How To Set Up A Customer Referral Program

Since you are researching how to ready a referral program, you likely know what a referral programme is and are convinced of the benefits of having a referral program.

(If not, here's why referral marketing is awesome.)

Allow's skip all that and go to the fun stuff: setting up a referral program for your ecommerce store so that you can start getting referrals.

Setting up your referral program in 6 steps

Setting upward a referral programme might audio intimidating but do non worry. I will walk you through the near important things to practice to kickoff getting referrals.

1. Understand your customers
2. Ready your rewards
3. Customize your referral emails and pages
4. Integrate your referral programme to your store
5. Launch your referral program
6. Runway, evaluate, improve

Once your referral program is up and running, you can tweak and optimize it afterward. My good friend runs a successful computer accessories shop, Mecha Store, with a pretty bones setup. Yet his referral charge per unit is much higher than the manufacture average of 3.twoscore%.

If you are familiar with referral programs already and want to go deeper, I have too linked to some advanced guides below. Enjoy!

i. Understand your customers

The most of import ingredient of a successful referral program is having a deep understanding of your customers.

This might sound cliché but information technology impacts every role of your referral program. You demand to sympathise why they would desire to join your referral program, what the best way to get them to join is, and what would brand them refer their friends.

Here are some questions I would consider:

• What exercise your customers like about your make and your products?
• How oft practise your customers purchase your products? Regularly or once every few years?
• What are they motivated by? Helping others, discounts, costless gifts, or financial rewards?
• Where practice they hang out online? On which social media platforms do they engage with your brand?

These questions will brand more sense as you lot ready your referral plan merely it is skilful to think most them starting time.

2. Set your rewards

At present, let'southward dive into the mechanics of your referral programme.

The first core piece is your rewards. This is a big section, then let's become through information technology together slowly.

At that place are two rewards to consider:

• The reward for your customers (or advocates)
• The offering for friends they referred

Reward for your advocates

Advocates are the customers who are referring friends to your ecommerce shop. The referral reward is to encourage them to refer others and to thank them for bringing you more than sales.

The most common blazon of referral reward for advocates is a discount coupon. This works the best if your products are bought regularly. Baronfig, a brand that sells tools for thinkers, gives its advocates a $x coupon for every friend they refer.

In ReferralCandy, you tin set the discount corporeality or percentage, the minimum social club required to use the coupon, and the coupon expiry. ReferralCandy volition automatically generate create single-utilize coupons in your Shopify shop for yous.

The second most common type of referral reward for advocates is a greenbacks incentive. This works the all-time if your products are not bought regularly, such every bit mattresses. The GLD Shop, a hip-hop jewelry brand, gives its advocates $l when their friends spend $99 or more than.

In ReferralCandy, y'all can ready a fixed cash amount or a percentage of the referred friend's purchase (e.yard. 10% of friend'due south purchase). ReferralCandy will help you lot pay out the greenbacks advantage automatically via PayPal.

The last blazon of referral reward is a custom reward. This is great if you lot want to offer a unique brand experience. For example, ThreadBeast, a men'southward streetwear brand, gives its advocates a costless package of streetwear for referring their friends.

In ReferralCandy, you can specify the custom reward for your advocates. We will not be able to fulfill this advantage for you, given its nature. But we will inform you when a referral is made so that y'all can send out the advantage.

Offer for referred friends

Next, you would also desire to give an offer to people who are referred to your ecommerce store. Why?

Nosotros found that people love to offer something to their friends. When advocates can requite their friends a discount coupon, they are more likely to refer their friends. Furthermore, the discount coupon will encourage their friends to buy your products.

In ReferralCandy, you can customize the disbelieve coupon for referred friends, just the same as the discount coupon for your advocates.

Choosing the rewards tin can feel daunting. What type of reward should you lot use? How do yous make up one's mind the amount? And so on.

But you don't take to overthink it when you are setting upward your referral program initially. A elementary Give $x, Get $10 referral plan has worked well for many brands such as Branch Basics. And you lot can e'er change your rewards afterwards.

Whenever y'all desire to test different rewards, you might find these guides helpful:

• Choosing Your Referral Program Incentives (20+ Examples)
• Best Practices for Setting Up Referral Rewards
• Referral Program Setup: Setting A Referral Review Period

three. Customize your referral emails and pages

Next, allow's go to the customer-facing side of your referral plan.

Generally speaking, there are two emails and two pages that you want to focus on initially:

• Postal service-purchase email: An automated email to your customers after they have completed a purchase that invites them to refer their friends
• Bring together page: The page where your customers sign up for your referral plan (example)
• Reminder email: An automated follow-up email for your advocates who take not referred whatever friends
• Share page: The page where your advocates get their referral link to share (example)

For instance, after someone buys a notebook from Open Atlas, a minimalistic notebook brand, an automated post-purchase email will be sent:

When the customer clicks on the "Get Invite Link" in the email, they will be directed to their Share page to get their referral link.

ReferralCandy helps you lot transport these emails and prepare up these pages so that you do non have to set them upwardly manually.

To help you lot get started quickly, there is a default theme for your referral emails and pages. You lot can only upload your logo and a imprint epitome to the default theme, and you are good to become.

You can besides customize your referral emails and pages farther by calculation a new theme in ReferralCandy. With a new theme, you can set the mode and content of your referral emails and pages so that your referral program matches your branding.

When you want to be more than sophisticated with your referral program, nosotros recommend you also customize other parts of your referral plan. You can read more about customization in the following guides:

• Customizing the text and styling of emails & pages in ReferralCandy
• twenty Examples Of Beautiful Referral Email Pattern
• 34 Examples Of Friend Landing Pages In Referral Programs

Once again, you do not accept to customize every function of your referral programme right away (especially if y'all are feeling overwhelmed). The emails and pages in ReferralCandy are designed to work "out of the box".

4. Integrate your referral program to your store

If y'all are using Shopify, you are all set! Skip to the next step. :)

If non, there are two things to practise:

• Add a referral tracking code to your store and then that ReferralCandy tin find successful referrals
• Transport your invoice emails to your unique ReferralCandy e-mail address so that ReferralCandy can detect referrals or frauds and invite customers to your referral program on your behalf

You tin fix this upwardly without any technical noesis. Here's a help article you can follow.

If you adopt a more advanced setup with your ecommerce shop, you can check out our API and JavaScript integrations. You will need developers to be involved.

5. Launch your referral plan

Your referral programme is ready for new advocates!

Instead of waiting for your customers to observe it, you should proactively let them know.

The best place to first is to inform customers who have already bought and tried your products. If they beloved your products, they would exist ready to permit their friends know about it. Knowing they will be rewarded for referring their friends will give them an incentive to actually exercise it.

In ReferralCandy, you tin can upload your customers' contact data and email them an invitation to join your referral program. When your customers join your referral program, you tin meet how many friends they have referred in your ReferralCandy account (under "Existing Customers").

Whenever you feel prepare to promote your referral program to even more people, you lot might find this guide, Promote Your Referral Programme Without Sounding Desperate, useful.

6. Track, evaluate, improve

Congratulations on setting upwardly and launching your referral program!

While a referral plan requires less maintenance and work than other marketing channels, you still want to brand sure it is fix to maximize your referral sales. Nosotros practise see a spectrum: some merchants cull to set and forget, some constantly tweak their referral program, and many in between.

In general, we encourage you lot to stay on top of your referral results and optimize your program, if necessary.

The fastest style to see your referral results is to look at the dashboard in ReferralCandy. You lot can at-a-glance see your referral sales, referral charge per unit, referred traffic, and top referrers. A good way to know whether you should tweak your referral plan is to compare your referral rate to the manufacture standard (which is available on the dashboard).

If you want to share your results or analyze them farther, you tin too download your referral written report as a PDF or CSV file (under "Referral Report").

We are standing by to help

If you accept been following along and implementing your referral programme, you lot are all gear up up now! Woohoo!

Not to worry if you have non. Equally much as we have simplified the procedure of setting up a referral plan with ReferralCandy, we know setting upwards a referral programme can exist daunting.

A practiced adjacent pace might be to check out some existing referral programs to get inspiration for your own:

• 10+ Top Ecommerce Referral Programs to Learn From
• 8 Examples of Successful Enterprise Ecommerce Referral Programs
• Examples of Referral Programs Using ReferralCandy

Finally, nosotros want to help you lot at every stride of the mode. We take more than 1,000 five-star reviews on Shopify App Store considering our customers love the product and our customer service. If you have whatsoever questions, experience gratis to reach out!

P.S. If yous enjoyed reading this, subscribe to our newsletter where we share our latest manufactures and helpful resource.

Source: https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/referral-program

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