The advocate reward email isn't being sent

If an advocate hasn't received their reward email after a friend's order, work through this checklist in order. The first three causes account for nearly all reports of a missing reward email.

The advocate reward email fires when a friend places an order using the advocate's referral code. Emails are typically sent within a few minutes after the friend's order is placed.

1. Has a friend actually placed an order yet?

This is the most common cause. The advocate gets their reward email only after a friend completes a real order using the advocate's code. Generating a referral code, sharing the code, or having a friend visit the store doesn't trigger the email – only an order placement does.

How to check:

• Go to the Reports page in 1ClickReferral. Look for a recent referral linked to the advocate in question.
• Cross-check with your Shopify Orders page. Find an order that used the advocate's referral code as a discount code.
• Open Shopify Admin → Discounts and look up the advocate's referral code. The "Used" count tells you how many orders have applied that code.

How to fix:

If no friend orders have been placed yet, the email is correctly waiting for a trigger that hasn't happened. Wait for a real friend order, or place a test order yourself using the advocate's code to confirm the flow.

2. Was the friend's order placed using the advocate's referral code?

The reward email only fires if Shopify recognizes the advocate's code as the discount applied to the friend's order. If the friend completed checkout without entering the code, or entered a different code, the referral isn't tracked and no email is sent.

How to check:

1. Open the friend's order in Shopify
2. Look at the discount code applied to the order
3. Confirm it matches one of the advocate's referral codes (you can verify the format on the Reports page in 1ClickReferral)

How to fix:

If the friend didn't use the advocate's code, the referral wasn't recorded. There's no way to retroactively credit the advocate – the code has to be entered at checkout for the reward to be issued.

For future referrals, make sure advocates know to share their code (not just a link) and that friends know to enter it at checkout. The widget copy and share message templates can be updated to make this clearer – see [How to customize the Thank You page widget headline and copy].

3. Did the advocate's email land in spam or promotions?

The reward email is sent through 1ClickReferral's email infrastructure, with your store name set as the display sender. The advocate sees something like "Cool Store" as the sender, but the underlying email comes from a 1ClickReferral sending domain.

Whether an email lands in the inbox vs. spam vs. promotions is ultimately decided by the receiving email provider (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) based on signals like sender reputation, content, and the recipient's filtering rules. Even with strong sender reputation on our end, individual mailboxes may filter promotional emails into spam or promotions tabs.

How to check:

Ask the advocate to:

• Check the spam, junk, or promotions folder
• Search their inbox for the email subject line you've configured (default starts with "You've earned a... reward coupon")
• Check whether the email has been auto-sorted into a tab or filter

How to fix:

• Ask the advocate to mark the email as "not spam" if they find it in the spam folder, and add the sender to their contacts. This signals their email provider that future emails from us should be delivered.
• Adjust the subject line of the email to avoid spam triggers (e.g., excessive use of "FREE", "$$$", or all caps). See [How to customize the advocate reward email].
• Keep the email body clean and avoid spam-flag content (excessive links, large images without text, words like "guaranteed", "limited time", "act now").

You don't need to configure SPF, DKIM, or DMARC on your store's domain – those are handled on our sending infrastructure. The recommendations above are the levers available to you as a merchant.

4. Is the advocate's email address valid?

The advocate's email is taken from the original Shopify customer record at the time they placed their first order with you. If that email address is invalid, mistyped, or has hard-bounced from prior sends, the email won't reach them.

How to check:

1. Open the advocate's customer profile in Shopify Customers
2. Verify the email address looks correct
3. Check if you have any record of bounces or undeliverable mail to that address

How to fix:

• If the email is mistyped, ask the advocate to update their email in their Shopify customer profile or place a new order with the correct address. Future advocate rewards will use the updated email.
• If the email has hard-bounced, the address is permanently invalid and cannot receive future emails – the advocate will need to provide a new one.

5. Was the program paused when the friend placed the order?

If the referral program is paused in 1ClickReferral, the program isn't tracking referrals. A friend's order during a paused state won't be linked to an advocate, and no reward email is sent.

How to check:

• Open 1ClickReferral and look at the Dashboard. The button should read Pause program (meaning the program is currently active). If it reads Activate program, the program is paused.
• Cross-reference the timestamp of the friend's order with when the program was last activated or paused.

How to fix:

If the program was paused at the time of the friend's order, the referral wasn't recorded and the reward can't be retroactively issued. Activate the program (see How to install and set up your referral program] for activation instructions) so future friend orders trigger reward emails correctly.

A note on cancelled or refunded orders

If a friend's order is cancelled or refunded after the advocate has already received their reward email, the advocate's discount code remains active. We don't currently revoke advocate rewards based on order changes after the fact.

This means the email isn't tied to the order's final fulfilled state – it's tied to the order placement event. If you've spotted an unusual pattern of cancelled friend orders generating advocate rewards, contact support and we'll help investigate.

Still not working?

If you've worked through everything above and the advocate still hasn't received their reward email, contact 1ClickReferral support with:

• The advocate's email address
• The friend's order number
• The referral code that was used
• The timestamp of the friend's order

We'll trace the email send from our end and confirm whether it was dispatched, delivered, or bounced.