Setting Up Your Referral Program

A good referral program turns happy renters into your best salespeople. TrailerBase ships with a full two-sided referral engine — you just need to decide what each side gets, who qualifies, and how much you are willing to spend. This guide walks you through every setting.

Where to configure

Go to Settings > Referrals. You will see four sections: Rewards, Qualification, Budget, and Expiration. You can toggle the whole program on or off with the switch at the top of the page.

Step 1: Set the referrer reward

The referrer is the existing renter who shares their link. Choose how they get paid:

• Flat dollar amount — for example, $25 account credit per successful referral.
• Percentage of the referred booking — for example, 10% of the referee's first rental total.

You also choose the payout form: account credit (applied automatically to the next booking) or cash payout via Stripe Connect once it crosses a minimum threshold, usually $50.

Step 2: Set the referee reward

The referee is the friend being invited. They get a discount code automatically when they sign up via the referral link. You can set:

• A percentage discount (e.g., 15% off first rental), or
• A flat discount (e.g., $20 off first rental of $100+).

Keep the referee reward attractive enough to convert, but not so steep that it nukes your margin on a first booking.

Step 3: Define qualification rules

You only pay the reward when the referral is real. Choose from:

• First rental only — the referee must be a brand-new account.
• Rental over $X — only rentals above a threshold trigger the reward, so a $20 tow-ball rental does not earn a $25 credit.
• Completed rental — the booking must be returned and closed, not just reserved. This is the default, since cancelled bookings should not earn rewards.

You can stack all three rules.

Step 4: Set your monthly budget cap

To protect your business from a viral surprise, set a monthly budget cap in dollars. Once referral rewards issued in a calendar month hit the cap, new referrals are still tracked but rewards are queued for the following month. Your dashboard shows how close you are to the cap in real time.

Step 5: Set expiration windows

Two expirations matter:

1. Referral link validity — how long after a click the cookie + UTM attribution survives. 30 or 60 days is typical.
2. Reward expiration — how long the referrer has to use their earned credit before it expires. 90 days is a good starting point.

Save and test

Hit Save. TrailerBase generates a shareable referral page for every existing customer, reachable from their profile. Before launching, create a test account and run through the full flow yourself — click the link, sign up, book, complete the rental — to confirm rewards fire as expected.

Tips

• Announce the launch by email to your existing renters — they cannot refer if they do not know.
• Review your numbers monthly. If your ROI is below 100%, tighten the qualification rules.
• Consider seasonal boosts (for example, double rewards in your slow months).