Skip to main content
Announcements let you broadcast a one-way message to the people promoting your product, shown right inside their affiliate portal. Use them to launch a new promotion, share a program change, run a quick poll, or point affiliates to a fresh set of marketing assets — without sending a single email. Unlike Messages, which are back-and-forth conversations, an announcement is a broadcast: you publish it once and every affiliate in your chosen audience sees it. This page is a tour of how announcements work and where each setting lives. Each part links to a deeper guide when you want more detail.

Where announcements appear

Announcements show up inside the affiliate portal — the dashboard your affiliates log in to. Depending on the format you pick, an announcement can appear as a pop-up in the middle of the screen, a bar across the top or bottom of the page, or a poll your affiliates can vote in. Your affiliates don’t need to do anything to receive them; the next time they open their portal, the announcement is there.

Open Announcements

In the left sidebar, select Affiliate Announcements. The page opens with your list of announcements and a calendar that shows when each one is scheduled or running. To start a new one, select Create announcement in the top right.

Pick a format

Every announcement is one of three formats, which you choose first when creating it:
  • Pop-up — a message that opens in a card over the affiliate’s dashboard. Best for something you want people to notice right away, like a limited-time promotion. You can add a title, body text, an image or GIF, a call-to-action button, and even a countdown timer.
  • Banner — a slim bar pinned to the top or bottom of the portal. Best for a persistent reminder that shouldn’t interrupt what the affiliate is doing.
  • Poll — a short question with options your affiliates can vote on. Use it to gather quick feedback, such as which new asset type they’d like next.
For how each format looks and the settings behind it, see Pop-up settings.

Build it in the editor

When you create or open an announcement, the editor has three tabs, with a live preview beside them so you can see your changes as you make them:
  • Setup — controls when, where, and who: how often it shows, which portal pages it appears on, the audience that receives it, and who it appears to be from.
  • Design & Content — the words and look: title, body, image, colours, button, and position on the screen.
  • Results — how the announcement is performing once it’s live: views, clicks, and, for a poll, the votes.

Choose how it’s sent

Each announcement is delivered in one of two ways:
  • Campaign — a one-time send. You publish it now or schedule it for a future date and time, and it goes out to your audience once.
  • Automation — a rule that sends the announcement automatically whenever an affiliate meets a condition, such as a set number of days after they join. New affiliates receive it when they qualify, without you lifting a finger.

Decide who sees it

By default an announcement goes to everyone in your program. You can also narrow it to a specific group — for example only your top performers, affiliates in a certain group, or people who joined recently. See Target an audience for the full set of targeting options.

Control when and how often it shows

On the Setup tab you can schedule an announcement to go live at a future date, set how many times it reappears after an affiliate dismisses it, and choose how long to wait between each showing. You can also limit a pop-up or banner to specific pages of the portal, so it only appears where it’s relevant.

Track results

Once an announcement is live, open its Results tab to see how many affiliates have viewed it, how many clicked its button, and — for a poll — how they voted. Use this to tell whether a promotion landed or whether it’s worth sending a follow-up.

Statuses and the calendar

Every announcement carries a status so you always know where it stands:
  • Draft — still being built; not visible to anyone.
  • Scheduled — set to go live at a future date.
  • Active — currently showing to your audience.
  • Completed — finished running.
  • Paused — temporarily stopped; you can resume it.
  • Archived — retired and hidden from the main list.
The calendar on the Announcements page plots your scheduled and active announcements by day, so you can see what’s going out and when at a glance. You can pause or resume an announcement straight from the list using its toggle.

Availability

Announcements are part of Referly’s engagement features. Depending on your plan, announcements and announcement automations may require the Engagement add-on. See Add-ons for what’s included.

Pop-up settings

Choose between a pop-up, banner, or poll and set up each format.

Target an audience

Send an announcement to everyone or a filtered group of affiliates.

Messages overview

Have two-way conversations with your affiliates inside Referly.

Marketing assets

Share banners and links for affiliates to promote with.
Last modified on July 21, 2026