Refer a Friend

Overview

Refer a Friend programs not only drive new customer acquisition and significant revenue, but they are also increasingly how high-quality customers discover and select your brand. An authentic recommendation from a trusted friend rapidly moves customers from consideration to conversion. Beyond the efficiency of the channel and the quality of the customers acquired, referred friends tend to spend more, purchase more frequently, and recommend more than other customers.

Marketing

Marketing determines what percentage of your engaged audience will become advocates. Extole provides a variety of CTAs to promote your Refer a Friend program directly on your website or app. We also provide fully customizable email templates designed for promotional purposes that you can send directly to your customer base.

On-site or In-app Promotion
Promotions on your website or in your mobile app typically take the form of CTAs. This may be a banner at the top of your screen, an overlay that pops up after a certain period of time or when an order is confirmed, or a prominently placed menu item app-users can tap on. Each of these fully branded CTAs will take your users to the share experience.

Email Promotion
Another method is sending your existing customers a promotional email encouraging them to participate in your program and earn a reward. This email could be sent to your entire customer base, or a specific segment identified by Extole's Audiences. For example, you could use the promotional email to nudge existing participants in the program to share with their friends again and earn an additional reward.

Advocate Journey

Advocates can follow any of the promotional CTA links embedded on your website or placed inside your mobile app. Tapping on a CTA will take your advocates to the share experience, where they can fill out their information and receive a personalized share link to send from multiple social share channels, including Facebook, WhatsApp, email, SMS, and more.

In a fully integrated Refer a Friend program, your advocates can share via an in-app share experience. Advocates, in this case, can also share with others by providing a QR code to their friends.

Friend Journey

When a friend follows an advocate's personalized advocate share link, they are brought to a rewards, account sign-up, or registration page directly on your company's website. Rewards can be applied in real-time so that friends are more incentivized to complete the desired action.

Your Extole team can adapt the program design to match your business's unique new customer acquisition flow. In other words, the friend-side of the experience can be customized differently for a loan application versus a credit card application, versus a retail purchase or a brokerage account opening.

Rules and Rewarding

Once the friend achieves the desired outcome of your program flow, the advocate will be rewarded. Your company can provide Extole with coupons, percentages off, or similar rewards. Extole will track your users' events and can administer the rewards once earned.

Extole can also track rewards earned and provide the information to an external system via API or file. For example, rewards can be earned in Extole and provided back to your company for processing and application.

Rewards can also be tiered. Different products can result in different rewards, and differing levels of activity can result in different rewards.

Performance and Data

The data at the heart of your referral program can create new or improve existing marketing initiatives for your company. Two key metrics that indicate the health of your funnel and success of your referral program are acquisition rate and participation rate.

Acquisition Rate
The acquisition rate measures the effectiveness of a program; in other words, what is the likelihood that one advocate will lead to a friend converting? This rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of advocates.

Participation Rate
The participation rate measures approximately the percentage of your customers participating in your program. A strong participation rate indicates the effectiveness of a program to engage advocates. Your participation rate is most often a result of your promotional strategy.

These basic performance metrics, as well as impact metrics and customer quality metrics, can be pulled from your program using Extole's reporting capabilities.