The best referral programs are those with a loyal customer base, targeted promotion, and attractive incentives. That’s why referral programs from brands like Dropbox, Airbnb, Tesla, and Uber succeeded greatly. However, every business is unique, and therefore, needs its own unique referral program. You have to build one that works specifically with your audience.
There are many referral program ideas to draw inspiration from. In this blog, we’ve put together the best of those ideas.
Start Creating A Referral Program With This 10 Point Checklist Of Ideas
1. Be appealing to your customer.
It sounds so simple that it can be easily overlooked. Your customers will refer you only if they like you. They should be genuinely impressed with your brand, its products, support, and services. Only then will they willingly spread the word around. Otherwise, you’d be trying to force them, which will turn them off.
Here are some ideas to help your brand stamp a favorable influence.
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- First things first: offer high-quality products. This is the way to establish credibility with your customers.
- Ensure outstanding customer service. Conduct training sessions to make your staff well equipped in this regard.
- Ensure transparency concerning how you manage permissions, how your customer service process works, how you use customer data, etc.
- Simplify customer support and feedback. Deploying a chatbot can help take care of this.
- Personalize user experiences using artificial intelligence.
2. Use the right referral program software.
Gone are the days when businesses ran their referral programs manually. Technological advancements allow automating your referral program. Using a referral marketing software like InviteReferrals, you can create and launch a referral program easily. It will take care of the other aspects such as monitoring referral activities, rewarding successful referrers, generating analytics related to the performance of your campaigns, and more.
A good referral marketing software will also have features for
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- simple integration,
- white-labeling (it allows your branding),
- fraud/spam prevention mechanism,
- social sharing options, and
- multi-language support.
It’d be great if the tool also facilitates developer APIs. This will come in handy if you currently have complex requirements, or the possibility of those arising in the future.
3. Eliminate friction.
When you sell quality products and provide outstanding customer service, your customers will love spreading you in their circle – without you even asking them to do so. Despite this, not all customer referral programs are successful.
The reason behind this is friction. It’s the friction experienced in the process of referring people to you that hampers your customers from referring.
Here are some ways to eliminate friction:
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- Keep your referral emails to the point, short, and simple.
- Provide customers with a unique referral link so that they can send referral invites easily and in various ways.
- Save your referrer’s time by incorporating a pre-written message in your share buttons.
- Include sharing and email buttons.
- Give them crisp, concise, and clear steps on how to take part in your referral program.
- Enable auto-fill options, wherever possible.
4. Use a simple but catchy headline.
Headlines play an important role in getting someone’s attention. Come up with a crisp yet powerful tagline that tells your referral program’s benefits in just a few words. Here are some examples to get you started.
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- “Refer us to a friend and get a 20% discount on your net purchase” – It’s simple and to the point.
- “Share us with someone and you both get $20” – This headline conveys the entire message in one short sentence.
- “Invite your friends to the event and you earn a free ride!” – What to do, why they should do it, and what they’d get out of it.
- Refer and Receive $15.
- Share the love, Get products worth $50 for free.
Notice that all of them have numbers and announce exciting rewards.
5. Make your referral program visible.
The prime reason why many referral programs fail is the lack of promotion. Often brands tend to presume that their customers are aware of their referral program. This leads them to lose out on a lot of opportunities to acquire new customers. So, avoid this mistake. Tell your customers about your referral program.
Make your referral program visible in the following ways:
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- Home page: Have a prominent button on your home page so that interested customers can click through and participate in your referral program.
- High-traffic pages: Display it on those web pages that are the most visited.
- Email signature: Sign off your emails with a short invitation to your referral program.
- Social media profiles: Have a link to your referral program on your social media profiles.
- Other marketing collateral: Include it in your other marketing materials such as letter pads, invoices, blog posts, flyers, “thank you” pages, and more.
6. Ask for referrals at the right time.
Timing matters a lot with referral marketing, just as it’s the case with any kind of marketing. Mentioning it at every chance you get is not the right way. This will make you sound salesy or pushy. And most buyers (61% of them) are turned off by pushy sales messages or advertising.
The best time to ask for a referral or mention your referral program to your customer is when he/she is happy with your brand or its offerings. Here are some instances that you should make use of:
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- Right after a successful transaction.
- Immediately after a positive customer support experience.
- Soon after a customer rates you high on your Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey.
7. Gamify your referral program.
Another technique is to design your referral program in such a way that customers feel like they’re playing a game. This works because it makes the referral process more engaging and fun for your customers. A study says that gamification increases online customer activity by 68%, and social sharing by 22%.
So, gamify your referral program. Apply game principles and game-design elements like play, reward structure (preferably a points system), and feedback to your referral program. Show the rewards earned in the form of GIFs or static images, and include a progress bar to render an immersive experience.
You may also add a digital badge to give users a sense of achievement. This way, your referral program participants will feel connected and engaged with it. The Dropbox referral program nailed this.
8. Research how referrals are coming to your business.
Once you’ve spent a significant amount of time in referral marketing, you’d have gained a lot of data on it. Your referral software will provide you with useful analytics in this regard. Use it to evaluate if referrals are coming to your business and where and how they’re coming. And when you’ve discovered those, invest more marketing, sales management, and support efforts into those.
Besides, referral analytics will also provide you insights into what works and what doesn’t with your clients. Use these ideas to fine-tune your future referral campaigns. All these will help you excel in referral marketing in the long run.
9. Recognize and thank your referrers.
Each time you get the contact of a prospect through a referrer, thank the referrer for it. This is not only an expression of gratitude but a motivation for him to refer you further. Additionally, this also strengthens the new referral bond to your brand. The following are some techniques to help you craft an appealing “thank you” note.
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- Let your “thank you” notes be short. No one has the time to read lengthy ones.
- Be specific while including a lot of details about that particular interaction. For instance, “We thank you for introducing Mrs. Sarah to us. She bought one of our new blanket collections today”.
- Finally, go through your “thank you” note and proofread it for grammatical and spelling mistakes.
10. Retarget customers who previously exhibited an interest.
There will always be people who are interested in your referral program, but weren’t able to participate in it right away. This may be due to time constraints, maybe they simply forgot all about it, or due to some other reason. No matter the reason, they’re ideal candidates for retargeting. They may just need a little push to join your referral program.
So, send them a friendly reminder. You can automate this process using your referral software. You may choose to email or text them. Whichever way you choose, reaching out to them directly is always worth it. There are many chances that they’ll actively advocate on your behalf.
In Conclusion
Mark Zuckerberg stated, “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising”. Now that you’ve got some of the best referral program ideas up your sleeve, put them to work to tap into the enormous potential of referral marketing.
Ciao,
Miss Kemya
This is a guest post from Shivani Goyal, a content writer at InviteReferrals, which provides referral software that allows businesses to attract new customers from existing customers through referral campaigns.