How Top Brands Use Referral Programs to Drive Customer Acquisition
24 likes11,790 views
The document discusses best practices for referral programs used by top brands to drive customer acquisition. It covers optimizing user participation through placements on the homepage, navigation, order confirmations, and standalone referral pages. It also discusses optimizing performance by measuring sharing rates, referral visits, and conversion rates, then testing different calls to action, offers, and shared content. The document provides benchmarks and examples from companies that have achieved referral programs contributing 7-30% of new customers with a cost per acquisition under $10.
How Top Brands Use Referral Programs to Drive Customer Acquisition
- 1. How Top Brands Use Referral Programs to Drive Customer Acquisition Tony Mario!i, COO, Friendbuy
- 2. @thuelmadsen #KISSwebinar Join us on Twi!er
- 3. Tony Mario!i COO Friendbuy ! @tonymario!i Your presenters Thue Madsen Marketing Associate KISSmetrics ! @thuelmadsen
- 4. @tonymariotti #KISSwebinar Join us on Twi!er
- 5. Introduction to Friendbuy www.friendbuy.com Friendbuy is a customer referral platform. Marketers build campaigns, A/B test and track results to accelerate customer acquisition without the hassle of ge!ing dev teams involved every time they want to make changes or generate reports. Referral programs are incredibly cost effective, delivering single-digit CPAs. Weâre going to cover best practices that top brands use to drive referrals and customer acquisition:
- 6. The following best practice examples come from companies that actually sell something. ! What follows should be especially helpful to marketers who are looking to acquire new, paying customers today. ! Referral programs can drive anywhere from 7% to 30% of your new customers, and a CPA well under $10 bucks. Thatâs what weâre going to talk aboutâŚ
- 7. WATCH WEBINAR RECORDING NOW
- 8. People always ask: âHow do I get more referrals?â ! Thatâs easy. ! Focus on two things that really move the needle. ! User participation & Optimization
- 9. Again, two things really âmove the needleâ for referral program performance. User Participation Optimization
- 10. User Participation Location ma!ers
- 11. Homepage & Navigation Best practices: ! ⢠Site-wide ⢠Highly visible (upper-le#)
- 12. Order Confirmation Page Best practices: ! ⢠Pop-up overlay ⢠Varied offers
- 13. User Account Page Best practices: ! ⢠Embedded ⢠On bu!on click - if you have to ⢠PURLs
- 14. Stand Alone Referral Page Promote / drive traffic from: ! ⢠Homepage & Navigation ⢠Dedicated email blasts ⢠Trigger emails & newsle!ers ⢠Social following ⢠Customer service follow up ⢠Email signature
- 15. Dedicated Email Blasts Best practices: ! ⢠Single call to action ⢠Clear offer ⢠Schedule (monthly / quarterly)
- 16. Your âreachâ may be bigger than you think⌠1 Website Homepage, navigation, order confirmation, user accounts, product pages, stand-alone referral page⌠2 Email Stand alone blasts, transactional (registration confirmation, order confirmation), newsle!er templates, receipts / invoices⌠3 Social followers Twi!er, Facebook, LinkedIn⌠4 Blog pages 5 Help desk pages / support ticket signatures / scripts
- 17. Start Your Free KISSmetrics Trial LOG IN WITH GOOGLE
- 18. Optimization Increase sharing rates and referral conversion rates
- 19. What to measure Shares ! Widget Impressions ! = Sharing Rate Conversions ! Referral Visits ! = Referral Conversion Rate Referral Visits
- 20. Sharing Rate - optimize call to action Best practices: ! ⢠Clear call to action ⢠Whatâs in it for them ⢠What their friends get (if double-sided) ⢠Address book importing
- 21. Sharing Rate - optimize call to action 1 Get Half Off a NatureBox! 2 Get $10 for free! 3 Get 50% off your next NatureBox! 4 Get $10 when you snack with friends! The irony here is that a NatureBox costs $20. So all the offers are mathematically the same. But #4 outperformed the rest and drove up sharing rates.
- 22. Sharing Rate - optimize design + 42% sharing rate ⢠Red, italic headline ⢠Background image
- 23. Referral Visits - optimize shared content A B C ⢠Purple bracelets ⢠Green bracelets ⢠âExpires in 24 hours!â ⢠Woman on beach ⢠âExpires in 24 hours!â + 35% Gain
- 24. Referral Visits - optimize shared content Doubled referral visits and referral sales
- 25. Referral Visits - optimize shared content Hey Pal, You're one of my smartest friends, so you're probably pre!y fed up with overpaying for razors. I was, so I joined Dollar Shave Club. They deliver great blades to me every month for just a few bucks. No more schlepping to the drugstore and no more overpriced, ridiculous shave tech that I don't need. Razor plans start at just $3/month. Check it out and let me know what you think. P.S. When you use this link to join, I get $5. Cha-ching! Doubled referral sales Best practices: ! ⢠Message is on-brand ⢠Always testing
- 26. Referral Conversion Rate - welcome referred visitors Best practices: ! ⢠Welcome overlay ⢠Friend incentive ⢠Email capture ⢠Reveal code
- 27. Referral Conversion Rate - welcome referred visitors Best practices: ! ⢠Session-based ⢠Dynamic message
- 28. Referral Conversion Rate - welcome referred visitors Best practices: ! ⢠Dedicated landing page ⢠No distractions
- 29. 1 Offers for sharer & friend 2 Calls to action for sharer & friend 3 Shared content (copy & images) 4 Shared email subject line Elements for testing 5 Referred visitor experience
- 30. Calls to Action - quick tips Tip 1: Verb + Whatâs in it for me? Tip 2: âI want to ___________.â ⢠Get $10 in store credit. ⢠Get a free month. ⢠Give $10, Get $10 ⢠Share and earn $10
- 31. Referral Benchmarks How are you doing?
- 32. Sharing Sharing Rate Several Friendbuy partners have exceed a 50% sharing rate, a worthy optimization goal for anyone. The sharing rate will vary by widget location (homepage, user account pages, order confirmation page, etc.) So ge!ing as many widget placements as possible is highly encouraged. Here are sharing rate benchmarks (aggregate across placements): ⢠7% â meh ⢠15% â solid ⢠30% â youâve nailed it How you can improve Sharing Rate ⢠A/B test offers (store credit, free gi#, etc.) ⢠A/B test content (copy, design, images, etc.)
- 33. Referral Visits Visits per share The tricky part here is that Facebook and Twi!er donât report impressions, busting the normal click-thru rate marketing calculation - the number of friends who see shared content on Facebook, Twi!er or an email message and click to visit your website. While email reporting does include opens, unique opens, and CTR, the best way to approach this - in aggregate and normalized across all channels - is to measure the number of visits per share. That levels the playing field. Here are referral visits (per share) benchmarks: ⢠1 visit per share â meh ⢠2 visits per share â solid ⢠More than 5 visits per share â youâve nailed it How you can improve Visits Per Share ⢠A/B test offers (store credit, free gi#, etc.) ⢠A/B test shared content (copy, design, images, etc.)
- 34. Referred Visitors Conversions Referral conversion rate The referral conversion rate is the percentage of referred visitors (friends) that convert when they get to your site. Referred visitors should convert at a higher rate than your organic conversion rate. Here are referral conversion rate benchmarks. ⢠Less than 4% - meh ⢠10% - solid ⢠More than 15% - youâve nailed it How to improve the Referral Conversion Rate ⢠A/B test offers (store credit, free gi#, etc.) ⢠A/B test shared content (copy, design, images, etc.)
- 35. Cost Per Acquisition CPA Referral programs yield âsingle digit CPAâs.â That is to say, your new customer acquisition cost is less than $10. Compared to display advertising ($40 CPAs), Pay Per Click ($30) and retargeting ($10), referrals are extremely efficient. Here are customer referral program CPA benchmarks: ⢠$9 CPA - meh ⢠$5 CPA - solid ⢠$2 CPA - youâve nailed it Key Takeaway: Single-digit CPAs.
- 36. Revenue Li! on Revenue Referral programs contribute to the bo!om line in a very meaningful way. Here are revenue li# benchmarks: ⢠Less than 5% - meh ⢠5 to 15 % - solid ⢠30% - youâve nailed it
- 37. Examples of Campaign Metrics Example companies by size
- 38. Where to start optimizing (30 day snapshot - 3 companies) a Rockinâ b Work on sharing rate c Work on conversion rate
- 39. Party Foul ! The biggest mistake people make . . .
- 40. Donât force a login or registration 90% drop off!
- 41. Recap Follow best practices and avoid common pitfalls.
- 42. Recap User Participation Optimization
- 43. Doâs and Donâts Do Donât Open access Let anyone refer Force a login Availability Make it visible, everywhere Bury it in your footer CTAâs & Offers Be clear & concise Be wordy or vague Test Measure and optimize Set it and forget it User Participation Optimization
- 44. Looking for more? ! For additional in-depth articles about the topics weâve covered, you can check out friendbuy.com/blog
- 45. Questions? Tony Mario!i COO Friendbuy @tonymario!i tony@friendbuy.com Thue Madsen Marketing Associate KISSmetrics @thuelmadsen tmadsen@kissmetrics.com
- 46. THANK YOU Tony Mario!i @tonymario!i tony@friendbuy.com