OM Documentation Display Rules

How to Use OptinMonster’s Referral Detection for Advanced Lead Targeting

OptinMonster makes it easy to show campaigns to visitors who have been referred to your site from another specific website.

In this article, you’ll learn how to use OptinMonster’s Referral Detection rule.

Before You Start

Here are some things to know before you begin:

Referral Detection Targeting

To target your campaign to visitors who have reached your site by clicking on a link from another specific website, follow these steps:

  1. In the campaign builder, navigate to the Display Rules view.
    Display Rules Tab
  2. Begin editing your rules and when adding a new rule choose the referrer URL from the dropdown.
    Referrer URL Rule
  3. In the next dropdown, select how you would like to match the URL (e.g. “exactly matches”, “does not contain”, “matches the pattern“).
    Referrer Rule Operator
  4. Next, a field will be provided for you to enter the URL you want to target.
    Referrer Rule URL
  5. When you’re finished, click Save.

Troubleshooting

Why would I use OptinMonster’s Referral Detection?

Some situations you might find the Referral Detection rule especially useful include:

  • If you’re running a promotion with another website and want to show a targeted message only to visitors who reach your site through that promotion.
  • To show a specific message only to visitors who reach your site through social media, e.g. through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
  • To hide campaigns from traffic who reach your site through another specific website.
Can I use Referral Detection to hide/show campaigns to visitors arriving from my email newsletter?

No, however, you can follow our guide on how to hide OptinMonster from existing newsletter subscribers.

Referrer Detection isn’t working for my campaign, why?

Referrer Detection checks if a specific value has been passed as the HTTP_REFERRER in the browser.

If the HTTP_REFERRER passed is empty then Referrer Detection will fail for your campaign and your campaign might not load as you expect.

There are several reasons the HTTP_REFERRER could be empty, including if the website visitor:

  • entered the site URL in browser address bar itself
  • visited the site by a browser-maintained bookmark
  • visited the site as first page in the window/tab
  • switched from https URL to a http URL
  • switched from a https URL to a different https URL
  • has security software installed (antivirus/firewall/etc) which strips the referrer from all requests
  • is behind a proxy which strips the referrer from all requests
  • visited the site programmatically without setting the referrer header
In all instances, we strongly recommend that you thoroughly test your campaign’s functionality when configuring referrer detection in the Display Rules to ensure your settings are working as expected.
Switching from a https URL to a http URL?

For advanced users, if you have access to the site your visitors are coming from, you can resolve this issue by adding the following meta tag to the head of the https site:

<meta content="origin" id="mref" name="referrer">

This is how Google, etc. get around sending referrer information from their https to regular sites.