Answer
May 10, 2023 - 01:27 PM
- Get to know your biggest fans and what they want – Your 5-star reviews would be the place to start this research. Find your biggest fans and check out their reviews. What did they love? Reach out to them directly and ask them: What would it take for them to share the product they love with their friends directly? Offer a couple of options to see what works best for them. It can be a discount code, a free product, or other reward.
- Create the double-sided incentive – Now that you know what your biggest fans would consider a strong incentive to engage in a referral, start building your program. Make sure you create a double-sided incentive, meaning incentivizing both the sender and the receiver of the referral. You can even gamify the program: create goal referrals to give unique rewards based on the number of referrals people make.
- Strategically display the referral program on your site
There are a lot of cool ways you can deploy your referral program on your online store. I’ll share a few options you can try out to get the best performance results.
Ask for a referral right after the customer leaves a review – If you’re collecting reviews on your site (which you should!) you can add a referral request right after the review flow.
Why is that effective?
You can take advantage of the moment the customers who love your products and the whole shopping experience leave a review on your site and ask them for a referral. This is the moment they are reminiscing about everything they loved about shopping with you and the product they got. So combine this with a referral request at the right moment, and watch new customers sign up.
Allow people to make a referral from every page from your site – Your referral program is a major brand asset. So, treat it as such! Give it prime location on your storefront and across the site pages, making it super easy for anyone who lands there to make a referral in just a few easy clicks. If you’ve done the great work to optimize your site for traffic and a flawless user experience, use your awesome referral incentives to further promote the program through strategic display.
Embed your referral program on a dedicated page on your site – Complementary to the previous point, allow one of your brand’s biggest assets to have its own house on the site. Make it easily visible and accessible. Brand it, and add your story on the page; you can even use some sparkling reviews to support the program. - Make it easy for people to share referrals on their terms – People communicate in a lot of different ways. Some like using social media, some rely on SMS (text messaging) and some love the good old email. Make sure you offer as many sharing options as possible for your referral program. Go a step further and customize the message. Be creative and include words from a glowing review to further boost the referral request.
- Use your reviews to create the “tribe” community everyone wants to be part of – Some brands have mastered the “tribe” mentality among their customers really well. Think brands who invest heavily in content marketing, or particularly in social media and influencer marketing. They communicate their products and offer in a way that really resonates with their target audience, and they do this by heavily researching their customer reviews. Of course, these reviews are substantial and on point (hence why you need to invest heavily into a continuous reviews collection process), giving them insights into what people say, how they perceive their products and what words they’re using.
