Docusign Digital Referral: A new way for ISV partners to maximize integration benefits

Introducing Digital Referral 

Are you an Independent Software Vendor (ISV)—a company that builds, markets, and licenses software products to other businesses? As of March 27, 2025, ISVs that have an integration connecting their product with the Docusign eSignature REST API have yet another opportunity to enhance their offerings and boost revenue. Digital Referral gives your customers an easy and seamless way to try out your integration, while also registering a referral-earning opportunity for you. This article explores the business value and technical ease of implementing Digital Referral, drawing from Docusign developer resources. We’ve all heard the phrase “killing two birds with one stone”, and while I’m not advocating the killing of any living creatures, here is a way to “make a killing”. Docusign Digital Referral solves two separate challenges for integrated partners. First, it makes it simple for your customers to experience the added value your integration provides to your product. If they don’t yet have Docusign, now they can get access to a free trial account and configure it with your product, all from within your product. Second, this process will automatically handle registration as a referral, providing attribution to your integration and tracking conversions. Qualifying referrals that convert to paid plans within 90 days can earn you a 15% referral payout for the first year (review your Master Partner Agreement for details).

Business value of Digital Referral

Digital Referral presents several compelling business benefits for ISVs:

• Revenue generation through referral upgrades: Docusign partnership programs include incentives for referrals, where ISVs can earn commissions and credits for each new customer. This is particularly valuable for ISVs with large user bases, as it creates an additional revenue stream without significant overhead. In general, each referred customer that subsequently signs up for a paid plan will earn the partner a 15% referral fee on the first year subscription.

• Streamlined operations: Instead of requiring you to manually submit referrals using the Docusign Partner Portal, Digital Referral is automated. There’s also no need to further coordinate between Docusign and your customer account team. 

• Enhanced customer value proposition: Your integration adds value for your customers that use Docusign by bringing the speed and ease of Docusign robust eSignature and document management services directly to where they work: in your application. By integrating Digital Referral, you can offer all of your customers access to the same functionality in the form of a free trial experience. Customers can seamlessly get provisioned, complete the setup, and begin using your integration, all without leaving your application. 

Seamless user experience

Digital Referral is presented to your users as an option when connecting your integration to their Docusign account. For those that don’t have an account, the Digital Referral free trial offer is presented in the form of a button. Clicking this button kicks off a popup-based signup workflow. 

At the completion of this workflow, the user will have been provisioned with a Docusign free trial account, created their password, and be logged in. The Digital Referral workflow redirects to your application, ensuring the user is ready to proceed to the next step in configuring your integration to connect to their newly created trial account.

Technical ease of implementation

Implementing Digital Referral is designed to be straightforward, minimizing the technical burden on developers. Unlike full API integrations, Digital Referral primarily involves just web development basics. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

• Become a Partner and register for Digital Referral enablement: If you are not already a registered partner, the first step is to become a partner. If you are already a partner, log into the  Docusign Partner Portal and choose Partner Program Support to submit a ticket requesting Digital Referral signup. 

• Add the Docusign script reference: On your connector configuration page, simply add <script src='https://www.docusign.com/scripts/ds-digital-signup.js'></script>. The file itself is hosted on the Docusign site.

• Add the button: On the same page, add a button for the Digital Referral. The handler should call DSFreeTrial.startSignup, passing parameters to ensure attribution, proper redirect handling, and (optional) user prefill information. <button type="button" onclick="DSFreeTrial.startSignup(firstName, lastName, email, phone, partnerIK, loginRedirectUri, locale);">Start Free Trial</button>

• Implement optional callback logic: If needed, you can register to receive callbacks when the user has completed the signup process.  

• Add a button to view upgrade plans (Optional): To improve the movement toward paid upgrade, you can add a “view plans” button that calls DSFreeTrial.viewPlans to pop up a view of plan offerings, enabling the user to purchase from this popup or to contact Sales.

• Test and validate: Basic testing cannot be done using development environments or sandbox accounts provided by Docusign. The free trials are ALWAYS provisioned in production. Therefore, during testing, developers should test the signup button only to the point that it opens the correct Docusign signup page. This alone is sufficient to verify that the signup process works as expected. Completing the signup process is not necessary. Simply cancel the signup. 

Conclusion

If you have an integration with Docusign, implementing Docusign Digital Referral offers a powerful way to boost revenue, enhance customer value, strengthen partnerships, and improve user experience, all with minimal technical effort. The process is developer-friendly, requiring only basic web development skills and minimal testing, making it an attractive option for ISVs of all sizes.

Next steps 

To get started with Digital Referral, visit Step 6 of the ISV Connector guide on our Developer Center, and check out the technical reference. For more information on the partner program at Docusign, access the Docusign Partner Portal and explore the resources available for ISV partners. For further assistance, reach out to the Docusign partner support team.