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Overview

Understanding how your referral program performs compared to industry benchmarks is critical for optimizing your results. While every program may vary due to custom events and offers, the benchmarks below will give you a high-level view of how you stack up and where you may focus your optimization efforts.

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Key Referral Program Metrics

  • Share Rate (shares / promotions clicked *100): The percentage of customers who refer a friend after clicking on a CTA to Refer. A promotion click is what opens the share experience, so a promotion click and a share experience view are the same step for this rate. Your dashboard may describe its Share Rate as shares / share experience views. It is the same rate.
  • Signup Rate (signups / share clicks *100): The percentage of referred friends who sign up like entering their email, submitting a lead, or otherwise engage after clicking a share link.
  • Conversion Rate (conversions / share clicks *100): The percentage of referred friends who complete a key action (e.g., purchase, account creation) after clicking a share link.
  • Acquisition Rate (converters / advocates * 100): The overall efficiency of your referral funnel: The likelihood an advocate leads to a friend conversion (Learn more about Acquisition Rate.)

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Referral Metrics by Industry

Tip: Benchmarks are medians based on data from each industry. Your program may vary depending on offer type, campaign age, and audience.

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Other Common Benchmark Rates for Credit Unions and Banks

  • Account Opening Rate (Accounts Opened / Signups): 60%
  • Account Qualification Rate (Accounts Qualified / Accounts Opened): 67%

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Other Common Benchmark Rates for Telecom / MSOs

  • Order Rate (Orders / Signups): 38%
  • Service Install Rate (Services Installed / Orders): 80%

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Finding these Rates for your Program

Share, Signup, and Conversion Rates: View these directly on your dashboard. Names or calculations may vary based on the events you’re sending; check your event mapping or contact support if unsure. Share Rate: Compare the Share Rate on your program dashboard directly with the Share Rate column above, and say how far above or below the median it is. For Share Rate, a promotion click and a share experience view are the same step. Your dashboard divides shares by share experience views, and on many programs its Promotion Clicked step and Promotion Click-Throughs metric count those same views. A report of raw events can show a promotion clicked count that is far from the share experience view count. A share experience can open without a click, for example automatically after a purchase, and a click can end before the share experience loads. That gap does not change the comparison. Do not recompute Share Rate from the promotion clicked event count. Acquisition Rate: Calculate this using the Acquisition Rate Report. Need help? If you want more granular metrics or have trouble locating your stats, contact your CSM for personalized recommendations.

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Optimizing Each Step of Your Funnel

Each rate shows a step where participants can drop off. Review your rates and focus your efforts where improvement is needed most. Some ideas include:
  • Boost Share Rate: Make sharing incentivizing and easy to do; test clearer calls to action.
  • Boost Signup Rate : Simplify signup forms; clarify friend incentives.
  • Boost Conversion Rate : Align offers with audience motivation; streamline the purchase experience.
  • Boost Acquisition Rate : Address bottlenecks in prior steps for holistic improvement.
For deeper strategies, check out our Referral Program Optimization Guide.

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Final Tips

  • Revisit benchmarks periodically; industry averages evolve.
  • Track trends over time, not just point-in-time values.
  • Use A/B testing to see which performs better