Create an activation campaign by selecting Campaigns > Activation Campaigns > Create Campaign.
You can also launch an activation campaign from any page, using the Actions dropdown > Activation Campaign.
Activation Campaigns are emails sent out to your preapproved members, to invite them to access your referral program and start sharing.
Unlike standard email tools that treat everyone the same, these campaigns only target people not yet participating in your referral program.
These emails:
Streamline the program access process by putting a portal link right in members’ inboxes – members share directly from the email or access their portal in one click
Make it easier to drive member engagement
Allow for easy targeting – organize contacts for greater control over who receives a campaign
Check out an interactive demo of how Activation Campaigns work:
Not every contact is ready to share when they first learn about your program. You need to consistently follow up until they’re ready without being pushy or emailing the wrong people.
Activation Campaigns solve this by only emailing people that haven’t engaged - once engaged, they become “Activated” and won’t receive future campaigns.
Activation emails are not just launch emails
The first time you use activation campaigns will be to launch your program to your first group of members. Ideally, this first group will be made up of your recent active customers (and/or other promoters with an active interest in sharing your brand).
But activation emails aren’t just for your program launch. You should add new members to your program regularly, and send activation emails out to encourage these members to start sharing.
Use Activation Campaigns to promote your referral program:
At Launch - announce your program to your existing contact list
Ongoing - systematically invite new contacts on a recurring basis
Follow up - nudge contacts who didn’t engage with the first campaign
For instance, you might:
Add each month’s new customers to your program (as preapproved members) on a regular cycle
Send an activation email to that “batch” of new customers
Send a follow-up 1-2 weeks later to anyone in that "batch" who didn't engage with the first email
You can send as many activation campaigns as you wish, but you can only email a given preapproved member once every 7 days.
Adding members for your activation campaign
Members must be added to a program (under preapproved status) before you can send an activation campaign to them.
If you would like to add preapproved members to send an activation campaign to, the Activation Campaigns page makes it easy.
You can add a member manually, or bulk import members, right from the Activation Campaigns page. You can also click “Automate” to learn how to set up the automated adding of members via Zapier or API.
Adding members as preapproved is very low-risk.
Rest assured – preapproved members will not be contacted unless you explicitly send them an Activation Campaign.
Selecting members for your activation campaign
When you’re ready to send an activation campaign, select Create Campaign.
Choose the Program you’d like to run the Activation Campaign for. Then decide which preapproved members you’d like to email:
Never Emailed – Newly added members/ other preapproved members who never received an activation email
Previously Emailed – Were emailed at least once, 7+ days ago, but haven’t activated yet
Specific List – A list of any preapproved members that you’ve imported previously (select the list by name with a dropdown)
Want to see exactly which members are in a specific category? Click on the button with the number of members to open the list.
To make the campaign easier to find and track, you can give it a name (ex. August 2025 New Members).
Once you’ve selected the members you wish to email, select Review Email.
Remember: Only preapproved members can receive an Activation Campaign. Activated members will never get an activation email.
If Referral Rock detects that a preapproved member has engaged with the program (visited the portal, shared with a friend, or added a referral), they will become Activated and they'll no longer be eligible to receive activation emails.
Check out the Member Lifecycle article for more on preapproved vs. activated members.
Editing and testing an activation campaign
Our activation email template is designed for consistency and closely follows program email best practices. The fields make it super-simple to craft an engaging email.
To edit the text of your activation campaign, click Modify Message.
From here, you can edit the email with the following fields:
Subject Line
Headline (bold text at top of email body - ideally presents the rewards)
How It Works
Intro Line (briefly introduce the program)
Three steps of how the program works
Visit Member Portal Button (text for the button that links to member portal)
Personal Message – use this to include additional text at the bottom of the email, such as a heartfelt thanks, or info on bonus rewards or tiers
Once you finish editing, be sure to save your edits by clicking the Save Changes button.
To the right of the message editor, you can preview how your message will look.
If you’d like to see how an email will look in members’ inboxes (including with the logo and footer from your Brand Settings), click Send a Test. This will send the email to your own inbox so you can check that everything’s displaying properly.
Once you’ve ensured that the email is formatted properly, click “Email (number) Members” to send the campaign.
Evaluating an activation campaign
Email analytics tell you how your Activation Campaigns performed so you can optimize them. Each campaign also includes an advanced delivery report including data on undelivered emails, spam, unsubscribes, and more.
Simply click on the name of a campaign marked as “Sent” to open up its details and Delivery Report.
The Delivery Report tracks the numbers and percentages of emails within the campaign that were:
Delivered
Opened
Clicked
Undelivered
Sent
Pending
Flagged as spam
Unsubscribed from
This makes it easy to identify what’s working and flag areas of improvement.
You can also click Email History to access an email log, with details on each individual email you sent in that campaign. Another way to access a campaign’s email log is by clicking on the number of members emailed in a sent campaign.