Refer-a-friend programs not only drive new customer acquisition and significant revenue, they are increasingly how high-quality customers discover and select your brand. An authentic recommendation from a trusted friend rapidly moves consumers from consideration to conversion.

Beyond the efficiency of the channel and the quality of the customer acquired — referred friends tend to spend more, purchase more frequently, and recommend more than other customers — the data at the heart of your referral program can create new or improve existing marketing initiatives.

Read more about influencer programs and the influencer program page!

Influencers are consumers who love your brand and also are able to market their referral link to an audience beyond immediate friends and family. For example, they might have a blog or be involved in an industry group. Affiliates differ because, in addition to reach, traditional affiliates also have marketing skills and discipline along with purely economic motives. They may aggressively post referral links to deal sites, share their link with big communities like Reddit, or even run paid ads powered by their referral link.

It’s important to note that an Extole campaign aimed at affiliates will differ from traditional affiliate programs, which tend to pay a percentage of purchase. Instead, they will receive a fixed amount per purchase. And, while program status and rewards earned dashboards are available from Extole, affiliate campaigns will not generate the types of reports or earnings documentation that many affiliates require.

As program participation grows with the more appealing external reward, the opportunity to engage influencers will follow. There are two ways to identify the influencers in your program, described below. It’s also conceivable that influencers known to or otherwise engaged by your marketing team could be invited to participate in the referral program.

Extole’s platform matches advocate data with social data to determine social reach. On the People page in the Extole platform, the “Biggest Reach” segment groups advocates with the greatest number of followers. In addition, the “Most Shares” segment of advocates also may contain influential advocate.

Advocate surveys offer a way to determine advocate motivation (for example, brand loyalty or economic interest) as well as understand their audience. Again, the Extole People page is a key resource for creating your survey group. In addition to the segments mentioned above, “Revenue Drivers” will be important to include in your surveys. These advocates often have few shares but significant conversions. That combination could suggest someone who has trafficked a link that has gotten significant response - in other words, an affiliate.

Once you’ve identified influencers, there are several opportunities to encourage them to continue to share through the referral program.

To thank customers for sharing, foster loyalty, and encourage more referrals, Surprise & Delight programs based on the impact and reach of advocates are increasingly common. These programs typically involve a quarterly or other calendar-based schedule and a unexpected gift sent to the program’s most frequent sharers, top revenue drivers, and most followed advocates.

The simplest programs deliver another reward via email. However, the most talked-about programs deliver physical gifts with a brand or product tie-in. Surprise and delight packages should include printed or even handwritten thank you cards. Include a hashtag and a unique referral program promotion link as well.

As depicted in the introductory diagram, setting up an additional referral campaign available only for influencers also lets you recognize influential advocates for their loyalty. A separate campaign can also make their referral experience more relevant. The following table illustrates some of the potential differences between your everyday advocate campaign and an influencer campaign:

After setting up the campaign structure and identifying the influencers they’d like to include, marketing organizations typically email an invitation welcoming them to the campaign. In addition, the invitation directs them to a new referral landing page where they can create their new link and, in some cases, download a welcome packet that outlines the benefits of the being one of your official influencers.

As with the influencer campaign, you can invite affiliates into a separate campaign with a different, more appropriate design. A main decision is whether affiliate driven traffic should be eligible for the friend discount.

Advocates are your brand’s best friends. You can augment traditional Friends & Family with Extole by rewarding advocates for the conversions they drive. How? Use a special advocate code or share link for them. Even if that share link issues the same friends and family code you’re giving out elsewhere, you’ll get more data than you normally get with a Friends & Family campaign typically measured only by coupon codes redeemed.

With an Extole-powered Friends & Family campaign, you’ll see who is driving the revenue in addition to the funnel metrics from share to conversion that will help you see where opportunities for better messaging or copy may lie, for example. As a result, you’ll be better able to improve the effectiveness of Friends & Family.

Knowing that people love your brand feels good. Extole’s advocate data gives you an easy way to highlight advocates at an individual level. With access to advocate data and share messages in the Extole dashboard, customers, like Blinds.com, include advocate share messages with their social feeds on in-office monitors to highlight to your team how strongly your customers recommend you.

Highlighting that passion outside of your office often takes the form of “advocate spotlight” posts on social media. Once a month (or even once a week!), your social team can recognize and even reward great advocacy with a social post featuring a share message. That advocate can even earn a special reward - merchandise or bonus reward.

Use advocate and friend data to power CRM and ESP driven marketing initiatives. These integrations can be backend, file-driven, or share time depending on system capabilities. Extole’s integration with Salesforce is available as an AppExchange app and uses our APIs to identify contacts as friend, advocate, or both and to trigger conversion events. Advocate and friend data can power a wide-range of reporting and marketing initiatives including email marketing campaigns.

When an advocate email a recommendation to her friends, not only do you have an identified advocate, but you also have valuable friend data. CAN-SPAM prevents most organizations from using friend email addresses for marketing emails. However, that data is nonetheless useful:

As with the use of any data collected from your referral program, it is the responsibility of the site owner to comply with any and all applicable laws, regulations, and program policies.