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Overview

One of the most common refer-a-friend support questions is a referred friend saying their discount “isn’t applying” or “didn’t come up automatically” at checkout. In most cases the discount was never activated because the friend’s referral was never attributed — not because the coupon itself is broken. This guide explains how attribution works, how to confirm what happened on the friend’s profile, and the order in which to resolve it.

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How Friend Discount Attribution Works

A friend earns the referral discount by clicking the referral link an advocate shared with them. That click records a share_click event and starts the friend’s referral journey, which is what makes the friend discount available. Two conditions matter:
  • Opening the email is not the same as clicking. The friend must actually click the referral button or link. An email open — including one logged by an email security scanner or inbox pre-fetch — does not create a share_click.
  • Cookies and browser session matter. Attribution relies on first-party cookies set when the friend clicks the link. If cookies are disabled, or the friend clicks in one browser and then checks out in a different browser, device, or private window, the referral can be lost. For how referral cookies work, see Extole Cookie Handling.
If there is no recorded click, Extole never reached the point where the friend discount could be activated.

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How the Discount Reaches the Friend

Depending on the program, the friend discount is either shown on the friend landing page for the friend to copy, or added to the link the friend follows to your site. Whether it then applies on its own at checkout depends on the program’s configuration and your commerce platform. If the friend expects the code to apply automatically but the program is set up to display a code to enter, that is the intended behavior — confirm the program’s intended experience before treating it as a defect.

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Diagnose in the Platform

Look the friend up under User Support and confirm what actually happened before deciding on a fix:
  1. Search for the friend by email and open their profile.
  2. In the Activity section, look for a share_click and the friend’s landing, sign-up, or conversion events. If referral emails were delivered and opened but there is no share_click, the referral was never attributed.
  3. Check the status and quality of the friend’s events. A click or sign-up can be recorded but marked suspicious or low quality and auto-declined, which stops the discount from being issued. See Visit Type and Quality.
  4. In the Rewards section, check whether any friend coupon or discount was issued. If none is present, no discount code exists to apply yet.
For related reward-status checks, see How to Investigate a WISMR Request.

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Common Causes

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If the Friend Is Not Eligible

Some referrals are intentionally not rewarded. Extole evaluates each friend event against quality and eligibility rules, and an event that fails is marked suspicious and auto-declined, so no discount is issued. Common reasons include self-referral signals — the advocate and friend appear to be the same person, or share a browser, device, or IP address — and the friend not being a new customer. For the full list and how to configure them, see Configuring the Rules of Your Program and New Customer Rule. When you respond to the friend:
  • Point them to the program’s terms — for example, “valid for first-time customers only” — rather than naming the specific rule that was triggered.
  • If a genuine customer made a good-faith attempt to participate, you can approve the declined event from their profile to issue the reward. Weigh this against the added fraud risk of overriding quality rules.

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Resolution Steps

Work through these in order and stop as soon as the discount applies:
  1. Have the friend retry the link in one browser session. Ask them to reopen the most recent referral email, click the main referral button in a normal browser with cookies enabled, and continue shopping in that same session without switching browsers or devices.
  2. Send the advocate’s share link directly. If the discount still does not appear, open the advocate’s profile, copy their share link, and send it to the friend to use. This gives the friend a clean, attributable path to the offer.
  3. Confirm eligibility, then issue a replacement. If the discount still does not apply, confirm the friend is eligible and manually create the referral so a replacement friend reward is issued. See How to Manually Create a Referral or other Event.
Creating a replacement reward issues real value, so complete step 3 only after you have confirmed the specific friend and that they are eligible.

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When to Contact Extole

Contact Extole support if the friend clicked the referral link and the referral is attributed correctly but no discount was issued, or if the coupon appears in the referral link but is not applied at checkout. Because your site and commerce platform handle the final step of applying the code, persistent auto-apply failures usually need your own technical or commerce team alongside Extole. Include the friend’s email, the advocate’s email, and the approximate time of the click so the referral can be located.