Referral marketing involves promoting your products or services by using referrals from your existing customer base. This is usually done by word-of-mouth and can be a highly effective form of marketing. As with most types of marketing, you can simplify your workload by automating the process, using specialist referral marketing software tools.
We have looked at a selection of tools here to give you an idea of some of the referral marketing software now available.
Top Referral Marketing Software Tools to Look at in 2024:
1. Refersion
Best for: Medium to large eCommerce brands
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $99 per month for unlimited affiliates.
Although primarily an affiliate marketing network, Refersion also acts as a referral marketing tool and an influencer marketing platform. If you are involved with eCommerce, you can integrate Refersion into your online store, either with a special app (for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Stripe, and Chargebee) or using a custom integration with Refersion’s API.
Once you’ve set up an eCommerce integration, you enter any existing affiliates and influencers into Refersion.
Refersion includes a marketplace where you can publish an “Offer,” where you give specifics about what you need and what you are willing to pay. You can include trackable links and coupon codes. In addition, Refersion helps you set up a targeted landing page. Refersion is flexible enough to help you structure your offers in a way that makes the most sense for each campaign. For example, you can set a flat rate commission or set an elaborate highly tiered performance payment scheme.
You can go beyond just setting up simple referral rewards. For example, you can structure offers requiring a conversion to meet specific requirements to be considered payable. Refersion can then make sure that the sales it tracks conform to these requirements. Sales that don’t meet these requirements are referred to as Unqualified.
Refersion’s Its reporting function is all focused on sales. You can see the data from various angles, and you can request customized reports from the Refersion team, breaking the data down in different ways.
Tens of thousands of eCommerce brands across various industries rely on this powerful referral marketing software, making it one of the most popular tools. For example, for Verb, a US-based haircare brand, Refersion grew their affiliate program by 20 times. The growth Verb enjoyed in revenue was even bigger and it grew its affiliate-driven revenue from about $2,000 per year to well over $500,000.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Multiple ways to structure commissions
- ? Affiliate management at scale is straightforward
- ? Ranking affiliates according to performance is difficult
- ? Reporting is limited
2. Referral Factory
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
Pricing: After a free 15-day trial, pricing starts at $95 per month for up to 500 users.
Referral Factory has built an incredibly easy to use referral marketing solution that is geared at helping you get more referred customers. Their solution allows you to ‘build your own referral program in under 5 minutes’ by giving you access to over 1,000 pre-built referral program templates that you can duplicate and use as your own. You can either copy a referral program from one of their templates, or build your own referral program from scratch.
What is unique about Referral Factory is that you don’t need to install any tracking scripts on your website – which means that marketers don’t need the help of developers to implement their basic solution. Their referral software comes with a built-in ‘page builder’ so you can build your own pages to capture referrals, and these can look and feel 100% on brand.
Once you’ve built your referral program you’ll need to onboard referrers – which you can either do by uploading a database, or by marketing your referral program to your customers. You’ll then be able to track and monitor all the users in your referral program from your client dashboard – with the option to export your data, sync it to Google Sheets, or collect it in real time from a secure webhook.
The reason there are so many ways to interact with your data is because of the flexible reward structure – meaning that you can offer literally anything as rewards to your customers, because you will need to manage the redemption of those rewards. This gives you complete control over how and when you will reward your customers for their referrals.
It has helped clients like MVSN TV to get over 9,000 referrals in just four weeks. What makes this result even more impressive is that each influencer who collaborated with MVSN TV on this project attracted about 45 referrals on average.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Chat and video support
- ? Flexible features
- ? Good selection of templates
- ? Cheaper plans lack customization
- ? Setup can be challenging if you don’t know exactly what you want
3. CrewFire
Best for: Medium to large eCommerce brands
Pricing: Pricing starts at $1,000 per month for up to 500 ambassadors.
CrewFire is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that specializes in ambassador and influencer marketing. The program helps in generating more likes, comments, and views on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media channels. The platform enlists brand ambassadors to generate more buzz around the brand, compensating them for contributing to the growth of the business, and fostering a healthy, ambassador community.
One of CrewFire’s primary services is referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. CrewFire provides services beyond affiliate marketing. Instead, the platform offers an all-inclusive solution for hosting your affiliate program and rewarding your army of ambassadors for producing UGC, sharing content and resources, and taking part in your social channels.
Using the CrewFire platform, you can provide your brand ambassadors with exclusive discount codes and referral links that they can use to drive revenue and earn passive income. You can also create your own discount coupons for certain events or campaigns, such as a Black Friday promotion or a product anniversary.
You can present your ambassador with a unique coupon code that is only valid for a limited time and offers a larger profit share and discount. Your advocates can easily check their earnings and transaction history. The platform can also redirect your ambassadors to PayPal or ACH to cash out their rewards.
CrewFire also gives you the option to set up a reward shop packed with great rewards and goodies that ambassadors can redeem in exchange for referral points. Because CrewFire has a customizable incentives feature, your brand can write the script and dig into what motivates your ambassadors to perform tasks, stay engaged with the campaign, and grow with your brand.
The referral software has helped brands to generate anything from $70,000 to more than eight times that in referral sales. One of their clients, Vitae Apparel, realized that for their next phase of growth it made sense to mobilize their customers. In the height of the pandemic, they started with CrewFire and in just one year (and a challenging year at that) they generated $233,000 in affiliate sales. On top of that, they also had thousands of content pieces and Instagram engagements per month.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Very easy to use
- ? Flexible campaigns
- ? Expensive
- ? User interface is basic
Key Features: Influencer Relationship Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Campaign Management, White Label Reporting, Payment Processing, Influencer Content Amplification, Ecommerce Tools,
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
4. Friendbuy
Best for: B2B and eCommerce brands
Pricing: After a free 30-day trial, pricing starts at $249 per month for up to $50,000 in total monthly revenue.
Friendbuy helps you launch your referral program quickly and easily with lightweight code snippets to get the program live.
Friendbuy widget templates are mobile-friendly and optimized for encouraging, easy sharing. You can activate referrals anywhere on your site or in your mobile app.
Friendbuy automates fulfillment for any reward type: coupon code, account credit, loyalty points, gift cards, and more. With robust algorithms for fraud detection and flexible reward criteria, it evaluates every purchase to ensure quality, reward eligibility.
You can optimize user referral with easy A/B testing for every part of the referral funnel. Experiment with different offers, creative, and messaging, and discover what drives more sharing and conversions. Friendbuy makes it simple to create variants and measure gain for all your key performance indicators, and quickly pivot when you identify a champion.
Also included in its referral marketing tools are email templates. These let you maximize an automated program, plus give you the flexibility to design custom communications. You can easily set event-based triggers and reports to power more communications to customers and prospects.
Last, but not least, you can also track real-time performance through each step in the referral funnel. As for performance, it has helped a brand like Tonal – “the Peloton for weight training” – to turn referrals into a powerful sales tool. In fact, it drives between 4% and 7% of their monthly revenue.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Very easy to set up
- ? Custom flows are useful for onboarding new referrals
- ? Reliable performance
- ? Limited communication
- ? Contracts lack flexibility
5. InviteReferrals
Best for: All types of online businesses as well as eCommerce startups
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $99 per month for up to 1,000 new referrers per month.
InviteReferrals is a powerful, yet simple-to-integrate, referral program software that helps to grow your business and acquire new customers through referral marketing. It integrates with multiple eCommerce platforms, including WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, MailChimp, and many more.
It works across all devices and platforms. Referral Program Widgets automatically adapt themselves according to the platform.
Customers can use the InviteReferrals mobile application to invite their friends through the referral program. Friends who accept the invite then install the mobile app and InviteReferrals will send coupons to the referrer over email for driving a referral install.
InviteReferrals also provides detailed customer referral program analytics, including invites filtered by referral channels. They track every step of the program, from shares to clicks to successful referral conversions (registrations, sales, mobile application installs). This helps you to identify your most influential referrers and track data to the individual customer level.
All campaigns are WYSIWYG, meaning you can design the complete campaign without the help of a designer or a coder. It’s this type of intuitiveness that has helped a digital healthcare company for women, Ava, to start referral marketing campaigns with great success. Ava launched their referral campaign in 11 different countries after which they saw substantial growth. The result — revenue amounting to $2 million per month.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great customizability letting you set up according to your needs
- ? Detailed reporting
- ? Support team can be slow to respond
- ? Steep learning curve
6. Mention Me
Best for: Mid to large businesses in the fashion, health, travel, or food industry
Pricing: Mention Me doesn’t share any pricing details on their website. Interested brands will need to contact their sales team directly.
Mention Me is one of the top referral marketing tools. Its award-winning platform that businesses can use to identify and nurture their best customers into loyal brand ambassadors. While it’s one of the older referral marketing tools (in fact, according to its website it’s the “world’s first customer advocacy intelligence platform”), it remains up to speed with the latest tech and leverages sophisticated AI-powered tech to grow your fan base.
Using word-of-mouth and tracked referrals, you can also acquire more loyal brand fans. This way, you can focus less on paid channels to drive organic traffic to your website and win high-quality leads.
Then, to improve the experience of your newly acquired brand fans, it shares advanced advocacy insights and features like segmentation and personalization. You can, for example, use their insights to identify and create the next best action. Aside from the insights, there’s also A/B testing by cohort to get to the bottom of what gets your customers excited.
It’s the ability to base your segmentation and personalization efforts on advocacy data that has allowed BrandAlley, one of Mention Me’s clients, to acquire 12% more customers via referral. What’s more, BrandAlley also managed to improve essential metrics like click-through rates and email open rates by more than 10% respectively.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Intuitive A/B testing
- ? Great customer support
- ? User experience has room for improvement
- ? Reporting not as useful or easy
7. Genius Referrals
Best for: B2B, SaaS, and B2C brands of all sizes
Pricing: After a free 30-day trial, pricing starts at $89 per month for up to 500 monthly advocates.
The Genius Referrals platform makes it easy to create and operate a referral program. They break their system into seven basic steps.
After you’ve configured the program according to your business needs, you’re ready to create a new referral campaign using multiple tiers. Templates in its design center can speed up the process, but you’re also free to create your own templates for future use. When that’s all set, you use the code snippets generated via its design center to install the referral template.
You can then notify your prospects and customers via email and/or social media. You can also apply your branding to the email notification service, an extra bonus.
Then, to monitor your network’s performance, Genius Referrals share detailed insights and analytics. Based on this info, you can adjust your referral program in real time.
One of their clients, Kinsley Armelle, praised their platform for the virtually endless list of possibilities which gave them the confidence that they could take their program to the next level. Using their referral software, they could achieve a referral conversion rate of 160% within a year. Their top advocates earned over $11,000, while they generated over half a million dollars in revenue.
Pros and Cons:
- ? A multi-level marketing feature
- ? High level of customization
- ? User interface can be difficult to navigate
- ? Customer support inadequate and slow to respond
8. Ambassador
Best for: Medium to large businesses as well as enterprises
Pricing: Pricing starts at $250 per month for up to 2,500 contacts.
Ambassador’s strength is that it is all-in-one referral software. You can use it to handle referral, affiliate, partner, influencer, and advocate programs on a single platform. All of these types of marketing follow a similar pattern.
You identify your ambassadors, add them to a personalized campaign, track their performance, and reward them with customized incentives. Across all these touchpoints, you can look forward to a seamless experience thanks to its intuitive visual editor.
It also offers a number of integrations with leading tools. Depending on the other tools in your tech stack, you’ll be able to link it to your CRM, email service, eCommerce platform, and payment processor.
Ambassador offers multiple referral marketing opportunities. You can tailor specific referral programs based on customer type, deliver unique rewards and messaging while tracking and analyzing every segment and all activities.
Some of Ambassador’s own ambassadors include Posigen, Skulpt, and StockX. For example, for StockX, a marketplace for sneakers, Ambassador offered the features they needed to create a powerful program. In fewer than three weeks, they generated nearly $500,000. Skulpt enjoyed equally impressive results using Ambassador’s referral software. After eight months, their referral program boasted a return on investment of 600%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Setting up and dispersing a referral bonus is easy
- ? Great support
- ? The dashboard is a bit basic
- ? No mobile app
9. Referral Rock
Best for: Medium to large businesses
Pricing: After a free trial, pricing starts at $200 per month for up to 10,000 members.
Referral Rock is referral program software, helping firms to set up word-of-mouth on autopilot. It enables you to customize the look and feel of your referral program to match your brand and customer experience.
You can control the design, copy, creative, messaging, and more. You build the referral program directly into your customer interactions and marketing channels to provide a seamless experience across all touchpoints.
Referral Rock also includes a dedicated advocate portal to easily share and track results, with pre-drafted messaging to make sharing easy and on-brand. Customization goes as far as providing personalized advocate codes and unique links.
You give your advocates multiple ways to join and share. These include integrating your email marketing tools to join with a single click, a website referral widget for easy access, automatic enrollment when behind a login page, and single sign-on via Facebook and Google. Advocates can share via email, social, SMS, unique links, and codes.
With Referral Rock, you can get set up in days, not weeks, with an iterative approach to quickly launch and optimize your referral program. They have personalized the onboarding to make it easy for you to get up and running without needing complicated integrations.
Not only is the setup quick and painless, but you also don’t have to wait long before you start seeing results. Within four months of using Referral Rock, FeedXL generated 216 new referrals. Plus, they also reduced the time spent on manual work by up to eight hours per week.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great tracking and analytics features
- ? Straightforward to set up
- ? User interface’s design has room for improvement
- ? Email templates and customization could be better
10. SaaSquatch
Best for: Larger businesses
Pricing: SaaSquatch doesn’t share any pricing details on their website. Interested brands will need to contact their sales team directly.
SaaSquatch is a marketer-driven platform that provides marketers the power to create referral and partner programs. Designed specifically for digital businesses, SaaSquatch acquires customers and increases lifetime value through referrals, special offers, and incentives for brands to utilize into their referral strategies.
Some of the standout features include multi-program and multi-campaign functionality and conversion triggers. Then, to encourage engagement, it offers gamification elements like leaderboards and time-based offers.
Brought to you by impact.com, one of the leading affiliate marketing platforms, SaaSquatch knows that while functionality matters, so too does user experience. It also lets you customize the user experience and templates using a drag-and-drop widget builder. Alternatively, you can also create your own using their APIs.
Whether you want to boost conversion rates and word-of-mouth revenue or cut customer acquisition costs, SaasQuatch has a proven track record. For example, AdZooma managed to grow their referral conversion rate by nearly 50%, while Habito reduced its customer acquisition costs by 45%.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Powerful engagement analysis
- ? Knowledgeable support team
- ? Expensive plans
- ? Customization options are limited and difficult to implement
11. Revetize
Best for: Small to midsize businesses
Pricing: Revetize doesn’t share any pricing details on their website. Interested brands will need to contact their sales team directly.
Revetize is a referral marketing software that lets you hit multiple birds with one stone. If you’re looking for the one-stop-shop for everything lead generation, customer communication, and reputation management, Revetize is the platform for you. That said, of all its features, it’s best known for its referral programs.
It allows you to leverage your happy customers and quickly acquire referrals, reviews, and repeat business. It also helps you send personalized, purposeful business texts and generate leads without having to lift a finger. All of your marketing efforts are organized into one spot.
The software allows brands to quickly generate hundreds of online reviews from authentic customers, create and distribute promotions straight from the platform, and even send personalized messages to a mass list of customers.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Powerful engagement analysis
- ? Knowledgeable support team
- ? Expensive plans
- ? Customization options are limited and difficult to implement
12. Yotpo
Best for: Businesses of all sizes
Pricing: Pricing starts at $199 per month. It also offers a free plan.
Yotpo’s eCommerce marketing platform is one of the best tools in the market. Because it offers one of the most advanced solutions for customer reviews, visual marketing, referrals, SMS marketing, and more, it’s no wonder companies like Google and Shopify use all of its benefits.
Yotpo integrates seamlessly with your entire marketing stack. By helping you accelerate growth and accomplish your goals in your overall digital marketing strategy, Yotpo is a great tool for: increasing sales and building better buyer journeys.
If you specifically want to use it for referral campaigns, you can choose from one of its out-of-the box campaigns and offer an array of rewards. Then, to motivate your network further, you can set up a tiered program using points, for example.
This is more or less what Princess Polly did. The fashion brand mainly targets Gen Z, a segment that’s known for being difficult to keep. So, to keep Gen Zers interested in their brand, they launched a tiered VIP program. They rewarded members for writing reviews, not only with monetary perks but also experiences in the form of being featured on the brand’s Instagram page.
Another Yotpo client, Ministry of Supply, adopted a similar approach. Instead of simply sharing discounts, they rewarded loyal customers with an even higher level of attention that included rewards like early access to product launches and insider info. The result — within the first six months of using Yotpo for referrals, revenue generated via its referrals program doubled.
Pros and Cons:
- ? It has a free plan
- ? Reliable
- ? Filtering capabilities are too basic
- ? Platform has a learning curve
Key Features: Influencer Relationship Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Campaign Management, White Label Reporting, Payment Processing, Influencer Content Amplification, Ecommerce Tools,
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
13. TapMango
Best for: Retail stores and restaurants
Pricing: TapMango doesn’t share any pricing details on their website. Interested brands will need to contact their sales team directly.
Who wouldn’t want the most comprehensive and feature-rich customer loyalty and online delivery platform on the market? That’s exactly what you’ll get with TapMango.
TapMango gives you all of the tools and resources you need to build and run a loyalty program your customers will be telling all of their loved ones about. With TapMango, you get amazing features like a comprehensive marketing portal and a branded mobile app.
What makes TapMango a fantastic referral marketing software program to invest in? The tool’s fully automated POS integration lets you start converting sales transactions into loyal customers. TapMango integrates with major POS systems including Toast, Lightspeed, Square, and more.
For example, when Sweetberry Bowls wanted to automate their marketing campaigns and introduce a friend referral system, they got some pretty sweet deals with TapMango. More than 3,000 customers were directed to leave an online review and hundreds of friends referred. Unlike many other referral programs that only reward the customer, Sweetberry Bowls sweetened the deal to ensure the referred friend gets a reward too, all made possible thanks to TapMango’s easy social sharing feature.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Intuitive user interface
- ? Expensive
- ? Customer support is disappointing
14. Talkable
Best for: Businesses of all sizes in the beauty, fashion, home goods, health, and food industry
Pricing: Talkable doesn’t share any pricing details on their website. Interested brands will need to contact their sales team directly.
Talkable allows you to acquire and manage high-value clients at a low cost, increase retention, and grow revenue through targeted referral and loyalty programs. Through the power of Talkable, you’re able to access a team of growth experts in a results-focused company with over a decade of eCommerce industry expertise.
You can use it to run always-on campaigns or specialty campaigns. Whichever approach you choose, you can look forward to features like segmentation and optimization to improve results.
Another standout feature that deserves special mention is its fraud prevention, a feature few other tools have. Their extensive experience has given them enough time to perfect their fraud management algorithm.
It’s Talkable’s fraud protection that attracted Pura Vida to Talkable. Before turning to Talkable, the eCommerce store used a popular vendor but suspected that unauthorized transactions inflated their figure. Talkable scrutinized Pura Vida’s historical data and revealed that their suspicions were in fact true. Pura Vida switched to Talkable and while they prevented unauthorized purchase, they still managed to increase performance to generate 12% of their total sales revenue from referrals.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Great customer support
- ? Detailed reporting
- ? Setting up campaigns can be challenging
- ? The dashboard is confusing
15. ReferralMagic
Best for: SaaS businesses
Pricing: After a free seven-day trial, pricing starts at $245 per month.
Through the magic of ReferralMagic, you can turn your users and customers into referral magnets. How is that possible? It’s not just the easiest way to integrate referral tracking software into your website. You build the right referral program directly into your SaaS, rebrand and resell to your clients, and customize based on your business needs.
ReferralMagic has a variety of features that make it stand out from other marketing software tools. It’s customer-centric, completely customizable, and offers a number of different referral campaigns for different goals.
It has helped IPMonitor, an IP address health and reputation monitoring tool, to maintain a stable user growth rate. Using an invite friend widget and a separate “Invite & Win” page, they could create a successful, tiered referral program.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Easy to use
- ? Good customer support
- ? Limited selection of templates
16. HelloReferrals
Best for: Small businesses
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $39 per month.
HelloReferrals is web-based referral tracking software that helps firms work with their network to send, receive, and track business referrals and sales leads. It provides tracking and reporting tools and gives you a place to organize your trusted partners in business.
You can use HelloReferrals to send and receive business referrals and word-of-mouth leads. You can also track your referrals and manage your leads.
It provides centralized communication with your referral group that keeps your networking activity in one place and always up to date. The platform allows you to send messages to partners, stage meet-ups, and create events to help each other throughout the sales cycle.
Pros and Cons:
- ? Cheap
- ? Easy to use
- ? No mobile app
Suited For Free Plan/Trial Price HelloReferrals Small businesses Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $39 per month Genius Referrals Businesses of all sizes Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $89 per month Referral Factory Businesses of all sizes Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $95 per month InviteReferrals Businesses of all sizes Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $99 per month Refersion Medium to large businesses Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $99 per month Yotpo Businesses of all sizes Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $199 per month Referral Rock Medium to large businesses Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $200 per month ReferralMagic SaaS businesses only Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $245 per month Friendbuy Businesses of all sizes Yes, it offers a free trial Starts from $249 per month Ambassador Medium to large businesses No Starts from $250 per month Crewfire Medium to large businesses No Starts from $1,000 per month Mention Me Medium to large businesses Undisclosed Undisclosed SaaSquatch Large businesses Undisclosed Undisclosed Revetize Small to medium businesses Undisclosed Undisclosed TapMango Retail stores and restaurants only Undisclosed Undisclosed Talkable Businesses of all sizes Undisclosed Undisclosed
Features to Look for in Referral Marketing Software
Ease of use
As with basically all software investments, intuitiveness is at the top of the list. Aside from generating more revenue, another primary reason why you’re investing in a referral software program is to save time. If it’s easy to use, you’ll have more time and energy to spend on strategizing and content creation.
Take Refersion, for example. It has a lot of features and options, but these are arranged in a clear and intuitive way. So, you don’t need any training before you can start using it.
There are some actions that you can take straight from the dashboard like getting the link to the sign-up forms for any of your offers or generating referral links. Other time-saving features include the ability to upload conversion triggers in bulk and powerful search features for finding specific affiliates.
They’ve also created a 17-minute video that walks you through all the key features. How-to articles are great, but the visual nature of videos make it much easier to familiarize yourself with the layout of the platform. So, be sure also to double-check which resources the tool shares before signing up.
Customization
A solid referral software will give you a good degree of customization. For the best results, you’ll want to segment your audiences and personalize your communication accordingly. Double-check that it lets you customize key elements like sign-up forms.
Aside from making your communication seem more relevant, customization will also make it easier to gather valuable data that you’ll need to improve the overall experience. After all, a referral program is all about customer loyalty and to create stronger relationships with your customers, you’ll need to have referral marketing tools that will let you interact with your audience as individuals.
For a good example of customization, you can check out Friendbuy. It lets you customize your widgets and email templates, allowing you to incorporate your branding across all touchpoints. Then, when it comes to rewards, you can add custom reward criteria and ensure that it gets distributed correctly using customizable rules and custom incentive validation.
Automated reporting
Aside from being user-friendly, the referral marketing software solution that you pick should also leverage automation. Features like automated reporting and referral tracking in particular are essential. You’ll need accurate data to set up and improve your referral program. It’s also one of the essential time-saving features that you’ll come to value most.
For example, CrewFire recently redesigned its analytics dashboard to streamline reporting. From submission activities to engagement to rewards, it lets you pull essential details about all the aspects of your referral program. Then, when it comes to referral tracking, it lets you track basically all types of conversion. Aside from purchases, you can also track actions like digital downloads, for instance.
Fraud prevention
A built-in fraud prevention feature is another value-added service. For your referral program to be successful, it needs to remain profitable and be based on correct data. Acquiring bots isn’t going to do anything for customer loyalty.
Ideally, the tool should also implement safety measures and leverage tech to flag unqualified referrals. If it lacks this feature, you’ll have to put processes in place to review redemptions manually, making it much harder to scale your referral program.
Talkable, for instance, uses a fraud management algorithm. In fact, according to their website, it has helped them to save their customers more than $100 million in fraudulent referrals already. You can use it to run customer emails through your customer base to verify that they're an existing customer, flag multiple attempts from the same IP address, and delay reward emails and referral links to deter fraud. These are just three examples of the best practices that you can implement with a tool like Talkable.
How to Choose the Best One for Different Business Needs
In addition to this checklist of essential features, you’ll also need to have your own checklist summarizing your requirements. It’s no use that a referral software has all the key features, but you can’t afford it or it won’t be able to grow with your business.
Answering the following questions will help you to narrow down your shortlist to the most suitable software for your business:
- Does it integrate with the other tools that you’re currently using? Or does it integrate with tools that you plan to subscribe to later?
- Is your team tech-savvy and knowledgeable about running a referral program? Do you predict that you’ll need a lot of support to get everything set up?
- Is white-label customization important?
- Is the referral marketing software in question used by other businesses in your industry?
- Does it offer enough language and currency options for your target audience?
- Does it offer a variety of rewards to appeal to your customers?
- Does it accommodate enough participants?
- Are there any transaction limits?
How to Set Up a Referral Program
Sure, referral marketing tools like these will automate much of the process, but that’s mainly when it comes to managing the program. You’ll still need to set it up. To set up a solid referral program, incorporate these steps into the process:
- Identify your business goals
- Know who your ideal customers are
- Find out how referrals are currently discovering your business
- Identify sources that can refer new customers e.g. happy customers, employees, etc.
- List which channels you can use for communication like email, WhatsApp, etc.
- Decide on which incentives you want to offer
- Create content like a landing page, email newsletter, and blog post that you’ll need to spread the word about your new referral program
Successful Referral Program Examples
Referral programs aren’t just restricted to eCommerce brands. From SaaS companies like Dropbox to eCommerce platforms like Shopify, various leading names have successfully implemented referral programs.
Let’s take Dropbox as an example. In just little over a year, they saw a growth of 3800% with their referral program. It’s one of the most popular referral program examples.
One of the secrets of their program was that they kept the incentive simple. They rewarded their users with more space for referring a friend, in other words the very reason why their users were using them in the first place. What worked in their favor was that this reward was also low cost. Handing out free Starbucks coffees or Amazon vouchers can quickly add up.
They were also very strategic about when they promoted their referral program. Using a key touchpoint like the first email after joining Dropbox worked great. It’s one more way that they kept it simple.
PayPal followed a similar approach. They also rewarded users with their core product — money. Using a points-based program, PayPal users get rewarded with points when the friend they referred to the platform joins. These points are linked to a cash back. For example, one referral equals 1,000 points which equal $10. To ensure that the program remains profitable for PayPal, they limit it to $100. If you want to follow this route, think about adding the same Ts & Cs.
Key Takeaways
Whether you want to win new customers or engage more with current ones, referral marketing lets you do both simultaneously. Sure, there’s still a time and place for paid marketing, but word of mouth can land you some of your best leads.
While you’re growing your business, you need to think about how you can build a solid referral community. It calls for more than simply identifying customers who’ll recommend your product or service. You’ll need to get actively involved and engage with them regularly. Any one of these referral marketing software solutions will make it easier to do that and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best referral marketing tools?
In this post, we have given you an idea of some of the referral marketing software now available. Examine the features and benefits of these products to find one suitable for your needs. The tools we have analyzed are:
- Referral Factory
- Refersion
- Friendbuy
- InviteReferrals
- Mention Me
- CrewFire
- Genius Referrals
- Ambassador
- Referral Rock
- Referral SaaSquatch
- Revetize
- Yotpo
- TapMango
- Talkable
- ReferralMagic
- Hello Referrals
What are the best referral programs?
Referral marketing involves promoting your products or services by using referrals from your existing customer base, usually by word of mouth. But how should your referral program look? One idea is to look at some of the best referral programs other businesses operate. Some of the better known high performing referral programs are:
- PayPal – gives cash for referrals
- Dropbox – gives free storage for referring friends
- Airbnb – gives cash for referring people (and more when they rent out their places)
How do you market a referral program?
Most of the referral marketing software tools we have looked at in this post could help you market your referral program. Some other methods you can use to market your referral program include:
- Promote your referral program with email marketing
- Share your customer reviews
- Make sure you have social share buttons
- Include your referral program on the homepage of your website as well as a dedicated landing page
- Include in your customer accounts
- Find a brand ambassador
How do you reward clients for referrals?
You can automate many of the tasks involved in rewarding your clients for referrals by using one of the referral marketing tools that we have covered in this post. For example, some tools automate your rewards, whether they be coupon code, account credit, loyalty points, gift cards, or something else. Some of the most common rewards for referrals are:
- Discounts
- Cash/cash back
- Store credit
- Swag
- Gift cards
- Free subscription period
- Donations
What makes a good referral?
You can determine how good a referral is by whether it meets the CARE elements of a good referral. These are:
- C (Consent) – although many referrals are given blindly, they are only useful if everyone involved does it willingly. In some cases, referrals can lead to inappropriate connections
- A (Actual) – a real opportunity must exist
- R (Relevant) – a connection must be relevant for all parties
- E (Exit and Evaluate) – the referrer will disappear from the transaction once the connection is made
How do you create an effective referral program?
The referral marketing software we have covered here will help you create an effective referral program. Some other important considerations include:
- Provide exceptional products
- Put your customers first
- Make sure you have clear marketing goals
- Keep your referral messaging clear and easy to understand
- Make it easy for people to refer
- Figure out who to reward
- Determine what reward to offer
- Decide on a reward structure
- Use reviews to boost your referral marketing
- Implement analytics and tracking
