Building an effective referral program

Building an Effective Referral Program

An Ambassador eBook

Contents

Introduction ..........................................................3

Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen ..... 5

Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to Refer .......8

Chatper 3: Measure, Analyze, Profit ............. 11

Conclusion ......................................................... 17

Building an EffectiveReferral Program

Table of Contents

IntroductionBuilding an EffectiveReferral Program

Introduction

IntroductionIts no secret that consumers today are less trusting of what companies say about themselves than what their friends recommend. After all, you’d trust your friend more than an online banner right?

Building a strong base of passionate ambassadors is criti-cal to any business’ success at influencing new customers and keeping your brand at the top of people’s minds.

IntroductionBuilding an EffectiveReferral Program

Just one well-planned incentive can spread throughout the Internet, raising awareness, driving traffic and acquiring thousands of new customers with the click of a button.

By rolling out an effective, monitored and well-managed campaign, you can ensure maximum returns and a rabid fan base ready to mobilize on the streets for your business.

But what actually goes in to a successful referral market-ing program? In this eBook, you’ll learn the techniques you need to get your program off the ground and start generat-ing a wave of brand ambassadors to mobilize and promote your brand.

Chapter 1: Stop,Collaborate, and Listen


Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

Carefully consider who your most satisfied customers are. Have that person in mind? Good. Now take some time to think about what makes him/her engaged with your brand.

Ask yourself:

What do they find valuable about your business?Where are they sharing your brand? How are they sharing your brand?

The scope and diversity of online channels for word of



mouth referral programs is staggering. Before you start casting off content and hoping to get some bites in the vast sea of social media activity, take a step back and look at where your resources can be best directed.

Are your customers sharing their best customer service experiences? Or perhaps they’re sending pictures of your product and brand. Depending on the medium, looking at how your customers are already sharing on social media sites can help better direct your campaign to maximize ROI.

Also take into account where and at what time your com-petition is active as well to make sure your message stands out from the crowd.



Once you have a better idea of your target brand ambas-sador base, you can begin crafting your core message and values. Work to find a message that is consistent and best targets your core base of supporters, and make sure to let your fans know what value your referral program brings to the table.

Along those lines, teach your brand ambassadors about what types of friends they should be targeting and best practices for going about it. Taking time out to educate your first ambassadors can add value to your program and position you as best suited to bring in new referrals from other businesses with similar intentions.

Be sure to provide some direction to your first wave of am-bassadors, either through informational materials online or direct engagement. Whatever the medium, education can get your campaign revved up right from the onset.


Chapter 2: EffectiveIncentives to Refer

Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to ReferOnce you’ve identified and segmented your most passion-ate supporters it’s necessary to have some incentives in place to back up your requests for referrals. And what bet-ter way to get people pumped up to promote than with a customer rewards program? (Hint: There’s no better way).



Incentive programs tap into people’s instinctive desire to help each other and to be recognized and rewarded for their kindness. But of course, the type of reward you offer can be a difference maker when in comes time to sign-up for your brand ambassador program.

ESTABLISHING INCENTIVES After deciding the structure you want to pursue for your brand ambassador program, you will need to decide on how much you want to pay for referral rewards. The bal-ance here will be the same as most marketing decisions: how do you make sure that you don’t spend more money getting the customer to you than the customer will produce in revenue? The difference, though, comes in calculation. Instead of cal-culating simply how much financial incentive the customer



needs to come to you, you also must consider what finan-cial incentive a customer needs to promote your product to their friends and what they think of as a “good deal” when offering their support for your business.

Taking the time to fully calculate the ROI from a social me-dia referral campaign can be very vexing and time consum-ing. For now, just make sure your customers are respond-ing positively and actively engaging in your campaign.


Chapter 3: Measure,Analyze, Profit

Chapter 3: Measure, Analyze, ProfitGoing beyond the glitz and glamour of rewarding custom-ers, there are a number of logistical components that must be stored and measured to gain the most utility from your campaign and better understand how successful it is, in-cluding having a clear idea of the benchmarks you’d like to reach.

Once you start the program, create a schedule to track, evaluate and optimize your program to direct resources where the most activity is generated.



Key back-end requirements that must be managed for suc-cess include:

Building and maintaining a database of existing and re-ferred customers.

Automated marketing resources to keep customers en-gaged.

Send updates to social networking sites on a consistent and real-time basis.

Update records to know how many ambassadors have signed up, and adequately reward those who have made successful referrals.



Many businesses choose to overlook data for a number of reasons (lack of experience, laziness, etc). This is a bad idea.

There are huge gains to be made by combing through data and seeing what works best for your program in the form of optimization and increased ambassador engagement.

Having a lot of data on hand is irrelevant without having a clear understanding of the key performance indicators that drive success on referral programs. Looking back at action-able metrics can help truly define the ROI from your invest-ment:

Brand mentions in social media: Tracking how, when and where your fans mention/share your brand can help opti-mize your engagement strategy and better segment and engage new ambassadors.

Customer loyalty: Analyzing how often a specific fan is mentioning your brand and sharing content can help better define your target supporter.

Conversion Rate: By tracking conversion rates across mul-



tiple acquisition channels, your business will better under-stand which platforms drive sales and locate where your engagement is most effective and where to direct resourc-es.

Always keep your analytics in mind when testing out new campaigns. If you’ve never tested out referral marketing with your business, keeping track of your successes and shortcomings can help optimize your program as it grows and evolves.

But to truly analyze all of the data and keep up to date re-cords is a herculean task. Luckily, there are a number of resources that offer solutions to the headache of managing your campaign. Using a brand ambassador software can help track and manage the inner workings of your cam-paign and ensure you’re getting the most bang for your referral marketing buck.

An effective SaaS brand ambassador software platform can attribute new customer activity to the appropriate ambas-sador, automate a number of campaign logistics, like issu-ing rewards and re-engaging neglectful ambassadors, and free-up much needed time to run the other components of your campaign.



Most importantly, be sure to consistently check the suc-cesses and failures of your program. Otherwise, you will be missing out on a crucial data to help your business’ refer-rals skyrocket.



Referral Program Worksheet:

Print out and use this flowchart to keep yourself organized when moving forward on your programming.

Listen to your current fans

What is my value to fans?

Where are my fans active online?

Where are my fans sharing my

content?

Develop incentives to refer

Type of Reward (Cash, Gift Card, %

Commission)

Is our reward profitable?

Measure and analyze data

Optimize programming

Cost of Incentive/Value to fans

ConclusionBuilding an EffectiveReferral Program

ConclusionAn online referral program is only as effective as the amount of brand am-bassadors it is engaging. When cus-tomers are engaged with your prod-uct they’re inclined to refer friends and family, but it helps to set-up in-centives to promote through concrete rewards.

By rolling out an effective, monitored and well-managed campaign, you can ensure maximum returns and a ra-bid fan base ready to mobilize on the streets for your business.

So gear up and get ready because the future of online referral market-ing is knocking on your door, and it’s about time you answered.


Conclusion

Ambassador enables any company to easily track, man-age & reward their advocates for referring customers and driving conversions. Receive actionable channel-specific metrics; including shares, clicks, conversions, revenue and clicks per share. Ambassador can be fully integrated into your website, maintaining your look & feel while providing a frictionless experience for your advocates.

Building an effective referral program

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