So many people interact with your brand each day: there’s everyone who visits your site…everyone who sees your messaging…and of course everyone who purchases your products or services.
Your brand may not be right for everyone who encounters it, but chances are everyone knows someone who’s right for your brand. This is why referral marketing is such an effective acquisition channel: in the moments when your brand is top of mind, everyday advocates help you reach new customers you can’t find through other channels. And people trust the people they know, more than any other marketing.
But even though they’re all valuable, not all advocates are created equal. In order to drive the most — and most effective — sharing, you have to be able to know who has the biggest impact.
How do you identify your best advocates?
You can see which of your customers are worth the most by looking at purchase histories and lifetime value. (Referred customers, on the whole, tend to be more valuable than customers acquired through other channels. One long-term study found that customers acquired through referral are 25% more profitable per year, are 18% less likely to churn, and have 25% higher LTV than non-referred customers.)
But how do you tell which of your advocates are the most valuable and effective at helping you acquire new customers? Which have the most outsized impact on your revenue? Extole’s platform automatically shows your best advocates, segmented by their reach, shares, and the conversions they’ve driven, along with who your newest referral customers are.
Once you know your top advocates, surprise and celebrate them
There are a ton of ways to target and retarget these specific segments to drive sharing. For example, you could:
- Ask all your new customers who came in through referrals to share with their friends
- Surprise and delight key advocates to thank them for their loyalty
- Create higher-reward campaigns for your advocates with the most social influence
We’ll take an in-depth look at how to do this in upcoming posts.