There may be times you want to check referrers’ eligibility before issuing rewards.
For example, if you:
- Sell a product with a cooling off period (e.g. insurance), and only want to issue referral rewards once the period ends
- Offer a free month subscription service to referees and only want to issue referrer rewards once the referee pays for their second month
- Want to avoid rewarding referrers for referees who cancel their first purchase.
You can choose to introduce delays and approval steps before issuing rewards in any scenario. It’s worth bearing in mind that putting controls in place will likely increase contact from referrers/referees asking when they’ll get their rewards.
You can take three different steps to check the eligibility of referrers and referees
1-Introduce a delay before issuing rewards
You can introduce a delay that queues referral rewards for you to approve. When the delay period expires, the platform will automatically fulfil any rewards left in the queue.
To configure this option, navigate to Offer Details, set up a new reward and enter a value (in days) for how long to withhold the reward.
Enter > 0 in the Number of days elapsed before reward issued box to introduce a delay before the reward is automatically issued.
2-Introduce an approval step
As with time delays, the approval step queues rewards for approval when referees make a qualifying purchase. In this case though, rewards remain in the approval queue until approved or declined.
To configure this option, navigate to Offer Details, set up a new reward and select Requires Approval before reward is issued.
Tick the option to make sure all rewards have to be approved or declined before issue.
3-Automating the approval or decline
You can use your own systems to decide the eligibility of queued rewards, automatically approve or decline them, and notify Mention Me of the outcome.
To do this, you’ll need to periodically prepare a CSV file with the e-mail addresses of ALL recent purchasers (regardless of referral status), indicating whether they should be approved or cancelled. You’ll then need to transfer this file into the Mention Me SFTP server for processing.
NB: Your customer service team can always override the automated process to accelerate or cancel the issue of a reward. 
