Referral marketing is a way of capitalizing on the strength of your customer base by tapping into their social networks. The theory is that if you can get your existing customers to promote your product or service to their friends and family, you are much more likely to generate sales.
People trust the opinions and referrals of their friends and family more so than they do traditional advertising methods. As a result, referral marketing provides an excellent way to promote your brand successfully.
Traditionally, this has been an organic, word-of-mouth process. However, several new apps have now been developed that help a business automate this process. The method involves rewarding your customers for recommending a friend to try your product or service.
In the end, you end up growing your customer base by encouraging them to talk about your offering. So let’s have a look at some of the best tools on the market when it comes to referral marketing.
Advocately
For Advocately, creating a large portfolio of customer reviews is one of the most efficient ways to generate sales. To this end, they create an automated review process that makes it quick and easy for their customers to leave a review.
The automated review process can be applied to platforms such as Google, Capterra, Facebook, and any other review sites that are related to your business. There is also a protective measure that helps you weed out negative reviews before they are published.
Reviews are stored in a central dashboard, from here your team is notified by email or some other messaging app. There is an additional feature that allows you to use your positive reviews as social media content or as part of your website.
Friendbuy
Friendbuy provides simple blocks of code that can be easily added to your accounts and get your referral marketing program up and running in no time at all. In addition, they offer email templates for automated referral programs.
Their templates are mobile-friendly, allowing you to activate referrals quickly and easily wherever you are. All of the rewards you offer your customer can be honored automatically and there are detection algorithms available to protect against possible reward fraud.
When it comes to nailing your rewards game, the app provides A/B testing for every part of the process. This allows you to experiment with different offers, and different promotional methods before you find the perfect fit. All of this is connected with analytic software that tracks the KPI’s for a full understanding of your performance.
Rewards can be automatically awarded based on specific events, and once you have created a flow that works the process can be set to run itself.
Hello Referral
Hello Referrals is a referral tracking software that allows companies to engage their network by sending and receiving referrals and sales leads. Its tracking and reporting tools can help create an organized referral program that makes the most of your customer base.
Amongst the software’s referral features include the ability to message partners, create events, and stage meet-ups in order to foster an active referral community with the businesses in your network.
All of this is done in an easy to navigate central dashboard that is seamlessly integrated with your email and media marketing platforms.
Invite Referral
InviteReferrals is an integration-friendly, referral software that increases your customer base through referral marketing. Working on all devices, it is easy to integrate with popular e-commerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and MailChimp.
The referral widgets can automatically adjust to each specific platform. As a result, it is as simple as ever to spread the good word about your products and services.
Once a customer decides to join the referral program, they simply download the mobile app which they can then use to invite their friends. Reward coupons are then automatically delivered by email.
All aspects of the referral process are under the watchful eyes of KPIs that allow you to find your most influential referrers. Everything from the smallest social media engagement to full-on conversion can be tracked and used to further your brand awareness.
Referral Candy
This might be the best entry-level referral marketing app on the market. If you are only just beginning with referral marketing software, then Referral Candy is an excellent option for your business.
Referral Candy is easy to navigate and can quickly implement referral marketing campaigns for increasing sales. It is easy to integrate with most major eCommerce platforms and can quickly grow your customer base by dishing out rewards to any customer that successfully makes a referral for your company. Rewards campaigns can be set and automated from a single dashboard and sent out from an easy email template.
This is a great way to start using your customer base as a form of marketing and grow your brand with customers from connected social circles.
Genius Referral
A Genius Referrals referral program is broke down into seven easy to follow steps:
- Sign up for the referral program.
- Customize a program and campaign that suits your business.
- Set the parameters for publishing reviews on your social media
- Design your ideal referral template
- Install the referral program on your website.
- Notify your customer base via email and social media.
- Monitor, manage and optimize your programs with analytics
Don’t misunderstand us here, these step’s do take a little time and consideration to get right. However, the benefit of this software is that once you have hit upon the right formula it works automatically.
Should you be struggling, Genius’ sturdy analytic tracking will allow you to adjust your campaigns to target different results.
Influitive
Influitive takes a unique approach to the referral game by repositioning their referrals as “challenges”. The interactive software allows you to engage your client base by inviting them to take part in challenges such as friend referrals and social media tasks.
Once a customer completes a challenge they receive points and various financial rewards. The referral program not only benefits you by finding more customers but it also gets direct customer feedback. This feedback is great for future marketing campaigns.
Ambassador
This all-in-one referral software can handle all types of influencer and advocate programs from a single dashboard.
Ambassador develops customer engagement across email, web, and mobile, and is easy to integrate with the various e-commerce platforms. Messaging and reward payments can all be automated.
Its highly customizable programs allow you to tailor your rewards towards specific types of customers. This means you can generate different types of campaigns for different types of customers
Referral Rock
Referral Rock’s software helps companies to create a brand buzz by encouraging and automating the customer referral process.
It is easy to use for both your customers and the people they bring in, and it can also carry your brands look and feel. The smoothness of the referral process is a real bonus when it comes to engagement and participation.
Referral Rock has an advocate portal that gives advocates multiple ways to join, share and track results. This includes full integration with your email marketing tools, and the ability for advocates to share reviews by email, text and other links
There are benefits to all of these different software that will depend on your business and the type of customers you have. For some businesses, automated email service will be exactly what your client base responds too, for others it is much more important to be adaptable on social media. The point is that different means require different solutions.
Once you have identified your business position in terms of the referral game, you will be better able to select between these various options. It helps to remember the basic logic behind this software, that word of mouth referrals can help to increase sales. By remembering this simple equation you can find the best software for your specific purpose.
