Referral marketing is the next channel for customer acquisition. Whether you are a large enterprise or an innovative new brand, online referrals can help you increase mindshare and drive significant incremental revenue. Yet your referral program will only be as effective as your ability to promote it. That means seizing every chance to put the opportunity to share in front of your customers.
Once you have designed your program to engage your current customers and drive new customer acquisition through sharing, you need to promote it at the right time and place to make it scale. Promotion is the key to success in referral marketing. This guide gives recommendations for exactly when and where to promote referrals, and shows how companies in a variety of industries have scaled their referral channel through promotion.
Timing is everything
In planning your referral program, think about the key moments in your ongoing relationships with prospects and customers. Whether it is the moment they land on your homepage, the moment they open your package, or the moment they hear from a friend, each interaction is an opportunity to encourage sharing and acquire new business.
When they hit your homepage
Right when a customer or prospect arrives on your homepage is the perfect time to show her how she can earn a reward for a referral. One click and both your customer and her friend are on their way to something good. And you get a new customer, or several. It is a win-win-win.
When they receive a package
Opening a package from you is an exciting moment for your customer. Capitalize on that thrill by giving her a chance to share her excitement.
When customers receive a package containing a VoIP phone adaptor from Vonage, they see a sticker on the box that says, "Refer friends & get rewards. SEE INSIDE." When they open the box they find a two-sided insert offering a free month of service for referring friends and a link to an active referral landing page.
When they open the mail
What is in your mailbox today? All too often it is only bills and unwanted advertising. But what if you open an envelope from a company whose products and services you truly like and find valuable incentives for referring friends? You share.
Rover, the online service for dog owners and sitters, sends a mailer offering $20 off for friends you refer to the service. You also get a $20 credit for each friend who books a stay through Rover.
When they hear from a friend
Anytime is a good time to hear from a friend. When the reason for the contact is shared taste, we are more likely to act on the impulse to express that common interest. This is how trends take off.
CLEAR, the expedited airport security service, lets its customers use email to tell friends, family, and colleagues about CLEAR. Both senders and recipients get rewards when the recipient converts.
No time like the right time
To hit peak performance, remind your customers to share your brand through Facebook, Twitter, and email with timed blasts on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Experience shows that certain times of the week and month are better than others.
- While Thursdays drive the most referral shares during the week, Mondays yield the highest conversion rates on shares and clicks.
- Shares, clicks, and conversions are generally higher than average in the first third of the month, and well below average in the last third.
- Run a quarterly special for your top advocates, a Friends and Family promotion, or a time-limited special offer. A week of double rewards can drive two to five times your standard weekly conversions.
Location, location, location
Strategic placement of referral promotions is paramount. You want to catch your customers where they live. As you think about where to promote, consider both offline and online locations.
Take advantage of print collateral
Magazines and reward cards are great places to stimulate referrals. AAA of Northern California, Nevada & Utah promotes its referral program in its member magazine, Via, as well as on cards that its agents hand out. Thanks in part to these promotional tools, agent participation in the referral program is over 95 percent. More important, referrals by AAA members have had a huge impact on customer value, driving a 15-point average Net Promoter Score (NPS) increase and a 20 percent uptick in average premium per policy compared to all other lead sources.
More print collateral
American Giant is an upstart clothing manufacturer that offers "the world's greatest sweatshirt," made in the U.S.A. To challenge big clothing labels while maintaining quality, the company does not do traditional retail and marketing. Instead, it relies heavily on referrals by its fanatically loyal customers. In addition to promoting online, American Giant includes a postcard with each shipment that describes the refer-a-friend program and shows how to get started.
Add a Facebook tab
Facebook is the perfect place to promote referrals, an attractive online property where social networking is the name of the game. Through Facebook you can amplify the impact of your paid ads by linking them to a referral offer on your Facebook page, and you can drive organic posts by rewarding customers and their friends for using Facebook as a referral channel.
Criquet, a Texas-based maker of organic golf shirts, promotes its referral program with a prominent "Get $15" button on its Facebook page. The $15 reward goes to the Criquet customer, while the friend who tries Criquet gets 15% off their first purchase.
Share on Twitter
If your customers are active on Twitter, it is a natural environment for sharing enthusiasm for your brand. Place a tweet button on your referral landing pages and emails to take advantage of this popular channel, as these companies do:
- Criquet
- Ooma, a VoIP phone company
- Intuit, makers of TurboTax tax preparation software
Use your whole website, start to finish
A strong promotion plan starts with a strong site presence. As a retailer, your site holds a big share of your online customer touchpoints. Companies with the highest referral-to-acquisition rates leverage site traffic with visible, convenient calls to action (CTAs). Here are the most common placements, in order of performance:
- Call to action overlay, a pop-up that appears over the pages of your website
- Global header
- Product pages
- Homepage hero
- Confirmation page
- Footer
- My Account
Here is a cool on-site promotion by NOMAD, the maker of innovative, portable charger cables for smartphones. Visitors to the NOMAD website are offered a discount for entering their email address. The offer appears when the visitor closes out of the NOMAD web page. This "bounce-back" offer extends the visitor's site engagement while helping build lead generation programs.
Get behind the camera
Video can be a great way to promote referrals. Xoom, the online international money transfer service, has produced a one-minute animated video that walks viewers through the simple process of recommending the service: "For every friend you refer, you each get a $15 reward."
Use your emails
Use your marketing emails
Email campaigns make an excellent context for promoting your referral program. Drive awareness of the program in the footer of your regular promotional emails. Include a call to action when you thank your customers for making a purchase. Start new customers off right by including an introduction to your referral program in your Welcome email series.
Hari Mari takes aim at bland summer footwear with its boldly designed, expertly constructed flip flops. It promotes its referral program in multiple locations, including a prominent spot in its marketing email newsletter.
Create dedicated promotional emails
Personal Capital offers investment management and personal finance services, bringing wealth management into the Internet age and giving individuals with complex financial lives a better way to manage their money. Recently the company sent its clients an email thanking them for helping it achieve significant milestones and offering a charitable donation for referring friends as customers.
Try other email types, too
Parallels, Inc. makes virtualization software that allows people to run multiple operating systems on a single computer or device. It promotes its referral program inside the order confirmation emails it sends to customers after they purchase.
Conclusion
Promote your referral program early and often, both on-site and offline, and you will trigger actions that draw new customers to your brand. Your promotional activities will not only boost customer acquisition in the short term, they will have an exponential impact on cumulative business growth. Why? Because referral targets who become customers tend to refer their friends.
In short, promotion should be more than an afterthought. It is the ignition switch that starts your finely tuned customer acquisition engine.
Putting promotion into practice
Extole helps brands launch and promote refer-a-friend programs at every moment and placement above. Request a demo to see how customer-led growth can work for your brand.