This article serves as a comprehensive guide of key terms to equip you with a deeper understanding of how referral programs operate.
So let's dive in and unravel the language of referrals to empower your marketing strategy and enhance customer engagement.
A
Active Customer List: a list of email addresses for active customers (we’ll request this in CSV format just before launch)
C
Campaign: Each campaign is targeted at a particular set of the client's customers according to rules specified by the client. For example a campaign might be targeted at customers who:
- use a particular language
- belong in a particular tier of the client's loyalty scheme
Only if the customer matches the correct criteria will Mention Me show a referral offer in that campaign to the customer. Many clients have only one campaign which is shown to all of their customers all of the time, but there is no limit to the number of campaigns they could have.
Corner-Peel: the sliding bar at the bottom of your page. You can use this to promote on the homepage or post-purchase page once the user closes the referral overlay
Customers Enrolled: is a unique customer who could share a particular referral offer. They become enrolled when a. they see the offer post purchase and MM is passed their details in the tag or b. They see the referral offer on your landing page and register their details manually. Please bear in mind we count enrolments into specific offers. If a referrer is enrolled into two offers in one day (e.g. a standard and a VIP offer) that will count as two enrolments. Conversely, if a referrer sees the same offer more than once, only one enrolment will be counted.
D
Data Layer: a JavaScript object that passes information from your website to your Tag Manager container. You can use this information to populate variables and activate triggers in your tag configurations.
E
Experiment: Within each campaign, at any given moment, there will be one running Experiment. There’s always going to be one live experiment which is what customers of this campaign are going to see right now, today, if they are served a referral offer. Within experiments, Mention Me could test different variations of the Offer in order to optimise the performance of your referral scheme.
G
Gaming: the abuse of referral schemes. Our gaming controls identify and limit this.
Gaming controls: A set of rules used to try and detect self-referral with pre-determined scores. We set a threshold for when a referral requires manual approval and should a referral be scored over this threshold, the referral will be moved into the Gaming Queue.
Gaming Queue: a list of customers (referrers and referees) that hit gaming or velocity controls criteria and are waiting to be manually approved or disapproved by your customer service team.
I
Incented customers: A referee who has claimed a referral reward. On the referee register page the customer is asked to give their email address. At this point the customer is given a voucher and is ‘incented’.
L
Landing Page: the page on your website promoting your referral scheme and driving people to register as referrers (eg. www.example.com/refer)
Links (for sharing methods): Can be of 3 types:
1-Open direct (email) link, will send an email
2-Open Link: to copy the link via any channel
Referrer Share page
3- Forwarded email link: email that gets sent to a referrer to forward when they register as a referrer.
Referrer Forwarded email
N
New customers: A referee who has made their first purchase on your website (regardless of whether they used the referral specific code or not). Mention Me uses email address as the unique identifier. When we see the email address of any registered referee pass through your checkout we count this as a new customer. Note – we do not track voucher redemption.
O
Offer: The most basic building block of Mention Me referral scheme. An offer encapsulates everything that a customer might see as a referrer or referee. Once a referrer has interacted with an offer, Mention Me generates unique sharing links they can send to their friends and that will bring their friends back to this specific offer.
Offer Page: the Mention Me referral overlay shown to customers on the post-purchase page
P
Purchase rate: a ratio between new customers introduced to your brand via referral and referrers who shared the offer.
R
Referrer: a person who shares your referral offer
Referee: the person receiving the referral offer, inviting them to use a brand for the first time
Referrer Reward: the incentive issued to a referrer when someone becomes a first-time customer as a result of their referral
Referee Reward: the incentive offered to referees, issued when they make their first transaction with a brand
Revenue: Revenue generated from the new customers first order. This value is taken from the tag, you should pass through a basket value net of shipping, VAT and any discount applied.
S
Share Page: the page showing customers how they can share their referral offer
Sharers (customers sharing): Individual customers who have shared the referral offer. This is calculated retrospectively, particularly in the case of Name Sharing - as such it under counts the number of sharing customers. The point of calculation depends on the sharing type, Facebook shares are calculated when Facebook spiders the link, email when someone clicks on the link.
Shares: Total number of shares made across all channels
A customer can only be 1 ‘sharer’ but can make multiple shares. Example – customer shares by email and Facebook = 2 shares, 1 sharer
Share rate: a ratio between customers who have shared an offer with their friends and those who have been enrolled into the scheme.
Share responses: Clicks on a referrers sharing links
Self-Referral: When a customer refers themselves to get a reward (e.g. uses their work email to refer their personal email)
SFTP: Secure File Transfer Protocol. We use this method to share customer fulfilment, eligibility, and data files so schemes run correctly
T
Tag: a tool used to gather data on a website. A piece of Javascript code, small pixel, or transparent image that collects unique information about a person and on-site behaviours across an organisation's digital properties
U
Unique impression: Unique customers seeing the referral offer in a single session.
V
Velocity Controls: these are restrictions we can implement in order to put a cap on how many rewards a referrer and/or a referee can receive within a period of time. These could be based on reward value as well.