Referral & Viral Marketing

In each referral program we evaluate/define the following aspects:

• Target audience
• TouchPoints, which is about how to reach those customers eg. which channel or method
• Rewards, rewards tiers and rewards types 
• Attribution 
• Referral trigger, which is about initiating the referral program
• Duration of the referral campaign
• Integrations with existing systems
• Campaign boosters

Target Audience

Are we building ambassadors (of an existing brand), or beta testers of a new brand? That signifies different target audience with different needs and behavior

Touchpoints

Embed to existing dedicated landing page or in email lists. Are we targeting a vast customer base or in fewer but more qualified conversions? 

Rewards

We will discuss in detail the kind of rewards (if any) that we will give in various programs for the business units. We don’t believe that all business units should have the same program as there are “templates” that fit better per business units

Attribution

When the referral counts as converted? When user will click the referral link? When he/she will join the referral campaign or when the referee will join our system and will make a purchase. All these are attribution options of a referral campaign and some of them require a tight integration with the back-office systems

Referral and user acquisition flow

1. Send a dedicated private message to new customers with a link and a code.
2. After clicking on the link, the new customer goes to a dedicated landing page inviting him to subscribe. Out of the link, the referee can just refer to the unique URL of his/her friend
3. After subscribing, he can send an invite to his friends with his code

1. His friends receive an email to subscribe.
2. Upon subscription and attribution, both parties receive the announced rewards.
3. After subscription, the referees are given the possibility to become referrers by sending an invitation to other friends etc.

Integration options

Duration

We believe that referral campaigns should stay forever BUT we propose to start with 3-month campaigns with increased incentive in the beginning. During this 3-month period, we will run many A/B tests to see which copywriting converts best and then we will decide which campaign we will keep. We believe that each target audience should have a dedicated campaign assigned, therefore we expect at least two (2) campaigns in parallel.

Boosters

Boosting is about ways to engage or nurture the users that have been contacted at least once. For those that will engage but not get listed or completed, we will introduce a set of emails to make them complete their listing or not to get disappointed because you didn’t approve their listing.