Refer & Earn
What it is
Refer & Earn pays you for bringing other senders to thanks.io. Every account has a personal referral link, and you can also publish any of your campaigns as a shareable link that gives new signups a ready-made starting point. When someone signs up through one of your links, you earn a commission on their first subscription payment and on every order they place after that, for as long as they keep sending.
Earnings accumulate as a balance on the Refer & Earn page. You convert that balance to thanks.io credits yourself, or ask the support team to pay it out in cash.
Where to find it
Click Refer & Earn in the left navigation of the dashboard, or go to dashboard.thanks.io/referrals.
Until you have referred someone, an Earn Free Credits button in the top navigation bar also takes you there. Your personal link is included in every order confirmation email and on the thank-you page after you place an order, so it is always close at hand.
Your personal link
Your personal link is at the top of the Refer & Earn page in the form https://thanks.io/r/<your-code>. Click the copy button and share it anywhere: email signatures, social posts, a text to a colleague.
Anyone who creates a thanks.io account through your link is attributed to you. Attribution is first-touch and happens at registration: the first referral link a visitor arrives through is the one that counts, and it is never reassigned afterwards. Only new accounts are attributed; an existing account that follows your link is not.
Campaign links
A campaign link does everything a personal link does, and it also hands the new user a free starter copy of one of your campaigns so they can start sending with something that already works.
Publishing a campaign
- On the Refer & Earn page, scroll to Campaign links.
- Choose a campaign from the Choose a campaign to publish dropdown. A campaign is a mailing list together with all of its automations, so the dropdown lists each of your mailing lists that has at least one shareable automation.
- Click Publish Link.
- A confirmation modal shows every automation that will be shared, with its image and message exactly as a signup will receive them. Review it. Anyone with the link can see these designs, so they should be generic: no names, phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, or photos of people.
- Click the confirm button to create the link, or Cancel to leave the campaign private.
Each published campaign appears as a row in the Campaign links section with its own https://thanks.io/r/<code> link, a copy button, a visit count, and a signup count. The Active / Paused toggle pauses a link without deleting it. A paused link stops resolving (visitors see a not-found page and no signups are attributed to it) until you switch it back to Active.
A campaign can be published once. Campaigns that already have a link do not appear in the dropdown again, and campaigns belonging to a sub-account are not eligible.
What a signup receives
Someone who registers through a campaign link gets a starter copy of the campaign in their own account:
- The mailing list, with its settings but no recipients. Uploaded files, field mappings, and your QR tracking URL are not copied.
- Every shareable automation on that list, each with its own copy of your Image Template and Message Template.
- The message text as you wrote it, with your QR code and landing-page URLs and any CC'd email address removed. Replacement variables such as
%FIRST_NAME%stay in place and are filled in from the new user's own recipients. - Dynamic branding switched off on the copies, so your logo and contact details are never rendered on their mail.
- Gift card brand and amount, if the automation sends a gift card. The face value is charged to whoever sends, on their own plan.
Every copied list and template carries your account name as a suffix, so the new user can tell where it came from. The copied automations arrive inactive: the new user reviews them and turns them on themselves. Nothing sends from a starter copy on its own.
Two kinds of automation are skipped and never copied: automations that belong to a sub-account, and automations whose image is a ThanksAI Studio design. The confirmation modal shows exactly the set that will be shared, so what you see there is what a signup gets.
The starter copy is a template, not a live connection. Nothing on it reports back to you, and you never see the referred account's recipients or activity beyond the commissions it earns you.
How you earn
The Refer & Earn page shows the current rates at the top. Rates are configured by thanks.io and can change, so treat the figures below as a snapshot and the page as the source of truth.
- Signup bonus - a percentage of the referred account's first subscription payment. Currently 100%. A yearly plan is commissioned on one month of the equivalent monthly plan, and a discounted first invoice never pays more than was actually charged.
- On every send - a percentage of the final total of every order the referred account places, for as long as they send. Currently 1%. The total is what they paid after discounts and excludes gift card face value. Orders placed from the referred account's sub-accounts count too.
- Renewals - subsequent subscription charges use a separate rate, currently 0%.
A free-plan signup earns nothing until it pays for something. $0 charges (trials, 100%-off coupons) do not count as a first payment.
Getting paid
Convert to credits
Under Get paid, click Convert $X to Credits to turn your entire available balance into thanks.io credits. The conversion is instant, and the credits appear in the balance shown in the top right of every dashboard page, ready to spend on sends like any other credits.
The button is disabled until your available balance reaches the minimum shown beneath it (currently $50).
If you have received a cash payout in the past, credit conversions are boosted by a bonus multiplier (currently 1.10x): the modal shows your available balance and the larger credit amount you will receive. Everyone else converts at face value.
Cash
Cash payouts are handled by the thanks.io team rather than self-serve. Email support@thanks.io with the amount you would like paid out, and the team will confirm the payment method and mark the balance as paid. Once you have been paid in cash at least once, a Paid in Cash tile and a "Prefer cash?" link appear on your Refer & Earn page.
Tracking your referrals
The stat tiles under the header summarize your program:
| Tile | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Referred Clients | The number of accounts attributed to your links |
| Total Earned | Every commission you have ever earned, before payouts |
| Available | Earnings not yet converted or paid out |
| Converted to Credits | Earnings you have turned into thanks.io credits |
| Paid in Cash | Earnings paid out in cash (shown only once you have taken a cash payout) |
The Activity feed at the bottom of the page lists every event in date order, newest first:
- a signup through one of your links (shown as a client number, never a name or email);
- a commission earned, labelled as a signup, send, renewal, or carried-over commission;
- a conversion to credits or a cash payout.
Each commission carries a status badge: Available, Converted, Paid in Cash, or Voided. A voided commission was corrected by thanks.io staff (a mistaken or duplicate earning) and does not count toward your balance. Use Newer and Older to page through a long feed.
If you took part in the previous thanks.io affiliate program, any balance you had there was carried over as an available commission labelled carried over. It converts and pays out exactly like any other earning.
What people see on your landing page
Following any of your links opens a page at thanks.io/r/<code>:
- A personal link shows "<Your first name> invited you to thanks.io".
- A campaign link shows "<Your first name> sends real mail with thanks.io - and you can too", with the first automation's image as a preview and a note that the signup gets their own free copy.
- If you have the Branding Builder configured, the page uses your company logo, accent color, and company name.
Only your first name and your Branding Builder company details ever appear. Your email address, phone number, mailing address, and recipients are never shown.
The Create Your Free Account button takes the visitor to registration, carrying your referral code with it so the signup is attributed to you even if they switch devices or browsers on the way.