Regular, strategic A/B testing is key to driving the most value from your referral campaigns. By testing cohorts, you can increase referred customer acquisition by four times within the first six months.
To optimise your referral program's performance, check out the benchmarking feature in the performance tab to see how your referral programme compares to others in a similar industry. This data can help you decide what to test next and make informed decisions to improve your conversion rate.
Once you have identified an area for improvement against the benchmark, we have pulled together a handy list of A/B tests that you can run to improve individual metrics.
Example of benchmarking within the overall performance tab in the platform.
Impressions per order - The ratio of offer impressions to the number of orders. For every order that Mention Me sees via the tag, how many times is referral seen?
- This metric should be above 100% which would indicate that your customers are seeing referral outside of the postpurchase overlay as well.
Recommendation: Look to promote more widely.
- Do you have a homepage promotion point live? Depending on your number of monthly visitors, it can drive up to 60% of all acquisitions.
- Are you reminding those who have enrolled to share? Download a list of customers who have enrolled but haven’t shared yet in the reports for download section of the performance tab in the platform.
Enrolment rate - The rate at which customers enrolled into the referral programme, enrolled customers compared to impressions.
- Customers can only be enrolled once per offer e.g., if a customer places 2 orders and sees the same offer there would be 2 impressions but only 1 customer enrolled.
Recommendation: Promote more outside of the post-purchase overlay.
- Are you promoting regularly in emails? Promoting referral in emails on a regular basis is a great way to boost results. It puts your scheme in front of customers who may not have yet seen it and reminds those who have to share it with friends.
Share rate - The rate at which existing customers share with friends. Of the customers that could share, how many have?
Recommendation: Focus on the referrer side of the journey (your customer).
- Referrer incentive – AB test increasing the offer and/or lower the minimum spend or include added value for example the current offer plus a chance to win. Ask us to set up a draft here.
- Sharing options - re-order the sharing methods in order of popularity. Also, test whether customers will be more likely to share when presented with a simplified UI version of the sharing page.
Shares per sharer - The ratio of the number of shares to the number of sharers for example, how often the average person is sharing.
Recommendation: Look to encourage your customers to share with more than one friend.
- Copy – see whether including plural copy 'share with friends' vs singular encourages more shares.
- Competition - launch a competition which provides an additional incentive e.g., plus a chance to win a gift card or a bundle of products to encourage your customers to share with more friends. See examples of competitions here.
Responses per share - The ratio of the number of share responses (e.g., clicks on share links and/or name searches) to the number of shares.
Recommendation: Look to encourage more share responses from your potential new customers.
- Copy - change the copy that your customers use to send the offer to their friends, from your current copy to ‘{enter text here}’ so customers can create a personalised message themselves.
Incented per response - of everyone who has responded to a share, how many have entered their email address (on the referee register) and were given an incentive to shop?
Recommendation:
- Social proof – see if adding your Trustpilot score or a review to your creative or copy encourages referees (your potential new customers) to engage.
- CTA - testing the copy of the CTA on the referee register page, reward-based CTA vs. USP-based CTA e.g., Get 10% off, vs, Get 10% off our award-winning furniture.
- Add USPs to the registration page, to encourage customers to register. E.g. 100 day free returns, 5* rating on Trustpilot or other awards.
Purchases per incented - of those who have been incented, how many have purchased?
Recommendation:
- As above, you can test adding USPs to the fulfil or promise page - sharing with potential new customers (referee side of the journey) reasons to choose your company to sell the benefits.
Purchase rate - The rate at which shares convert to qualified new customers
Recommendation: Focus on the referee side of the journey (your potential new customer).
- Validity period - drive urgency for the referee to purchase by testing the validity period e.g., 14 days vs. 7 days.
- Multiple CTA - test whether adding multiple CTAs gives referees more options/inspires them to explore more of your site and therefore encourages them to purchase e.g., new in, best sellers, back in stock.
Example of the referee fulfil page that has multiple CTA's
Running AB tests is vitally important to improve the effectiveness of your scheme.
Watch this video introducing Benchmarking Intelligence:
Other support articles you may be interested in:
- [Video] How to set up an offer and A/B test
- Choosing an effective referral offer
- Picking a winning variation
