Referral program: Give 20%, Get 30%


Student referral programs provide an opportunity for students to refer products to their friends and community with a unique referral link—and when they do so, both the friend and the student will receive a reward discount.


In a student referral program, the key users are:


Creator - The school owner who is selling content on Teachable

Referrer - Existing school student who is referring prospective students

Friend - Prospective student who is receiving a referral link from a referrer


When a friend redeems a purchase using a referral link:


The friend receives a discount 20% on that purchase

The referrer receives a discount 30% which can be applied at their next purchase within that same school


All students enrolled in your school have a Refer a friend tab in their profile settings (accessible via their profile icon in the top right corner of any school pages).


In the top section of the Refer a friend tab is the student referral link. This is the student’s unique referral link that contains their referral code. 

Student referrers can copy their referral link by clicking the Copy URL button. Once they copy the URL, they can share it with friends.

In the bottom section of the Refer a friend tab, students will see any earned rewards they have. A student will earn a reward once a friend completes a purchase using their referral link.


Once a student earns a reward, there will be a new reward code they can use to redeem a discount on their next purchase within the school. To redeem their earned discount, they will copy the code and paste it in the Add Coupon Code field of the Order Summary section of the checkout page when purchasing a product.


Once a friend receives a referral link from an existing student, they can navigate to the checkout page of the product they are purchasing.


The discount will automatically be applied to the cost as long as they are using the referral link correctly. The friend can fill out the rest of the checkout page to complete their purchase.


Referral link attribution


Referral links track sales using “cookies”. On Teachable, a cookie is created whenever a user clicks a referral link, regardless of whether or not they purchase the product at that moment. The referral link cookie is valid for 30 days, or until the user's browser cache is cleared.


In practical terms, this means that even if a friend clicks an referrer’s link, leaves the site, and returns to purchase later—the referrer will still earn a reward for the sale (as long as the friend is on the same device and browser, has not cleared their cache, and is within the cookie period).


If there are multiple referrers that are providing their link to the same friend, the attribution will go to the referrer that most recently provided their link to the friend (i.e. last-touch attribution). This is because cookies can overwrite each other, and even if there is a pre-existing cookie that has not expired—a newly created cookie will take precedence.