You’ve been busy testing your eye-catching visuals, catchy copy and irresistible offers to craft a campaign that engages customers. Then now you're ready to engage as many of your customers as possible and guarantee that your campaign is genuinely unmissable.
Not been testing and looking for some inspiration as to what to optimise next? See our guide here.
Why promote your referral scheme?
The stats speak for themselves:
- Customers share brands 35% more when referral is promoted at two or more touchpoints, compared to just one.
- For our best performing clients, maximising awareness of their programme, outside of the postpurchase overlay will drive 40-50% of referrals.
This guide is focused on taking advantage of every possible touchpoint to keep your brand at the front of shoppers’ minds — and encourage them to recommend you to others.
How to promote referral using your landing page
When promoting your refer-a-friend programme, you are likely to want to lead your customers to your referral landing page which includes the Mention Me iFrame within it.
Wherever you are going to promote your referral scheme, it's advisable to setup unique tracking so that you can assess the effectiveness of each touchpoint you implement. To do this, add situation parameters to each of your touchpoints, as detailed here.
Where to promote your referral scheme
We've outlined some of the key touchpoints to consider promoting your scheme.
Post-purchase
After a customer makes a purchase, it's a great opportunity to encourage them to refer their friends and family. Utilising a post-purchase full overlay can improve the chances of customers engaging with and enrolling in your referral program.
Almost all of our customers do this - if you're not doing this and need some guidance, get in touch here.
Homepage
Another effective way to drive new customer acquisition and engagement is to promote your referral program on your homepage. Depending on your monthly website traffic, this can be responsible for a large percentage of your referral acquisitions with some clients getting more than 50% of their referrals from an effective homepage strategy.
There are multiple ways to promote your program on your homepage, such as including it in your site header, creating a tile on your website or using a corner peel.
Check out some of the different options available here.
Promoting referral in email on a regular basis is a great way to boost results. It puts your scheme in front of customers who may not have visited your website for a while and reminds those who have to share it with friends.
- Dedicated solus email at least once a quarter (on average, share rate increases by 5%),
- Banners in newsletters e.g. emails that are promoting new products/ranges,
- Banners in transactional emails e.g. order confirmation and order shipping confirmation emails,
- Anniversary emails - triggered email several days after delivery.
- Banners or dedicated emails in your unique email series - such as your postpurchase or welcome series.
- NPS emails - do you send any follow up to reviews or NPS surveys? A great way to promote to customers who leave positive sentiment would be reminding them that they can also recommend a friend your way for a reward.
Check out some different implementation considerations here.
Dashboard
Implementing a dashboard in your customer accounts is a more personalised way to encourage sharing. Not only does it serve as a reminder to customers every time they log in, but it also shows their referrals in progress, whilst making sharing as easy as possible by giving them the options they need, right in their account.
See more on how to promote referral using a customer-facing dashboard here.
SMS
Given how much time we all spend using our phones (guilty), communicating with your customers through SMS could be the final prompt that pushes them to take action.
With so many brands competing for consumer attention, engaging them through targeted SMS messages offers an alternative way to cut through the noise. Use your referral insights to identify your best brand advocates, and send them relevant text messages to remind them to take up your referral offer.
Social Media
If you have a large set of followers on your Social Channels (who as followers are likely to be some of your biggest advocates), then reminding them of your referral programme on a semi-regular basis (once every 1-2 months) can be a great way to reach customers who aren't necessarily visiting your website to make another purchase.
In App
If you have an app, likely being used by some of your most engaged customers, this is an ideal place to promote your scheme.
Depending on the layout and functionality of your app, consider:
- In App notifications / push notifications
- Inclusion in a "My Account" area
- A menu item on the navigation
- A tile within the app
If you need some technical support with including referral within your app, get in touch here.
Parcel inserts
Offline promotion through printed campaigns like leaflets, parcel inserts, and brochures is also an effective way to get your referral program in front of your customers at a moment of delight, right after they receive their purchase.
Customise it
Finally, take a moment to consider your own unique customer journey. What are the points of delight in your customers experience and when are they most likely to engage with a well timed prompt to refer a friend?
Promoting referral at this moment engages your customers at one of their happiest points in their journey with your brand.
Learn More
Read this article from our team to understand the value of each touchpoint.
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