Creating a referral program isn’t that challenging but making it attractive among audiences can be!
The purpose of your referral program (also known as customer referral program) is to establish your brand name and convert customers into loyal customers such that your existing customers’ don’t hesitate to become your brand promoters!
In concise, your main focus is to increase your clientele by reducing your customer acquisition cost. But your referral program has failed to bring effective results. The time and money you have contributed to your program haven’t brought the results you always dreamed of! The objective of your customer referral program disappeared a long time ago.
You tried your best in hitting your referral goal but, there was a saying, you can’t do everything by yourself- you do need people to help you overcome your obstacles. That’s why in this post, I am gonna illustrate the pocket-friendly approaches through which you can give a new life to your referral program. With this in mind let’s begin exploring the ways through which you can acquire more true referrals.
Ways To Get More Referrals!
1. Promote Your Referral Program On Social Media
You wanted your name to be known by a dedicated target group and thus, you crafted a referral program. Combine it with social media to make it more popular. I have been saying from a long time that social media isn’t only for texting your friends- but it’s a complete platform that allows you to build connections, promote business, and gain presence. Using your niche platforms, you can easily promote your referral program and bring effective results. Let’s try to make it more clear using an example.
Whenever a referrer earns some kind of reward in exchange for referring someone to your store, you can ask them to share their reward winning story on social networking sites. This will make your referral program more potent and you would be able to spread the brand name that’ll eventually help you increase your customer base.
There are several tools available in the market that allows you to provide social sharing options to your customers. Using those sharing options your customers can easily share their referral story with their closed ones. Not only your customers, but you can also promote your refer-a-friend program by making an official announcement on social platforms for the same. By making an announcement on social media you’ll be giving a kick start to your referral program and you would be able to convert more potential leads. Time to proceed with the second method!
2. Make It Visible On Your Pages
You want your referral program to be successful. But I have a question. Does your audience even know about your program? I am sure you don’t want people to gossip with each other and criticize your referral program- stating that they haven’t found any referral program in your e-store. For this, you need to make sure that your audience is well aware of your referral program. There are so many distinct options available out there, you can select the one that best suits your business model.
You can advertise your referral program on your home page for capturing and converting more beautiful eyes. Or you can even inspire yourself from the idea of pupsik. To increase the usability of their referral program they have allowed their users to get their referral reward directly from the footer. Don’t forget to check out their footer to get motivated. I have one more example.
Invite your friend. Earn [amount] after each friend’s first payment. This is the line that you always get at the bottom of the Google Pay App. The referral benefits and sharing possibilities are clearly visible to their audience and thus they have succeeded in making their referral program successful. Present your referral program such that it captures your audience’s attention at the very first glimpse. You can make your referral visible using any of these approaches.
3. Use Emails To Aware About Your Program
We all know that social channels have given robust competition to email marketing in terms of user engagement, but the essence of emails is still the same. Marketers are still leveraging and taking benefits from emails. I would suggest you should use emails if you don’t want your name to be pronounced last.
Use an alluring announcement email template to aware your audience about your referral program and increase its user engagement rate. List all the benefits your users will earn if they refer a friend to your online store. For more effective results you need to make sure that your template consists of clear CTA buttons and attractive colors. Target your existing customers who are happy from your support/products and have a high probability to convert.
4. Encourage Existing Referrals To Increase Your Clientele
Happy customers are priceless for your business. In your customer referral program, your aim is to generate leads through your existing customers. So, if you don’t want to fail in your referral promotions, you need to ensure that you’ve shown love to your referrers. A simple appreciation from your side can help you maintain their trust and engagement in your business.
To show the love you can do so much- the only thing is that you need to become creative. I would love to share some referral ideas- you can use any of them or you can even create your own unique idea and share it with us.
- Provide coupons/discounts to your true referrers
- Make them popular on social media
- Show your gratitude through emails
- Create a special showcase page for them
- Make them feel royal on their special days
So… these are the unique ideas that can keep your referrer yours! Don’t forget to share your idea with us if we find it suitable we would be glad to include that in this post.
5. Make Your Referrals Easy To Understand
Your referrals shouldn’t be hard to understand. From the very first look, the objective of your referral program should be clear i.e. the benefit your audience will have if they refer someone to your store. If your audience isn’t participating in your referral program cross-check your content and change it if modifications are required. Make it easy and simple to understand if you want to enroll more referrers’.
Pupsik has clearly mentioned the benefits its users will acquire if they recommend a friend on their site. Pupsik has mentioned sharing is caring. If you invite friends to their store you’ll earn points. And they have also mentioned the points you’ll earn and at what time it will reflect in your account. So make sure, your customers aren’t taking hours to respond to your referral program.
Image Source- Pupsik Studio
6. Pitch Referrals on Live Chat
When a customer is interacting with you on live chat and if he is happy with answers, you can pitch your referral reward program to them. The probability that they’ll refer your name to their friends is high as they are already satisfied and happy with your services. So, train your support members with the methods they can pitch your refer a friend program to your customers.
You can also…
- You can also promote your referral program by creating creative videos. There can be a variety of videos. You can create explanatory videos in which you can explain how your referral program works or a video showing the benefits of your program. if desired you can even create a one in which all your customers share their reward winning story and how your referral program benefited them.
- You can create separate referral campaigns. These campaigns can be for valentine’s week, cancer day, or a simple campaign to save water. These kinds of campaigns not just spread your name but it creates a long-lasting impression on your audience.
These are the top ways that can be used to promote your referral program. But this isn’t enough. You want to make your referral strategy powerful and thus you’re required to measure your referral performance at a regular interval of time. Prepare reports for the same and detect the areas for improvements.
Be The Business That Everyone Wants To Refer!
The aim of the Referral program is to bring more potential and loyal customers for your brand. For this, you’ve adopted various methodologies. If they are bringing favorable results then praise yourself. But if not then do favor giving your attention to the methods listed above. I hope using these ways you would be gaining more loyal customers for your e-store.
I would also love to suggest the top tools you can consider for your referral program. Some of them are coupon referral program, InviteReferrals, Omnistar Tell, ReferralHero, ReferralMagic, and ReferralCandy. Choose the software that meets your business requirements. Be the business that everyone wants to connect!
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