To improve referral performance, you need to understand who's doing what, and where to focus improvement efforts. This article will cover the data recorded through the referral journey so you can understand the end-to-end journey.
The end-to-end referral funnel is shown in the diagram below. The red boxes represent the end-to-end funnel and Mention Me tracks absolute numbers at each stage. The orange boxes represent the core referral metrics we can use to benchmark performance and identify areas of focus for optimisation.
We keep careful tabs on the volume of referrers and referees who have engaged with referral at each stage of the referrer and referee journey.
| Metric | Definition |
| Shown | The number of times Mention Me has served an online referral offer to your customers. This is a raw count of page impressions on the Offer page when shown to (potential) referrers. This number does not include any promotion of the referral scheme not delivered by Mention Me (e.g. in an email newsletter, or in an onsite banner). |
| Seen | The number of unique customer identities (i.e. unique email addresses and names) enrolled into the referral scheme; the people who can share your offer with friends. They can do this by name, even if they didn't engage with the offer. |
| Unique impression | The number of unique customers who saw your referral offer |
| Enrolled | Customers enrolled into your referral scheme. This includes both active enrollment and silent enrollment on the post-purchase overlay |
| Shared | The number of customers who have shared the referral offer with friends (at least that we know about). This number will rise over time, even without further promotion of the offer, as people frequently share offers days, weeks or even months after first seeing it. |
| Sharers | Individual customers who share the referral offer with friends |
| Shares | The number of times your referral offer is shared across channels (one sharer can share multiple times) |
| Share responses | The number of responses shares garner, e.g. the number of times a referee clicks a link in a Facebook post and is delivered to Mention Me’s referee journey. |
| Incented customers | A referee who claims a referral reward |
| New customers | A referee who makes their first purchase on your website. Mention Me uses email address as the unique identifier. Note: we don’t track voucher redemptions |
| Qualified | An optional step if there’s purchase qualification criteria new referees must pass before the referrer gets their reward (e.g. the new customer making their first payment on a subscription). |
| Conversion metrics | To assess and optimise the performance of referral schemes, we look at conversion ratios through the funnel. |
| Revenue | Revenue generated from the new customer’s first order.This excludes shipping, VAT and any discounts applied. |
| RefereeSegment | Specific segment information that the client is sending us via the tag about the referee (eg. VIP, gender, order frequency, etc) |
| RefereeLocale | The market where the referee is which is passed to us in the tags |
| ReferrerSegment | Specific segment information that the client is sending us via the tag about the referrer of the referee who has opted in (eg. VIP, gender, order frequency, etc) |
The two core ratios are:
Overall customer share rate
The likelihood a customer will share a referral offer; the ratio of sharing customers to unique customers (the higher the number, the better). Share rates for strong, optimised referral programmes tend to be around 30%.
Purchase Rate (Purchases per sharer)
The likelihood of a shared referral offer converting into a new customer. This is almost always a lagging indicator (referees are not always immediately ready to take up the offer), particularly for considered purchases. Mature referral schemes tend to have ratios in the 15-20% range.
We also track metrics at each stage of the funnel
Shares per sharer
The average number of times each customer shares your referral offer. Higher ratios suggest customers are sending an email to multiple friends or sharing across multiple channels (e.g. Facebook and email)
Responses per share
The number of times someone clicks on a shared referral offer. A high value indicates strong engagement on social networks. A low rate doesn’t necessarily indicate poor performance; it may be due to targeted sharing via email.
Incented per response
How likely referred friends who click the share link are to enter their email address and claim their introductory offer. We recommend a target of 50% upwards.
Purchases per incented
How likely a customer who’s claimed their reward is to make their first transaction.
