Give-$30-get-$30 referral, how do you build it on Magento?

HelloFresh popularised the pattern; it is now the dominant acquisition channel in meal kits, cheaper than paid social by 30-50% on a CAC basis.

Stack:

• Smile.io, LoyaltyLion, or Yotpo Loyalty handles the referral engine on Magento. Each existing customer gets a unique referral link or code. New customer redeems; both sides credit on first-box ship confirmation. Pricing: $50, $300/mo at meal-kit scale.
• Discount-code-as-attribution, each referral code is a Magento cart price rule with a customer-specific generated suffix (e.g. SARAH-30OFF). Order webhook fires when the referred customer’s first box ships, triggering the credit on the referrer’s account.
• Klaviyo trigger flows, "share with friends" email at day 14 of subscription (after the first 2 boxes ship and the novelty is high), and at every milestone (5th box, 10th, 25th).
• Mobile-first share UI, in the customer portal, big share buttons for SMS, WhatsApp, email, copy-link, Instagram story. SMS dominates in the US; WhatsApp in EU/AU.

Economics: $30 give + $30 get = $60 total cost per referral. If the referred customer’s LTV exceeds $250 (typical at month 6), the unit economics work better than $80, $150 paid-social CAC. The bottleneck is referral velocity, at 15-25% of customers actively referring you scale fast; below 5% it’s a side channel.