This glossary covers the metrics recorded across the referral funnel. Understanding each stage of the referral journey is essential for analysing performance, making informed decisions, and identifying opportunities for improvement.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mention-me.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Referral Funnel Overview
The end-to-end journey consists of two main participants:- Referrers: Your brand advocates — existing customers who share your referral offer.
- Referees: Their friends — the people receiving your referral offer and being encouraged to become new customers.
- Volume metrics: impressions, shares, orders
- Conversion metrics: share rate, purchases per sharer
- Revenue metrics: first order revenue, lifetime value
Core Metrics
Orders
The foundation of your business. This metric highlights important trends such as the impact of promotional events, seasonality, and year-on-year growth. An order is defined as having a customer (email), value and currency, and a unique order ID.Impressions and Exposure
- Impressions / Shown: The number of times a referral offer is displayed by Mention Me. This only includes pages served by Mention Me, not external email marketing or banners.
- Unique Impressions: The number of unique customers who saw a referral offer within a 24-hour period. Running a report over a week will not simply sum daily unique impressions, since the same customer may appear on multiple days.
- Seen: The number of unique customers eligible and registered to share referral offers, either actively or passively.
Customer Enrolment
- Enrolled: Customers enrolled in your referral scheme through automatic enrolment (e.g. post-purchase overlay) or manual sign-up. Enrolments into distinct offers are counted separately — if a referrer enrols into two offers in one day, that counts as two enrolments. However, seeing the same offer more than once only counts as one enrolment.
- Actively Enrolled: Customers who click on a referral offer at post-purchase or register directly via a landing page. All of these customers receive a Referral Registration email.
Sharing Activity
- Sharers / Sharing Customers: Unique referrers who shared the offer during a given time period, via email, social links, or by entering their name during checkout. This metric considers unique sharers within the selected period — if a referrer shares on Monday and Wednesday, the weekly count is still 1.
- Shares: The total number of shares made across any channel (email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Name Share, etc.). A single customer can send multiple shares.
- Shares per Sharer: Average number of times each customer shares. Higher figures suggest sharing across multiple platforms or to multiple friends.
Mention Me takes a conservative approach to counting shares. A share is only counted when there is confidence it was sent:
- Email sharing: counted when someone clicks the link in the email
- Social media sharing: counted when the social network follows the link (evidence it was posted)
- Name sharing: counted only when the referee uses the referrer’s name during checkout
Referee Response
- Share Responses: The number of actions taken on a shared offer (e.g. link clicks or entering a friend’s name at checkout). There is no deduplication — multiple clicks by the same person are all counted.
- Responses per Share: Engagement rate calculated by dividing share responses by total shares.
Referee Registration and Incentives
- Registered / Incented Friends: The number of referees who enter their email and receive an incentive or promise of a reward. To reach this step, the email must be valid. Not everyone who registers will receive an incentive — some may be held in gaming queues, or vouchers may have run out. Unless you experience significant gaming, registered and incented counts should be roughly equal.
- Incented per Response: The likelihood that referees who click a referral link register for the offer and claim their incentive. A target of 50%+ is considered healthy.
Conversions and Outcomes
- Confirmed Purchases: Referees who place an order after engaging with the referral offer. Only transactions tracked via Mention Me order tags are included.
- New / Qualified Customers: Referees who make their first purchase and meet your qualification criteria for rewards (e.g. product category rules or subscription completion).
- Purchases per Incented: Conversion rate from incentivised referees to actual customers.
- New Customers: Distinct referees who complete their first order, matched by email.
- Unique Successful Referrers: Referrers who introduced at least one friend who became a new customer.
- Rewarded Referrers: Referrers who received a reward because a referee completed the necessary action.
Revenue Metrics
Revenue figures associated with referred purchases are split into three categories:- Revenue from New Customers: First orders from referees.
- Revenue from New Customers’ Subsequent Orders: Orders made by referees beyond their first.
- Revenue from Rewarded Customers: Purchases made by referrers within 45 days of receiving a reward.
Revenue is the order value passed to Mention Me through the tags. It should be net of shipping, discount, and taxes. All revenue is displayed in a single reporting currency (usually GBP by default), configured at the account level. Orders can be placed in any currency, but the platform converts them using up-to-date exchange rates. The reporting currency cannot be changed dynamically by campaign.
Conversion Ratios to Monitor
- Overall Customer Share Rate: Sharing customers / unique customers. Strong programmes reach 30%.
- Purchase Rate (Purchases per Sharer): New customers / sharers. Mature programmes average 15-20%.