h1. Django Member-Get-Member

django-membergetmember (MGM) is an application to deal with MGM campaigns to get new users using "convertible credits" to incentivate them.

h2. What's a Member-Get-Member campaign?

You can find these MGM campaigns in multiple e-commerce sites, like groupon or livingsocial. There is a current member, the invitator user, that is offered to get new members for the site and get some money for every one of them. So the user invitator gets 5$ when a friend joins the site or when this new member buys something. This new member usually gets some credits, too.

h2. MGM concepts:

• Credit: A internal coin to be used (redeemed) in a buy. It has an expiration date to incentivate the user to buy asap.
• Redeem: The action to convert the credits in real money, and to be discounted from the final amount.
• conversion on signup: The invitator user gets its credits when a friend signs up
• conversion on conversion: The invitator user gets its credits when the new member buys something
• Invitation code: It's a code to identify who the invitator user is, when the new member signs up.

h2. Setup

Copy the mgm folder in your project

Add it to the settings.py's INSTALLED_APPS list

call syncdb or create a migration

modify your settings.py file: @MGM_EXPIRATION_DAYS=@ number of days until a Credit expires

h2. Integrate it in your code

You can read the tests.py's tests. They test the different alternatives:

• Convert on signup: test_convert_on_signup
• Convert on conversion: test_convert_on_conversion
• Redeem credits: test_redeem_credits. Remember to use @redeem(..., commit=False)@ when you show the total amount to be paid, and @redeem(..., commit=True)@ when the payment is actually done.

h2. Track the invitation key

Once the app creates the invitation (MemberInvitation class) the user will propagate the key via email or social media.

There are different mechanisms in order to track this key:

• Ask the new user to write it down in the signup form: It sucks, not recommeded.
• Ask the invitator to write down the emails from their friends. It sucks even more, forget it.
• Create a url including the key to propagate it. Then get the key from it. For example, you can add the key as a GET argument: The url points to the signup form. In this case you can write the key down in a hidden field in the signup form. The url points to anywhere in your site. You can use cookies to store the key (continue reading)

h3. Middleware to track the invitation key using cookies

django-membergetmember provides a middleware to track the code using cookies. To activate it just add this middleware to your settings.py's MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES: @'mgm.middleware.MemberGetMemberMiddleware',@

It will capture any request with a GET argument (that you can setup in settings.MGM_COOKIE_NAME) and it will create a cookie with this invitation code.

Then, when a users signs up you have to read the content of the cookie. You may use this code:

import pickle
if request.COOKIES.get(settings.MGM_COOKIE_NAME, False):
    invitation_key = pickle.loads(request.COOKIES.get(settings.MGM_COOKIE_NAME))