How ready is your referral program, honestly?
Twelve questions, weighted by what actually decides whether programs work. Get a score out of 100 and a prioritised fix list — in your browser, nothing stored, no signup.
Do you have hard evidence customers are happy — NPS responses, reviews, retention?
Do customers already refer people without being asked or rewarded?
Do customers interact with your product often enough to see a referral prompt?
Can your unit economics fund a meaningful two-sided reward?
Have you defined the exact qualifying event — the checkable action that earns a reward?
Can a customer share you in one step today — a personal link or code that exists?
Are happiness moments instrumented — NPS 9–10s, milestones, glowing support tickets?
Can you trace a new signup back to the specific person who referred them?
Are eligibility rules and terms written down — who can refer, what voids a reward?
Do you have a plan for self-referrals and bulk abuse?
Does one named person own the program — its numbers, its payouts, its inbox?
Will you measure referral CAC and payback against your other channels?
The score updates as you answer. All twelve questions make it meaningful — partial scores flatter everyone.
Demand evidence (satisfaction, unprompted referrals, engagement) carries 32 of the 100 points, because mechanics are fixable in a week and demand is not. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
What does 'ready for a referral program' actually mean?
Three things, in descending order: evidence customers would refer (satisfaction data, unprompted referrals, engagement), economics that can fund a two-sided reward, and plumbing — a defined qualifying event, working attribution, published terms, a fraud plan. The scorecard weighs all twelve because most launch checklists only cover the third.
How does the scoring work?
Each question carries a weight reflecting how often that gap actually kills programs; your answer earns the full weight, half, or nothing, summing to 100. Demand evidence holds 32 points on purpose — mechanics are fixable in a week, while a product nobody would recommend is not a program problem.
What should you do with a low score?
Work the fix list top-down — it is sorted by weighted gap, so the first item is the one costing you most. Below 40, resist launching anything: a public program that stalls is harder to relaunch than one that started late. Between 40 and 65, fix the flagged plumbing first; the demand is usually already there.
The full pre-launch sequence — what to check, in what order, before announcing anything — lives on the referral program checklist page linked below. The scorecard tells you where you are; the checklist is the path.
Is the referral program scorecard free?
Yes — free, no signup, and your answers never leave the page. Score as many times as you like.
How is this different from a referral readiness checklist?
A checklist treats every item as equal; the scorecard weights them by how often each gap actually kills programs, and turns your answers into one comparable number plus a sorted fix list. Use the scorecard to find your gaps, the checklist to close them.
What is a good score?
85 and above means launch and iterate; 65–84 means launch-able with gaps to close in month one; 40–64 means spend a few weeks on foundations first; below 40 usually means the demand evidence, not the mechanics, needs work.
Ready to launch? The plumbing is our job.
ReferralFlo covers the mechanics half of this scorecard out of the box — links, attribution, qualifying events, reward rules and fraud screening.