10 commandments for running an effective referral marketing program

You need to find a referral marketing platform that is suitable for your unique program. The good referral marketing platform will make it easy for you to create referral offers. Additionally, it will make it easy to integrate with your website. Once integrated, it should be easy to have your customers refer your business.

The only way to get customers to promote your brand is by giving them compelling offers. A compelling offer is a unique offer that customers can't get anywhere else. For example, your offer can give your customer a credit or a discount towards their next purchase. Also, the same offer can give the referred customer a discount or a free trial. Make sure to test and optimize your offers to find out which one is more appealing to existing customers.

Provide your customers with an easy and painless way to share. The sharing experience should be very simple and in a clean interface which allows your customers to share via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also provide the ability to import contacts from Gmail. Additionally, you should provide customers with a default pre-populated share message and give them the ability to provide their own personal message. Lastly, provide product level sharing as well so customers can decide which particular product they would like to share with others.

This is very important. For the referred friend to convert, your friend invite needs to be short and to the point. The friend invite needs to describe the offer and detail exactly what the reward is. Make sure to keep the call to action simple. Also, make it personal. And don't forget to show them clearly who the referral is from.

To make your referral program successful, you need to promote it on key touch points and channels. Below are some of the best channels for advertising your referral program:

• Reach out through your Email Lists
  
  
• Inform through your social networks
  
  
• Announce on your order confirmation pages and/or emails
  
  
• Notify using exit intent pop-ups and incentivize by offering discount or gift for joining

• Make promotions clean with a clear call to action

Generic and template messaging do not work well in referral marketing. You need to personalize the offers and referral experience. Here are a few opportunities on where you can personalize

• The messaging/offer
  
  
• Offer description
  
  
• Offer text
  
  
• Call to action
  

Here are the numbers you need to be aiming for a successful referral loop:

• 20-30% - share rate is typical for brand
  
  
• 50-60% - you will grow quickly
  
  
• Over 60% - you are hitting home run

Maintaining a referral program is an ongoing process. You want to continually optimize the program for success. When optimizing your program, you need to look at and analyze the following:

1. Analyze performance by promotional placement
   
   
2. Analyze performance by sharing channel ( i.e., email, facebook, twitter, etc.)
   
   
3. Test the copy
   
   
4. Default sharing messages
   
   
5. Remarketing efforts and more.
   
   

Now you know the dos and don'ts of running an effective referral marketing program. You can now use these rules to create a successful word of mouth marketing channel for your business. Word of mouth is one of the best marketing channels that you can use to grow your traffic and sales. The good thing about referral marketing is that it is cheaper than most marketing channels. You don't have to pay the high fees you do for acquiring prospects. Also, you will only reward for successful sales or referrals. Create a referral program for your business now and get the customers who love you to promote your brand.