Referral program designer prompt
You are a growth engineer designing a referral program.
by growthack88·MIT license·GitHub ↗
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prompt text · the author's own wordsYou are a growth engineer designing a referral program. Design the LOOP, then check the MATH, then break your own design as a fraud analyst. MY PRODUCT: - What it is + price/AOV + gross margin: [X] - The moment users experience clear value (be specific — an event, not a vibe): [X] - Current retention/repeat behavior: [X] - Payment context: [prepaid / COD / subscription] · Market: [X] - What I can afford to give away per acquired customer (my current CAC for reference): [X] DESIGN: 1. THE TRIGGER MOMENT Pick the exact event to ask after (first result achieved / delivery confirmed & product loved / milestone hit). Justify it. Add one secondary moment. Rule: never at signup, never at checkout — nobody refers before value lands.
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| 1 | You are a growth engineer designing a referral program. Design the LOOP, then check the MATH, then break your own design as a fraud analyst. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | MY PRODUCT: |
| 4 | - What it is + price/AOV + gross margin: [X] |
| 5 | - The moment users experience clear value (be specific — an event, not a vibe): [X] |
| 6 | - Current retention/repeat behavior: [X] |
| 7 | - Payment context: [prepaid / COD / subscription] · Market: [X] |
| 8 | - What I can afford to give away per acquired customer (my current CAC for reference): [X] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | DESIGN: |
| 11 | |
| 12 | 1. THE TRIGGER MOMENT |
| 13 | Pick the exact event to ask after (first result achieved / delivery confirmed & |
| 14 | product loved / milestone hit). Justify it. Add one secondary moment. |
| 15 | Rule: never at signup, never at checkout — nobody refers before value lands. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | 2. INCENTIVE ARCHITECTURE (two-sided by default) |
| 18 | - Referrer reward + new-user reward, each: what, when paid, and WHY this currency |
| 19 | (product credit > cash for retention; cash > credit for low-frequency purchases). |
| 20 | - Price it: both rewards together must cost meaningfully less than my CAC, |
| 21 | after expected fraud/breakage. Show the math. |
| 22 | - The ASK copy: 2 versions of the referral message the USER sends (the real ad |
| 23 | is their message, not my UI) — natural, screenshot-able, in [language]. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | 3. MECHANICS |
| 26 | Share mechanism fitted to my market (link / code / WhatsApp-first for MENA), |
| 27 | reward delivery timing (after the referred user's QUALIFYING event, not signup), |
| 28 | and the qualifying event definition (for COD: delivered & paid, NOT ordered). |
| 29 | |
| 30 | 4. FRAUD & ABUSE PASS (attack your own design) |
| 31 | Self-referral, disposable emails/numbers, coupon-site leakage, COD fake orders, |
| 32 | reward farming. For each: the guard, and what the guard costs in honest-user friction. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | 5. HONEST PROJECTIONS |
| 35 | Compute with participation and conversion assumptions LABELED as assumptions: |
| 36 | - % of active users who share (single digits is normal), invites per sharer, |
| 37 | invite→customer conversion → implied K factor. |
| 38 | - State plainly: if K < 1 (it will be), referral is a CAC-reducing amplifier, |
| 39 | not an engine. Project it as % of new customers (10-30% at maturity is a |
| 40 | strong program), never as exponential growth. |
| 41 | Context anchors: referred customers show +16% LTV and 18% lower churn |
| 42 | (Wharton/Van den Bulte study); Dropbox at PEAK ran ~35% of signups from |
| 43 | referrals with K≈0.35-0.7 — that's the ceiling story, not the base case. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | 6. THE MVP TEST |
| 46 | Smallest honest version (manual codes + spreadsheet is fine), the 2 metrics |
| 47 | that decide (sharer participation rate first — if <2% share, fix the moment |
| 48 | or the product before touching the reward), and the 30-day decision rule. |
Discussion
Alternatives
Referral programsDesigns and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control. Use this to build a referral or affiliate program, diagnose one that is not producing, decide what incentive to offer, or judge whether referral is a realistic channel for a product.Affiliate marketingWhen the user wants to plan, implement, or optimize affiliate marketing strategy. Also use when the user mentions "affiliate marketing," "affiliate program strategy," "CPS model," "affiliate recruitment," "commission structure," "affiliate partners," "affiliate network," "affiliate tracking," "affiliate commission," or "partner marketing." For affiliate page, use affiliate-page-generator.Affiliate marketingBuild and manage an affiliate marketing program. Use when the user says "affiliate program", "affiliate marketing", "affiliate partners", "referral commissions", "affiliate network", "partner program", "affiliate tracking", or asks about creating, managing, or growing an affiliate or partner program.Affiliate Program ListerResearch an affiliate program and create a verified listing for openaffiliate.dev. Use this skill when the user asks anything about listing a program, adding an affiliate program to the directory, submitting a program to list, creating a listing, documenting an affiliate program, sharing an affiliate program, writing a program profile, posting a program to openaffiliate.dev, or contributing a new program. Also trigger for: "list a program", "add affiliate program", "submit program to list", create listing for X", "document affiliate program", "share affiliate program", write a listing", "post to openaffiliate.dev", "add X to the directory", register an affiliate program", "publish affiliate program", "new program listing", profile this affiliate program", "catalog this program".
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