What your partner sees after you send an invite
When you click Ask {their first name} to Update Profile or Invite to the App on a partner, they get an email and a link. From there, two paths open up. They can fill in their profile and stop there, or they can create a full ReferralPulse account. Both are valid endings. This article walks through what they see at each step so you know what you're asking them to do.
The email they receive
The invitation arrives as a plain-text email written to read like a personal note from you, not a marketing broadcast. Subject line:
[Your name] wants to send you better referrals
Body, in your voice:
Could you take a couple minutes to fill out a quick profile? It just asks about your service areas, ideal client, and contact preferences so I'm only sending you leads that actually match what you do.
The email has one link, labeled Complete Your Profile. The footer notes that the link is good for 90 days and that creating an account is optional.
If you wrote a personal message when sending the invite, that message appears at the top of the email above the standard text.
The personal message field is the highest-leverage part of the invite. A line like "I have a client who could really use someone with your tax expertise" turns a generic invite into a real-feeling ask. Even one sentence makes a noticeable difference in completion rates.
The page they land on
The link opens a single page. The header reads [Your name] wants to send you better referrals so they immediately know who's asking and why. If you included a personal note, it appears in a quoted block right under the header.
Before any questions, the page tells them two things: their information is private, seen only by you unless they choose otherwise at the bottom of the page, and they don't need to create an account. Under that is the address the invite went to, and a line saying the profile is already filled in from what you had on file, which they can correct.
The form has four sections:
- About you. First name, last name, job title, company, LinkedIn, type of business, the partner types they want to meet, city and state.
- How people reach you. Mobile phone and company website.
- What you do. Their expertise, ideal client, who is not a fit, when to call them, what sets them apart, the industries they serve, their service areas and a line about the company.
- Affiliations & languages. Networking groups and the languages they do business in.
Only first name, last name, company and type of business are required. Everything else is theirs to fill in or skip.
Two questions close the form:
- Who Can See This Profile? It starts on Only [your first name]. They can open it up to Any ReferralPulse member who adds me if they want other members to see it too.
- Do You Want Your Own Account? It starts on No, just update my profile. The other choice is Yes, create my account.
The button at the bottom reads Update my profile for [your first name], or Continue to create account if they chose an account.
Fill this in for me
The page looks your partner up from the email address the invite went to and fills in any blank fields for them. It never overwrites something that is already filled in, whether it came from you or they typed it. If the lookup can't find them, it asks for their company name or LinkedIn address and looks again.
If that lookup has not run, a Fill this in for me card sits above the form with a Fill my profile button that does the same thing. They review what came in, fix anything wrong, and submit.
Your partner doesn't need a LinkedIn address on file for this to work, because the lookup starts from their email address. The more you had filled in on their record before you sent the invite, the less they have to type.
The two paths
The Do You Want Your Own Account? question at the bottom of the form is where the two paths diverge. Both are real options.
A partner who answers No, just update my profile lands on a Profile saved screen. It shows a small picture of their referral network so far, the two of you with empty places around you, and offers Create your account once more, next to Not right now. A partner who answers Yes, create my account goes straight to signup.
Path A: Profile-only (they choose No, just update my profile)
They keep their profile updates, you get the data, and they walk away without an account.
What they get:
- Nothing. No login, no dashboard, no voice assistant, no in-app visibility into anything you've logged about them. Their submission was a data hand-off.
What you get:
- Their full profile data on their partner detail page on your side. The badge on their row in your Partners list flips from yellow Invited to blue Profile Updated.
- Sharper recommendations from your assistant. The fields they filled in (their type of business, ideal customer, expertise, desired partner types) sharpen who the assistant suggests for introductions, who it flags as a gap in your network, and what referrals it considers a good fit.
Path A is a perfectly valid place to stop. A lot of partners pick it the first time. They get the email, fill in the profile, submit, and you have everything you need to keep referring well to them. They never log in.
Path B: Full account (they choose Yes, create my account)
They become a registered ReferralPulse user with their own dashboard, and the bilateral sync described in What changes when a partner has their own ReferralPulse account turns on.
Submitting the form takes them to a signup page with the email pre-filled and locked (so they have to use the same email you invited). Once they pick a password and finish onboarding, three things happen:
- All the profile data they just filled in carries over into their own account. No retyping.
- The invite controls on your partner detail page disappear. There's no separate badge for a registered partner; the sign is that Invite to the App and the other invite buttons are gone.
- Future referrals you log to or from them auto-mirror to their account, and statuses sync between the two of you.
They can come back to a full account later
The account question is not a one-time decision, and the form says so. The profile data they submitted via Path A is kept indefinitely, even if they chose No, just update my profile at first.
If a partner picks Path A today and decides three months from now that they want a full account, they can sign up at referralpulse.ai with the same email address they used in your invite. The new account automatically links to the profile they already filled in, the data carries over, and your view of them flips to Registered User without you having to do anything.
So Path A is never a dead end. It's a partial step that they can complete later, on their own time, with no help from you.
Once a partner reaches Profile Updated, the invite button goes away. There's no separate re-invite at this stage. If you want them on a full account, the simplest nudge is to tell them they can sign up at referralpulse.ai with the same email anytime, and their profile carries over.
What if the link expires
The invite link is good for 90 days from when you send it. If a partner clicks it after that, they see an expired-link page with a short message saying the link is no longer valid. They can ask you for a new one. Re-sending an invite from your side creates a fresh link with a fresh 90 days.
The profile data, if they had filled it in before expiry, is still on their record. Expiry only affects the link, not the data they already submitted.
Get more out of your assistant
The single highest-impact field your partner fills in on the invite form is Partner types you want to meet, the list of professionals they want to give and receive referrals with. The form picks a sensible starter set based on the type of business they entered, but the partner can adjust it to match how they actually want to receive work.
When that field is accurate, every recommendation the assistant makes about that partner is sharper. Suggested intros, gap-finding, dormant-partner reminders, all of these depend on knowing who this partner wants to hear about. So if you're trying to get the most out of an invite, that's the field worth nudging the partner to confirm.
If a partner came back with a sparse profile (just the required fields), you can fill in the rest from your side later. Open their partner detail page and edit the fields directly. The data you add stays on your view and doesn't override anything they submitted.
On the iOS app
Where to find it: The invite link in the email opens in the partner's mobile browser, not in the iOS app, even if the iOS app is installed.
The landing page is responsive, so it works on a phone. Both paths (profile-only and full account) work end to end on mobile. Once a partner finishes Path B and creates an account, they can install the iOS app and sign in with the same email and password.
Most partners read the invite email on their phone. If you're picking a moment to send invites, mid-morning works well, the email is more likely to be read on a coffee break than ignored at 6am with the rest of the inbox.