying the URL)
- Clicks on the optional share button
Coming soon:
- A view of your top shared products by views or revenue
- A leaderboard ranking your most active organic sharers
This is useful for identifying potential micro‑influencers or candidates for a loyalty reward.
Does it tell us who our best advocates are?
Yes, for identified customers.
When a sharer makes a purchase, their anonymous fingerprint is linked to their email, building a profile over time.
Some clients have discovered that a single customer generated thousands of pounds in orders purely through organic link sharing — people they would never have identified through traditional referral data alone.
How It Works
Does the customer need to sign up or do anything?
No.
Tracking is entirely passive. Customers do not need to enrol in a programme, create an account, or click a special referral link.
If they share a product URL and someone clicks it, it is captured automatically.
What data does it collect? Does it use personal data?
The tracking fingerprint is built from anonymous browser signals — such as device type, screen size, and general network information.
No personal data is collected at the point of sharing.
A customer's identity (email address) is only associated once they make a purchase, following your standard data capture process.
No PII is required for the feature to work.
Does it affect our SEO?
The parameter added to product URLs is designed to be SEO‑friendly and should not negatively affect your search rankings.
Speak to your account team for more detail.
Is there a share button, or does it work invisibly?
Both options are available.
The core tracking works invisibly. If a customer copies your product URL and sends it to a friend, that share is captured with no button required.
Optionally, a share button can be added to your product pages to actively encourage sharing.
The button text is fully customisable and can be translated per locale.
Expectations
Does it claim incrementality?
No.
Product Referral is an attribution tool, not an acquisition tool. It does not claim to generate new behaviour — it reveals and measures sharing that was already happening.
If you want to actively drive new customer acquisition with measurable incrementality, Brand Referral is the right solution.
Can we use this data to reward sharers or run a campaign?
Not directly through this feature — it is designed for insight and attribution.
However, the data it surfaces can absolutely inform other programmes.
For example, you could:
- Use the sharer leaderboard to identify advocates for a commission scheme
- Feed the data into customer segmentation
- Create lookalike audiences for paid campaigns
Enable Product Referral
For Shopify: Shopify: Product Referral
Non-Shopify: Integration Instructions