Short version. One link per partner or placement, a reward per counted demo booking, a budget you lock, and a live view both sides read.
Alumni are the admissions team you already have
For a coaching institute, an ed-tech course or a university, the strongest recommendation comes from someone who took the course. Batch groups, alumni networks and mentors already send students; the institute just cannot see it, and so cannot thank anyone. A referral programme is a way to see it and to reward it, without turning alumni into salespeople.
Think about the numbers an institute already has: a few thousand past students, a few hundred of them active in batch groups, and perhaps fifty who answer every 'which coaching should I join?' question in their network. A referral programme does not need all of them. It needs the fifty to have a link and to be thanked for what they already do. The rest follows from the record: the alumni who bring demos become visible, and the institute learns who to invite to the next open day, whose testimonial to ask for, and which batch its next students are coming from.
Setting up: the demo, the counsellor call, the enrolment
Decide which step you reward. A booked demo is easy to count and cheap to reward; an enrolment is rarer and worth more. Many institutes run both as separate offers: a small reward per demo for wide sharing, a larger one per enrolment for mentors and counsellors. The course page is the landing page; the booking form's thank-you page carries the snippet, or your CRM reports the enrolment.
Each alumnus, mentor or campus ambassador gets a link. Posters on campus get a QR each. Everything is one list.
Rewards that feel right in education
Rewards in education do not need to be large to work; they need to be certain. ₹200 per demo, paid the moment it is counted, does more than a vague promise of a fee waiver at term end. The platform fee is 15% on top, from your locked budget, and the campaign pauses itself when the budget is used up so no one is promised what cannot be paid.
What the numbers teach you
Opens by city tell you where demand is before you open a centre. Time on the fee page tells you what the objection is. Demos per alumnus tell you who your real ambassadors are; those are the people to bring to the open day. Alumni see their own numbers too, which turns 'did you count my referral?' into a question nobody needs to ask.
One more thing the record teaches: timing. Demos booked from a batch group arrive in the week after results are announced and in the fortnight before a new batch starts. Seeing that in the live view, year on year, is how an institute learns when to ask alumni to post, and when to leave the groups alone.
Keeping it clean
Do not reward the click; clicks are forwarded for fun in student groups. Reward the demo or the enrolment. Reverse the result if the enrolment is cancelled in the cooling-off period; the reversal is visible with its reason, and the budget comes back.