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Bullmark

Referrer-only vouchers

A brand minting vouchers for a referral campaign has a problem the open marketplace creates for it: the batch it paid for can be bought off the shelf by anyone who wanders past. The campaign gets spent on people who never heard of the referrer.

audience says which kind of batch it is.

valuemeaning
OpenToAllanyone may claim or buy it. the default, and what every voucher was before this existed
ReferrerOnlyonly someone holding an active referrer contract with that brand may take one from an open window

What “an open window” means

Section titled “What “an open window” means”

Three routes reach a supply without a referrer, and ReferrerOnly closes all three:

  • the marketplace (POST /marketplace/listings/{id}/buy)
  • the direct claim (POST /products/{id}/claim)
  • the retail buy (POST /products/{id}/buy)

/r/{code}/claim is not closed. A referrer’s audience arriving through the referrer’s own link is the entire purpose of a referrer-only batch — gating that would make the setting mean “nobody gets these”.

What a buyer sees

Section titled “What a buyer sees”

The listing stays on the shelf, badged referrer only, with the buy button replaced by a way to ask the brand. Hiding it would leave the brand unable to see its own stock, and letting someone press buy only to be refused is worse than saying so up front.

The API is the authority either way: canBuy on a listing is resolved server-side, because a screen cannot see who holds a contract.

What counts as “an active contract”

Section titled “What counts as “an active contract””

Active, and not past its end date. Specifically not:

  • Offered — a proposal nobody accepted. A brand’s offer, ignored, must not still open its stock to the person who ignored it.
  • Ended / Declined — the term is over, for the same reason the reward stops paying.

A contract with a different brand opens nothing. Being “a referrer” is not a rank.

The brand’s own owner is never locked out of its own supply.

Changing it later

Section titled “Changing it later”

You cannot. audience is set when the supply is issued, and vouchers from that batch are already in people’s hands under the terms they were issued with. A change of mind is a new batch.