4. #ReferralMarketing
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6. Empower the Voice
of Your Customers
with Referral
Marketing
Ernan Roman
President, ERDM
6/24/14
7. Discussion Points
Game changing insights from recent VoC Research:
– 5 Voice of Customer Research Based Prerequisites
for Referral Marketing
Songza: High-value Customer Experiences which drive
word-of-mouth referrals.
#ReferralMarketing
10. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
These 5 CX requirements must be satisfied to earn the right
for customers to rave about you;
#ReferralMarketing
11. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
These 5 CX requirements must be satisfied to earn the right
for customers to rave about you;
Engaging and competitively differentiating customer
experiences are the foundation of today’s customer
relationships.
Is this how consumers view your brand?
#ReferralMarketing
12. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
These 5 CX requirements must be satisfied to earn the right
for customers to rave about you;
Engaging and competitively differentiating customer
experiences are the foundation of today’s customer
relationships.
Is this how consumers view your brand?
Personalization of content, communications and
experiences per customer's individual preferences are
proof points that you care about your customers.
Are your communications preference driven?
#ReferralMarketing
13. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
Spray and pray blasts of email hurt your brand and
alienate customers.
How much damage might yours be causing?
#ReferralMarketing
14. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
Spray and pray blasts of email hurt your brand and
alienate customers.
How much damage might yours be causing?
It’s not about self serve. Customers want guidance and
education which delivers value and saves time.
Are opportunities to engage and serve evident in each of
your channels?
#ReferralMarketing
15. 5 VoC-based Prerequisites for
Referral Marketing
Spray and pray blasts of email hurt your brand and
alienate customers.
How much damage might yours be causing?
It’s not about self serve. Customers want guidance and
education which delivers value and saves time.
Are opportunities to engage and serve evident in each of
your channels?
Authenticity, storytelling, emotion and real-time
engagement in conversations are powerful elements
in today’s marketing. How does your marketing rate?
#ReferralMarketing
18. Personalization of Context and
Content
Differentiation by personalizing to your needs right now;
your context will dictate your content
#ReferralMarketing
19. Relevance Drives Referrals
Mondavi wanted to tell customers they make
drinking wine with friends better.
Created an ad that actually made drinking wine
with friends better (versus pushing Mondavi
wines).
Song used in the commercial (commissioned by
Mondavi for the commercial) was so perfect for the
moment, that people took to Twitter to share the
commercial and ask how they could get the
Mondavi song.
#ReferralMarketing
21. Josh Fenster @jDfenz
Great native advertising
by @Tostitos on
@songza.
#digitalmarketing
Relevance drives referrals
Reply Retweet Favorite More
22. Josh Fenster @jDfenz
Great native advertising
by @Tostitos on
@songza.
#digitalmarketing
Relevance drives referrals
Reply Retweet Favorite More
Barbecuing
with Tostitos
23. Niki Hillier @nikihi
@Tostitos @songza @jDfenz
Songza and lime tostitos and salsa
complete me.
Relevance drives referrals
from Studio City, Los Angeles
Reply Retweet Favorite More
#ReferralMarketing
24. @songza @jDfenz
Oh Songza, you complete us.
TostitosVerified account @Tostitos
Relevance drives referrals
Reply Retweet Favorite More
#ReferralMarketing
26. 5 Questions to Consider Regarding
Your Referral Marketing
Do customers think that your customer experience is
truly engaging and competitively differentiating?
Are your communications personalized per customer's
individual preferences?
Are you damaging your brand with low yield
spray and pray marketing blasts?
#ReferralMarketing
27. 5 Questions to Consider Regarding
Your Referral Marketing
Are you pushing customers into “self serve” to reduce
your costs and as a result, reduce your value to
customers?
Would customers describe your marketing as having
authenticity, storytelling, emotion and real-time
engagement in social conversations?
#ReferralMarketing
28. Additional Information for You:
Today’s Presentation
Ebook; 5 Strategies for Transforming
Your Customer Experience
14 Step Checklist For Breakthrough
Multichannel Marketing
7 Marketing Mistakes You Need to
Avoid
Case Studies
Blog; Ernan’s Insights on Marketing
Best Practices
#ReferralMarketing
31. #ReferralMarketing
Your Customers Expect ItRef erral Program A dopt ion
* based on Extole surveys of referral program adoption
5 1%
4 3 %
2 5 %
of Financial Services
of Sharing Economy
of Internet Retailer 400
53. Who we are
• Austin-based lifestyle brand
• Makers of vintage-inspired golf
shirts, polos, and button downs
• Clothes for guys (and boys) who
prefer a classic style and want to
look as good off the course as they
do on it
• Super soft organic cotton
• Predominantly online business
54. Goals of Referral Program
Expand customer
acquisition funnel
Allow advocates to
“market for you”
Increase customer
lifetime value
55. Consistent On-Brand Content
Email
• Dedicated email campaigns
• Referral link on the bottom of every email
Website
• Created personalized landing pages for bloggers to
send readers
Social
Media
Blogs
• Posts once per week (Facebook and Twitter)
• “Give 15 / Get 15” button on Criquet Facebook page
• Referral program featured prominently on website
o Homepage overlay, best performing link
57. Definitively Positive Results
• 8 dedicated emails
• Links on 110 other emails
• 15 Facebook posts
• 25 tweets
• Many press references
• Over 1 million impressions
• 2nd highest conversion
rate of any marketing
channel
58. Take Advantage of Referrals
• Keep offer simple
o Give 15% / get $15
o Immediate gratification
• Increase top of the funnel
o Sponsored posts are very
effective
• Make sure content is on-
brand and shareable
59. #ReferralMarketing
Q&A
Next Steps
o Keep an eye out for the replay
o Email hello@extole.com for more questions
o Download Extole’s Referral Marketing Best Practices for 2014
o Stay Current on Extole News and Happenings!
email: hello@extole.com | web: www.extole.com | blog: extole.com/blog
60. #ReferralMarketing
Q & A // Panelists
Debbie Hauss
Editor-in-Chief
Retail TouchPoints
MODERATOR
Jen Leen
Head of Demand
Generation
Extole
Ernan Roman
Founder
ERDM
Michael Hamp
Minister of Finance and
Special Ops
Criquet Shirts
Throughout our presentation we encourage you to interact with our speakers by typing in questions and comments using the questions pane. We will be answering questions live both during the event and after the presentation.
Customer acquisition is the number one priority for marketers today, however it is also one of their biggest challenges.
Referral marketing is the third acquisition channel.It does what SEO and SEM can’t – it generates trust, builds loyalty and ultimately, drives new, high value customer acquisition.
SEO and SEM channels perform, but what about those potential customers who aren’t specifically searching for your brand? Recent reports state that while search marketing spendwill continue to rise, it will lose share of all interactive spending. Tactics like referral marketingwill take a bigger piece of the interactive marketing pie as they enable brands to reach potential new customers and create an entirely effective and predictable acquisition channel.
Based on a study we performed last year, marketers are well on their way to incorporating referral marketing into their acquisition strategy. There’s a 50% chance that your bank is relying on referrals. 43% of the sharing economy has already rolled out a referral program. This includes new to market companies like the ride sharing companies Lyft, Sidecar, and uber as well as well established companies like AirBNB. And over ¼ of internet retailers are already on the bandwagon as well.
Extole is the leader in referral marketing.
Let’s start with the offer – this is the foundation of a successful referral marketing campaign. This is the nudge that gets your advocate to share and keep sharing; this is the gift the friend receives from you and your customer.
Effective referral programs provide customers with a compelling reason to share your brand, products, or services with their friends. But – as your area of greatest spend - it needs to make sense based on your typical acquisition costs as well as the Liftetime value of your customers.
Consider:
Your audience – who are you trying to compell, what would they find interesting?
Your goals - What exactly you’ll be asking of your customers – set your reward based on the value they are driving – it’s okay to be cheap when you are asking for awareness. If you are asking them to drive sales, award them accordingly.
The lifetime value of a typical newly acquired customer and your typical cost per acquisition.
You should evaluate all of these factors when picking a suitable reward.
So, definitely make it easy for your customers to find your program, but once there, make it easy for them to share.
There are a number of ways customers can share referral marketing programs with their friends, including email, personal URL (PURL), Facebook, Twitter,. Give customers the option to choose among channels in order for sharing to be most effective. In all cases, make sharing easy and test and optimize messaging according to sharing channel.
What works best for Email isn’t necessarily best for FB or Twitter.
It’s all about making the experience exciting and having a high level of trust and authenticity, which ties into his discussion of giving customers engaging and competitively differentiating experiences.
and personalizing content/communications
And authenticity/storytelling/emotion
Make sure the friend experience is exciting and fosters a high level of trust in the referral program. This includes both the outbound sharing experience and the inbound referral experience.
Remember that FB post, Tweet or email is the top of funnel for the friend, so you should be using your standard techniques for optimizing it.
Copy matters. Genuine and friendly is best. Heavily branded share emails tend to trail in performance behind simpler, friendly emails. Some of the most effective Referral Marketing programs for companies that rely solely on referrals for acquistion use plain old unbranded text emails with great success. Make it intimate.
Try different subject lines. And most importantly – make sure your offer and your brand’s unique value proposition are clearly communicated.
One of the most effective ways to create an engaging experience for the friend is through the friend landing page. The friend landing page is the page that a friend sees upon clicking a trusted recommendation from
a customer sent through email, Facebook, Twitter, or a PURL (these channels are prepopulated with default messages, but can be personalized by sender if desired).
The friend landing page should describe the details of the referral program, communicate the offer and include a CTA for conversion. A conversion can be an opt-in, signup, redemption, or purchase.
The right time to promote referrals; giving customers plenty of chances in real-time to refer .
Driving awareness of a referral program is critical to its success. The more customers that see your program, the more that will participate and share the program with their friends. For the best promotion, use your site, your email list, yretargeting and traditional advertising– all of your customer touchpoints. An important point here is that it is owned assets as well as PAID media like traditional ads, retargeting.
Great promotion also means a great user experience. Make sure calls-to-action (CTAs), emails, and social promotions reflect your brand look and feel, are designed with the end user in mind, and are properly integrated into your site or property. Make sure it looks trusted, looks first party, looks easy. Make sure the CTA is clear.
Most importantly tailor your CTAs based on the touchpoint. You’ll see that your customers have very different motivations for participating at each point in their lifecycle and each interaction point. Tailor the messaging as well as how you ask for the share accordingly.
A great example of this is catching customer right after they made a purchase. They are on a buyer’s high – do you start with a banner ad or pop the sharing experience directly? We’ve seen 2-30% participation rates with just a banner, but 2x that when the customer doesn’t even have to click your ad. They can just share
Examples of post purchase, in package,
Here’s a typical optmization plan.
Referral Program Analytics
The right reporting and analytics are critical to monitoring and optimizing all elements of your referral program. You need to analyze performance by promotional placement – each placement will have different behavior as your customer has different motivations on your product page when in consideration mode versus your purchase confirmation page when they are on a buyers high. Look at performance by sharing channel – tweak your messges independently and accordingly., and understand who is sharing and how these shares are driving conversions. With this information, you can identify your top customer participants and target programs to to them to foster additional participation.
Optimizing the Program
Continually testing and optimizing program elements yield the best results. Test the promotional placements and copy, default sharing messages, remarketing efforts and more.
Extole referral marketing programs create a new channel of customer acquisition next to SEO and SEM. Brands seeking high growth use Extole to increase customer acquisition between 5-40 percent while also building brand loyalty and retention.
Increased Conversion Rates:
Email
Social channels
Traffic to website
Sales:
Higher AOV
Repeat Purchases
Awareness:
Social reach
Brand discovery