When a brand has a well-designed referral program but still struggles with low participation, the problem is often visibility. Let’s say you’ve offered a compelling reward, made it easy to earn, and designed the perfect landing page for your referral program–but customers still aren’t biting. When everything else about your program has been optimized, promotion is usually the missing link.
How to Boost Referral Program Visibility With Promotional Placements
Success isn’t just about the right reward–it’s about promoting your program in the right places. To capture customer attention, you need to boost your program across multiple channels, ensuring that referrals remain top of mind whenever and wherever customers interact with your brand. Here are 5 places you should be promoting your referral program–and how to make it as attention-grabbing as possible:
1. Email and SMS Campaigns
Your direct communication channels, such as email and SMS, are some of the most effective promotional tools in your arsenal. Customers who have already opted-in to receiving marketing emails or texts are the ideal audience for a referral ask, as they are more likely to be loyal brand ambassadors already. Embed a referral CTA into lifecycle messages such as welcome messages, post-purchase, and loyalty program updates, and share it as a standalone campaign like you would for other seasonal promotions.
Best Practices for Maximizing Referral Program Visibility
- Personalization is key: Something as simple as including a customer’s name in a promotional email can improve unique open rates by 29% and unique click throughs by 41%. You can even use their purchasing or browsing history to further personalize your messaging and CTAs.
- Make sharing easy: Your customer shouldn’t have to manually navigate to a specific page on your website in order to receive their referral code or link. Embed one-click share links in your promotion so customers can share with friends right from their email or messaging app, eliminating obstacles to conversion.
- Don’t neglect SMS: SMS should be a key part of your referral strategy–not an afterthought. SMS promotions have exceptionally high open rates (98%), and higher click through rates than email (6-36% depending on industry). Using Attentive with Extole can help you maximize your SMS referral strategy with highly engaging automated text message campaigns.
2. Post-Purchase Pop-Ups
Capitalize on customer excitement by placing a referral promotion immediately after purchase, when consumer delight hits its peak. A well-timed pop-up can convert momentum into a successful referral without the customer even leaving your website. Because they are hard to ignore, pop-ups are also a great way to drive awareness–even customers who don’t convert will retain knowledge of the program that might lead to participation down the road.
Best Practices for Maximizing Referral Program Visibility
- Be intentional with creative: More likely than not, the creative you use is the first thing customers’ eyes will land on. Use strong visuals that command attention and compel viewers to engage with the rest of the content. Swap out the imagery seasonally to keep things refreshing, on brand, and timely.
- Optimize your CTAs: A strong CTA can be the difference between a referral offer that gets clicked and one that fades completely into the background. Part of making sharing easy is ensuring that your CTAs tell your customer exactly what to do next, and why. Conduct A/B testing to experiment with multiple CTAs and find the best one.
- Tailor copy to different audiences: Make sure your copy is compelling to each unique user segment. Pop-ups aren’t just effective for recruiting new advocates, they are also a good place to encourage frequent brand advocates to reach new tiers of loyalty. Use pop-ups to remind advocates how much they’ve earned from past referrals, and consider offering more valuable rewards when they reach a certain number of referrals.
3. Mobile Push Notifications
For app-first brands, push notifications are key to keeping referrals top-of-mind–especially for users who aren’t engaging as frequently with your app. Push notifications are instant and high visibility, cutting through the clutter of a crowded inbox by appearing directly on a user’s screen. With the right messaging, you can use this channel to prompt immediate action–and even offer mobile-only limited-time incentives.
Best Practices for Maximizing Referral Program Visibility
- Get the timing right: Schedule push notifications during the times of day that users are more likely to be on their phones, like during lunchtime or in the evening. Attach them to specific user behaviors like browsing product pages or making a recent purchase to maximize the likelihood of engagement.
- Create urgency: Notifications need to make a strong impact with only a limited space for copy. Messaging that emphasizes urgency is a great way to drive clicks with low context. Promote a limited-time reward that prompts users to act quickly to earn more.
- Couple with in-app marketing: Use in-app notifications and messages to remind users of the referral offer while they’re engaging with your app.
4. Product Page Banners
Static, evergreen referral program placements are a key part of an effective promotional strategy. While they aren’t as action oriented as other promotions, they drive subtle, always-on visibility that helps prime customers to engage with other promotional channels. A banner at the top of your product page or in a side menu is a great place to share the details of your referral program to drive awareness even before purchase.
Best Practices for Maximizing Referral Program Visibility
- Test multiple variations: As with other aspects of your referral program, A/B testing is the best way to determine what will be most compelling to your customers. Test product vs. lifestyle imagery, different CTA placement, and even fonts and colors.
- Be transparent about reward value: Make sure the copy or CTA contains the reward customers will earn for referring their friends. Customers may be more hesitant to click into something if they aren’t sure whether it will be “worth it” to take action. This transparency also builds trust with your customers.
- Keep it fresh: Refreshing the banner seasonally can help with any creative fatigue that might negate the awareness impact of the placement.
5. In-Store Placements
While this particular promotion may not be relevant to all brands, it is highly effective for retailers, bankers, or any business with a brick-and-mortar presence. Seeing a promotion in person tends to have lasting effects–particularly if it’s attached to a branded item like a bag or a postcard that customers will carry home with them. Employees themselves can also act as in-store brand ambassadors by reminding customers of the referral program at checkout.
Best Practices for Maximizing Referral Program Visibility
- Get creative with it: What works well for your brand might look different from these suggestions. Banks can try putting referral promos on the back of branded envelopes, while retailers might consider putting a QR code on a clothing tag. Unique ideas are often more memorable than obvious ones.
- Enable employee ambassadors: equip your employees with a mobile referral app that allows them to capture referrals on-the-go. The new Go Extole app does just that, giving brands an easy way to empower in-person employee-to-customer acquisition
- Reinforce online: In-person promotions should not stand alone. Make sure you reinforce them with strategic online placements that retarget customers who have recently made in-store purchases.
Marketing Your Referral Program Doesn’t Need to be a Heavy Lift
Consistently reinforcing referral program visibility will help drive increased participation, encourage repeat advocacy, and increase customer engagement across the board. Using this list as a reference, audit your current referral promotion strategy. What are your current touchpoints? How many do you have? If you’re struggling with participation, consider adding at least 2-3 of these placements. For existing placements, regular refreshes alongside message testing will keep them as effective and eye-catching as possible.
Building a comprehensive promotional strategy can be challenging. With enterprise referral marketing solutions like Extole, you can easily promote your referral program across multiple channels and track what works best. Schedule automated promotional emails, SMS, and push notifications, plus design pop-ups and banners for every page on your website using drag-and-drop tools. Schedule a demo to see how simple it can be.
