18.7 Automating Your Referral Program with Workflows

You can use Close Master Workflows (Automations section) to automate certain aspects of managing your referral program, reducing manual effort.

Relevant Workflow Triggers:

• Affiliate Created: Trigger a workflow when a new affiliate partner is added or approved.
  • Use Case: Send a custom welcome email sequence beyond the default template, perhaps including links to specific program rules, best practices for referring, or introducing their point of contact at the agency.
• Affiliate Lead: (Triggered by link tracking) Trigger a workflow when a new lead is attributed to an affiliate via their tracking link.
  • Use Case: Send an internal notification to the assigned agent mentioning the referral source. Send an email notification to the *affiliate partner* letting them know their link generated a lead (optional, manage notification volume).
• Affiliate Sales: (Triggered by tracked online sales or potentially manual sale creation) Trigger a workflow when a commission record is generated.
  • Use Case: Send an internal notification to the accounting team or broker to review and approve the pending commission. Send a notification to the affiliate partner about the generated commission.
• Opportunity Status Changed (to Won): This is a key trigger for potential automation related to manual sale crediting.
  • Use Case (Advanced): If you consistently store the referring affiliate's ID or name in a Custom Field on the Contact or Opportunity record, you *could* potentially use this trigger to automatically run the Add Manual Sale action (see below), automatically generating the commission record upon closing. Requires very careful setup and reliable data capture.
• Contact Tag Added: Trigger based on adding a tag like "Referral Partner Prospect".
  • Use Case: Start a workflow to invite that contact to join the affiliate program via email with the signup link.

Relevant Workflow Actions:

• Add to Affiliate Manager: Automatically enroll an existing Contact into your Affiliate Manager and assign them to a specific Campaign.
  • Use Case: Triggered when Opportunity Status = Won, automatically add the client Contact to the "Past Client Referral Program" campaign.
• Add Manual Sales For An Affiliate: Allows a workflow to automatically create a commission record (similar to clicking "+ Add Manual Sale").
  • Use Case (Advanced): As mentioned above, triggered by Opportunity Status = Won. The action would need to dynamically pull the correct Affiliate ID (from a custom field?), the relevant Campaign, and crucially, the correct Sale Amount (GCI from an opportunity custom field?) to calculate the commission accurately. Requires careful planning and reliable data in custom fields.
• Add Leads under an Affiliate: Allows a workflow to manually associate an existing Contact record with a specific Affiliate partner for tracking purposes (adds them to the affiliate's Leads list in the portal).

Using workflows can help streamline partner onboarding, notifications, and potentially even the commission generation process if your data structure supports it reliably.