Marketing and promotional placements are the key to the success of your referral program. You need to promote your program at the right time and place to make it scale. In this guide, you will find recommendations for exactly when and where to promote referrals both generally speaking and by vertical. We have provided examples of companies who have followed our best practices and effectively scaled their referral marketing channel through promotion.

Making your referral program easy to find when your brand advocate is ready to share is important. No matter your vertical, we always recommend promoting in your global header, global footer, and on the order confirmation page.

At the bare minimum, your program should be marketed in the global header and footer of your website. For the header, this could mean a permanent placement in your global menu or a banner. For the footer, this typically means a link.

Take advantage of the moment of delight your customer experience just after they've made a purchase. This moment is when your customer is most likely to share. We recommend an auto-pop; however, a static CTA on this page is a great alternative. Some clients choose to do both!

Another great alternative to a confirmation auto-pop is launching our Mail After Purchase email. This email is typically sent to all customers who shop on your site and functions as an invitation to your referral program. There are no required resources on your site to set up this email since it comes directly from the Extole platform. For examples and more information, scroll to the bottom of this article in the Offline Promotions section.

Please note that your Advocacy Rate (i.e., Advocates / Advocate Viewers) may be low if you have confirmation page CTAs enabled. This is because the confirmation page CTAs appear for every purchase made, so the number of Advocate Viewers will be very high. On the other hand, confirmation page CTAs improve your Participation Rate (Advocates / Transactors) because they drive advocacy!

Certain verticals see more success with specific promotion types. If you are curious about creating a more vertical-specific promotional strategy for your Extole program, reach out to your CSM.

A successful promotion type for retail companies is the Overlay. The example below shows both the minimized and expanded view of the Overlay as a customer would see it on your website.

For subscription or membership-based companies, we recommend promoting your referral program on customers' My Account pages as well as in monthly outbound emails. Another successful promotion placement is in account menus and/or navigation.

Promotional emails are a key part of every healthy marketing strategy. Using these emails to promote your referral program is a solid choice for any brand, regardless of vertical. Three emails we strongly recommend adding referral promotions to are order confirmations, standard outbound marketing, and mail after purchase.

The Mail After Purchase email sends an invitation to the referral program after each purchase to all customers. You can choose to delay this email by hours or days to align with your transactional emails and/or shipping times.

In addition to promoting your referral program on your primary website, we encourage you to add promotions to your social media posts and in your mobile app.

Promoting your program via social media channels meets your customers where they're at. It can be as simple as adding a link to a post that customers can click on and be directed to your landing experience.

Leverage the time your customers spend on your app by adding in-app promotions in the form of banners, overlays, or menu placements. If you have to choose one promotion type for your app, we recommend an item in your main menu.