Referral marketing is basically a marketing strategy in which businesses leverage its customer base through turning its loyal customers into their brand promoters. In the past 20 years, there are many referral marketing examples that made companies successful and that’s what we are going to see today.
Loyal customers are turned into brand promoters by being referred to other companies. Companies have been able to use this strategy for many years and it’s one reason they’re successful, so let’s take some time today talking about referral marketing in depth!
The best customer referral programs are the ones that make your customers feel like stars. When they refer a friend, you give them something special in return – typically some kind of gift card or discount on future purchases. It’s win-win!
A referral program is a growth marketing tactic that encourages new customers to recommend a brand to their friends, family and colleagues. Often called word-of-mouth marketing or advocacy marketing, it combines easy sharing tools with rewards.
When it comes to an e-commerce, referral campaigns are one of the finest marketing strategies around and through turning customers into a brand promoter, it provides a big boost in your customer growth and sales.
This kind of marketing uses referrals or word-of-mouth to promote services or products and businesses may control it through suitable strategies and make a viral referral campaign. This can make both more profits and good customer base for your company. Nevertheless, it is essential that the marketing is done right. Otherwise, this may backfire on you and rather than gaining new customers, you might lose your current customers.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of referral programs. Most referral programs give advocates a reward for every friend they refer. What kind should you choose? Where do I start with my small team or budget when there are so many options available?! And how can we make it easier for our customers not only submit their own referrals but also agree on who deserves credit if they’ve referred someone else into buying from us as well- without annoying them at all?
Why a Referral Marketing Program is a Good Thing for Businesses?
Rather than writing reviews online or filling out feedback surveys, people can share their experience with partners and friends through referrals instead! Referral programs help attract new leads for business owners looking into expanding their customer base in ways they never thought possible before.
Where does one start when working with a small team or budget? Getting your customers to submit referrals can be difficult. You need the right approach, and it’s important that you don’t annoy them in the process. Referral programs come in all shapes and sizes, but they need to work for the business. Just find one that works for your business .
Many people might wonder why they should use referral marketing programs if they are already practicing different kinds of marketing. Is it really powerful or what makes it very important for an e-commerce business? Well, the answer is simple. Referral marketing strategies are extremely powerful for business growth.
Growth Hackers treats referral programs like a secret growth engine: when your customers become your advocates, business momentum multiplies almost effortlessly. Referral marketing programs have not been rated as one of the best and most powerful marketing tools for no reason. There are several factors that are inherent in referral campaigns that lay the foundation of successful marketing strategy.
• Target Marketing Usage
Every businessman understands the significance of targeted marketing. That is the reason why segmentation tools that enable businesses to categorize the customers into appropriate segments on the basis of different factors are very famous.
When products are marketed to customers who need them, the chances of customers purchasing your products become high. On contrary, if you market products to customers who aren’t interested in that particular product, you face the risk of thinning out the customer base of your business.
A referral marketing program actually uses precision targeting. Once you ask for referrals, your clients who would refer your services or products would know the people in their circle of family and friends well and would know how to convince them to get something better than you do.
We’ve helped brands leverage referral programs and segmentation tools, and Growth Hackers has seen firsthand how precise targeting turns happy customers into highly effective brand advocates. It’s a more targeted approach and through this, you can be assured that your brand name would spend effectively ads rapidly, bringing more customers to you as a campaign goes viral.
• Extensive Reach
Another referral marketing aspect that adds to its value is its extensive reach. You can find many new customers thanks to top client referral marketing programs. Family and friends aren’t the only referral channels. Celebrities play an essential role to reach out to customers. Popular YouTubers are approached by companies who like them to refer their products in their videos.
Brands that rely on traditional channels reach only a fraction of potential customers, but Growth Hackers shows that referral programs unlock widespread influence and exponential growth. For instance, hair stylists would refer a hairspray or serum to her or his fan base and this could lead the viewers purchasing the product since they trust the hair stylist.
In addition to that, testimonials, customer reviews, and bloggers play a major part to being profitable referral channels. With such referral channels, each of these might have hundreds or thousands of followers and subscribers, the reach can be widespread and by using such sources, this will help you acquire a big customer base.
• Trust
According to a study, it was found out that referrals is the most trusted form of advertising. Generally, trust is the basis of each good relationship and in business-customer bond, trust is the factor that’d prompt the customers to invest their money in you and recommend your products to their family and friends. In many cases, individuals are wary of marketing campaigns if they’re shopping for the first time.
Nevertheless, if a family member or friend assures them of the brand’s quality, they become at ease and would shop with some restrictions than before. Through the use of the help of people to market your products to people who trust them, your business will get more customers than carefully-crafted ads or marketing campaigns.
Growth Hackers treats trust in referral marketing like a magnet—when customers believe in your brand, they naturally attract more people to it. It’s what makes referral marketing very powerful as the trust factor in this kind of marketing is high and tapping into this reserve is bound in getting your e-commerce business the attention this deserves.
• Accelerated Growth
The channels that were mentioned are definitely extensive. However, how fast do you think referrals would go viral? With today’s advancement in social media, customers can reach thousands of people in just a few seconds. A single Facebook post, single tweet or Instagram selfie can achieve thousands of potential customers in no time and re-posting and re-tweeting of the referral means that you can reach lots of people in just a short period of time.
Now that we saw why referral marketing programs are important, let’s have a look to some of the most successful referral marketing examples…
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The Best Referral Marketing Examples You Should Not Dare to Miss
Now that you know what referral marketing is all about and the main reasons why it is very important, I want to give you referral program ideas. How? Here are some of the best examples of referral marketing programs that will surely help your business in the long run.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox referral marketing program is probably one of the most famous referral marketing examples but also one of the most known growth hacking examples.
Dropbox is a famous online storage company and they began a referral campaign through offering free 500MB space for both the referred and advocate. In this customer referral program example, customers earn more space in their Dropbox account by inviting friends and family members. It is a great incentive for new users as well as existing users!
2. Airbnb
If you are a marketer and have not heard about Airbnb’s referral program, you’re not qualified for your position. Yes, you have read that right. The referrals of Airbnb are the best in the world and analysts have reasons why they said this.
Airbnb has created a referral program to help both renters and people who are looking for somewhere they can stay. Hosts of Airbnb get 100 dollars if their friend signs up using the link provided, while users also have an opportunity at earning some cash by inviting others via email or social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Whether it’s hacking Craigslist or bring in awareness about the referral program, Airbnb learned and improved each step of this technique and mastered the art. What they offer is a 2-way incentive program to users. It means that the recipient and referrer are eligible for a twenty-five dollars credit once the recipient completes his or her first trip. The referrer is also entitled to seventy-five dollars once the recipient hosts somebody. The program is still available for users and it became of of their most successful customer acquisition channels.
3. Uber
It is never easy to miss Uber when it comes to their referral marketing programs. With its thousands or even millions of users around the world, Uber deserves a spot in the top referral marketing examples. Uber is one of the best growth stories. What makes its success different is that their decision is incorporating referral marketing in the mobile model via the app.
Nowadays, referral marketing examples like Uber’s model is replicated by some ride and cab sharing apps. Uber’s referrals are based on the free ride’s concept. The referral model is open to drivers as well, which has picked up well by users.
4. Google-For-Work
It is apt to say that Google has twined itself into one’s daily life and beyond. When giant brands like this utilizes customer referral programs to promote products, this speaks volumes regarding the technique’s effectiveness. Even if this program is functional in some countries, this still attracts a big amount of referral traffic because of its simplicity. Google For Work provides a 1-way referral program that’s quite vanilla. For each recommendation, a referrer will get $15.
5. ReadyTalk
After sending out several unsuccessful email referral campaigns, the ReadyTalk, a video and audio conferencing service provider, considered investing in advocate marketing program to nurture their best customers. With this referral marketing program, they gave rewards for smaller acts of customer advocacy and strengthened their relationship with the customers before asking for some referrals.
In the first ten weeks of implement advocate marketing program, ReadyTalk got 183 referrals. Being personal with top advocates and providing them something of value before asking for referrals will inspire them to submit high-quality referral leads continually.
6. Evernote
Customer referrals are an easy way to give your business a boost in the short term. They don’t cost much — if anything at all and Evernote created an awesome one. Evernote, a note-taking app, launched a referral program, which awards points to the customers each time they make referrals. Such points may be redeemed for free access to the premium features of the software. Aside from that, each time the referred lead of a customer upgrades to the Premium version of Evernote, the customer who submitted referrals will get extra points. The service now has hundreds of millions of users. In fact, thirteen millions of these were referred by some users.
What you can learn from referral marketing examples like Evernote is that their process of referral does not end after your customer submits the contact information of their friend. Providing them rewards whenever the person they referred upgrades their product can serve as a reminder to refer again. This will also motivate them to encourage their peers to upgrade.
There is no doubt that Evernote created a successful referral program. When you use a referral process like they did, your customers are more likely to remain loyal and bring their friends with them. This natural word-of-mouth marketing will help grow both the customer retention rate for your business as well as revenue by increasing exposure.
7. FreeAgent
FreeAgent is one of the best referral programs even if it’s not as famous as other ones. FreeAgent is an accounting software and its customer referral program provides both new users and referring customers a 10% discount, which lasts as long as both parties are actually paying subscribers. The discounts are stackable, which means that once the customer has referred ten peers, they will use the software for free of charge. After this, they may ask to join the Evangelist program of FreeAgent, which enables the customers to earn a 20% share of subsequent referral subscriptions.
The idea to steal with FreeAgent is that making referral incentives last as long as each party is a customer can help avoid churn. Providing stackable rewards for every referral will motivate your customers to submit new contacts consistently.
8. Verafin
Verafin is an anti-money laundering and fraud detection software used an advocate marketing program for running Referral Rally contest online, which offered rewards for top referrer at the end of every week. To make sure that all leads submitted were high quality, the company included a feature called Referral Certification challenges, which educated the advocates on the ideal referral persona of Verafin, how best to submit a referral, and how to talk regarding the company to prospects.
When advocates completed every step, they got a special badge. After the contest finished, Referral Rally produced topnotch quality B2B referral leads, which is 3 times the number they’d hoped for.
With the referral marketing program of Verafin, Gamifying the process of referral will surely engage your advocates as well as motivate them to get more referral leads for you. Educating them on your preferred prospects will also ensure that you are only getting valuable leads you may act on, rather than low-quality referrals that will waste the time of your sales team.
9. Tesla
A known electric car company changed its referral program throughout the years to reflect its customer base that continues to grow as years passed by. The Tesla customer referral program is one of the top client referral marketing programs out there. Originally, they offered customers a thousand dollar to refer a friend, yet have changed since their strategy is giving Tesla owners who refer many people to be eligible for better prizes including an exclusive battery.
It’s even better for the fact that the first individual to refer twenty people in their region will get a free Model X or Model S. Some referral rewards include invitations to an exclusive party and the chance to buy some special edition products not available to the public.
In terms of rewards, the best are the things that money cannot buy. Whether they are special products, a VIP treatment or an access to a private event, such incentives will surely make each of your customers feel truly valued, especially if you want them to refer again. You may also use referrals to enter the new markets in a cost-efficient way through providing regionally-based contests and incentives.
Tesla’s referral program reflects how much testing needs to be done when creating a campaign in order to see what works and what doesn’t.
10. Influitive
With the use of their advocate marketing program, which is called Influitive VIP, the mobilized lots of advocates to submit referrals, making their company grow successfully. Last 2015, they generated thousands of referrals through running a variety of several campaigns and bringing together customer support, marketing, and sales.
What you will get from the referral marketing program of Influitive is that you have to know what your advocates need and want. You might have lots of happy clients wanting to be a referral for you and refer you to their networks. They are just waiting for you to make a move. Through creating a one of a kind program that prepares the customers to give some referrals and provides them a great referral experience, you may fill your pipeline with quality leads.
11. PayPal
The referral program of PayPal was actually used as an inspiration of Dropbox’s successful referral campaign. I personally love Paypal’s referral marketing example as it is not so renowned since this happened when social media wasn’t so common. PayPal used the means of IMs, blogs, and emails to spread the word of their referral campaign and got a daily growth of 7-10% in the early 2000s. PayPal began to pay people to invite their friends.
It was unheard of at the time and tons of users jumped on the bandwagon, enabling Paypal to earn a strong customer base of over hundreds of millions of members.
12. Amazon
Pictures are worth a thousand words. Amazon includes header images in its post referral program, which evokes a reminder of the significance of friendship. The referral campaign’s content is well-written, which urges the user to share experiences with their friends through them to the Amazon Prime. A strong call to action is a primary part of this referral marketing program as well as one of the reasons of its huge success.
13. iStock
iStock gives a royalty free stock image, audio track, and video for online users. The referral program had unique angles, they enable their customers pick their own referral reward. Giving 3 options for users, commission, credit, and cash, they ensured that they’d target a bigger base of potential clients. These are their rewards:
- Commission: If users refer successfully a friend and they purchase a pack within thirty days, the advocate was provided with 20% on this sale.
- Credit: For each new customer who purchased thirty credits within three days, twenty credits were provided by the company.
- Cash: iStock offers twenty dollars in cash for each new customer who made a purchase of thirty credits during a period of 30 days.
iStock has a big market with various individuals from across the globe. Through giving them an option to select from, they made sure that they cover every customer who has several motivations to make referrals.
14. EventBrite
It enables people across the globe to create events. This global marketplace provided a referral reward of 25% of all referred customer fees that are generated every year. Even if it has been seen by numerous referral marketing programs that referral marketing campaigns provide double-sided incentives, which are more successful compared to the ones in which incentives are only given to the referrer. However, it’s one example of single-sided referral done right to gain customers in spite of not providing any incentives for referred people.
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How to Implement and Use a Referral Marketing Program?
Referral programs encourage your current customers to spread the word about your business with the promise of a reward. Building your own referral program can have so many benefits for your business. But, to do that, you need to make sure you have existing customers. And, not just your “common” existing customers, but very happy ones.
Growth Hackers has helped dozens of brands implement referral programs and seen first-hand how satisfied customers become the strongest promoters of your business. In the world of business, there is no universal blueprint for creating a perfect customer referral program. However if you assess your needs and preferences carefully then hopefully this article has given some insight on how to get started!
Consider offering referral incentives. You should be offering referral incentives that are tailored to your customer base.. When it comes to referring new customers, you can’t just rely on your existing client base own choice. This idea will help keep your company thriving by ensuring that everyone has a reason to work with your company or use your product.
You might wonder how to effectively attract new customers to your online business. You can use the referral marketing examples above to give you inspiration. What I love about referral marketing programs is that it’s a strategy you can use to market your business even if you’re on a shoestring budget. Implementing referral marketing strategy to increase sales and referrals is not that hard… but having a successful one is not easy at all. Below are the different techniques you can implement nowadays for your business:
1. Provide Exceptional Buying Experience and Customer Service
The core of each and every customer referral marketing program is a good product, a good overall buying experience, and exceptional customer service. It’s the fundamental to any particular referral campaign. To begin, assess the buying experience of your business, looking at this from customer perspective and ask yourself if it is worth sharing with your friends.
2. Pay Attention to the Analytics
You are probably already getting referrals and do not even know it. Google Analytics has an entire section on referrals, which can help you pinpoint some websites that are referring and linking individuals to you. This report may be broken down to not just visitors yet customers as well, providing you deep understanding of which referring websites is most qualified.
Through this knowledge, you may reach out to such websites and work out a plan to obtain even more traffic. For instance, you might work out for a referral marketing program to share profits with them, guest blog posts, and additional mentions.
3. Make It Easy for Customers and Visitors to Refer Your Brand
You might want to ensure that you are making it easy as possible when sharing your products and refer your brand. Basically, there are numerous ways to do this. Consider how a successful company has done this on their website by adding this right to their primary navigation. There’s no doubt that referring friends is an essential call to action for them.
4. Capitalize on Influencers
The influencers within your niche may be a goldmine of referral sales and traffic. The key is finding influencers who are following close as possible to your targeted market.
5. Implement Referral Programs
There are times when people need a nudge. Giving rewards for referrals may be just the thing in getting your customers and visitors sharing your brand with their family and friends. For instance, companies offer some tiers of rewards in a form of products getting people share their pre-signup landing page. You may do the same through providing rewards through a loyalty or referral program.
6. Reviews are Also Referrals
People trust what others say about your company more than what you say. Therefore, see to it that you encourage customers to leave reviews after their transaction.
There are many growth hacking tools and referral program software around and some of them can help you build referral marketing campaigns with little to no effort. Referral programs are a great way for your business to grow. Modern referral software can track referrals made by happy customers through either a code, a referral link or rewards card, and they usually receive some kind of benefit when someone refers their friend. This natural word-of-mouth marketing experience creates positive feedback in which the company thrives on!
Get Inspired by Existing, Successful Referral Marketing Programs and Examples
A referral program is one of the top ways to attract new clients while building customer loyalty. Don’t wait to get referrals though. Encourage referrals! First, you need to understand how you’re going to motivate customers.
If you want to create a referral program, you should definitely take inspiration from the examples above. Customer referral programs are a great way to grow your business by engaging and leveraging the brand’s biggest assets: customers. What started as an idea for these leading companies has since become successful systems in supercharging customer acquisition, growth rates among other things that can be measured with data!
It’s no secret that customer referral programs are the most cost-effective and lucrative marketing strategy for your business. How do they work? People don’t make as many referrals because of reasons like fear or lack of awareness, but this doesn’t have to be an issue! Make it easy on yourself: craft a great experience with rewards at every turn so when people hear about what you can offer them through word-of mouth (and in some cases money) there won’t be any hesitation whatsoever before sharing their favorite shop with friends who might need help finding exactly what is right for them.
What are you hoping to get out of your rewards program?” That’s a great question. Rewards programs can help with more than just rewarding customers – they’re also an opportunity for companies like yours (for example) to market themselves and their products in creative ways that people might not have considered before!
To make sure it works well, ask yourself these questions: Do I want bigger purchases from my existing clientele? Or do I need higher conversion rates so new clients come through too.? These answers will guide the brainstorming process ahead and help you get new, innovative referral marketing ideas.
To do it right, those companies sunk a significant amount of time, money into building their referral marketing programs. Fortunately you can tap into referral marketing software to save on resources and technical expertise in order to build your program! This is all done through automation which creates an effective word-of-mouth experience for customers that increases retention rate and revenue.
Like all marketing programs, referral programs are most effective when managed efficiently and optimized to attract the right customers. But building an attractive referral program for your business can be challenging in itself; ensuring that it actively encourages referrals from loyal customers themselves will always make or break a campaign at hand.
It’s important to note that customers acquired via referral programs usually come in at a lower cost per acquisition than traditional advertising. This makes the channel an excellent choice for modern marketers who seek new business growth and customer acquisition channels.
Word-of-mouth is one of those old-school marketing tactics that work and referral marketing is word-of-mouth in the digital marketing world.Referral marketing exists for a long time even if it’s more and more used recently. Indeed, viral growth has become so popular via growth hacking and the rise of growth hackers.
A referral marketing program is an important and powerful component for each business. Implementing several basic techniques may help facilitate and encourage the process of referral that can be a primary source of new sales. While the best and effective referral marketing campaign is a matter of debate, those examples above have excelled when it comes to providing ease to customers, a value add to their life aside from introducing new deals making them famous with the masses.
Some businesses have stayed and provided a continual referral program to its patrons while others put a stop in the end. For somebody whose bread and butter is all about making growth hacks, many businesses can look out for new services or products that are utilizing referral marketing in a unique way to highlight their items.
If you are just starting with your referral marketing campaign for your business, make sure that it’s something that would be enjoyed by your customers and referrers. In this way, get inspired by the successful referral marketing examples above and I can guarantee that you will achieve results.
Growth Hackers is one of the top referral marketing companies, we can help you get viral growth, create a referral marketing campaign but also help you with lead generation, social media, conversions, content, SEO, growth hacking, email marketing and much more. Don’t hesitate to contact Growth Hackers now and discover how we can help your business grow.
7 Comments
Referral programs seem to be the most cost effective marketing strategies around. Every business should try it.
Hey, this is a great article regarding referral marketing examples. I found this blog post really insightful and helpful. Keep the good work up 🙂
Good examples of referral marketing campaigns. Thanks for sharing! All the Best.
Hey, Jonathan.
Thanks, for sharing this amazing article with us. All the mentioned examples are effective to know about Referral Marketing Programs. Every business & marketers should have to try this once.
I like the way PayPal strategically used their referral program. Whenever they need to boost the number of users on their platform, they give away cash to new referrals.
Hi, I came across your blog article. No fluff, just helpful info.
Keep up the good work.
I can make some more money with the use of a referral partner program. The idea of earning money by referring others grows in acceptance and carries no risk. Great article. On point!