Catch the Customer Advocate Wave

Some referrers are being rewarded with an incentive they can’t take to the bank: good karma.

Time Warner Cable discusses traditional referral programs and social media work together to increase customer engagement.

Google products are the most popular choices among about 150 “unicorn” startups

The most successful referral programs actually design for consumer psychology in a way that truly unleashes the power of referral.

During a panel at the 2016 Content2Conversion and Demand Gen Summit conference, moderated by Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase, Atmel’s Sander Arts and Extole’s Jen Gray discussed their journeys with ABM.

First impressions are everything, and it’s especially true when it comes to user onboarding.  That’s why it’s so crucial to obsessively perfect your onboarding flow

The company believes that by ensuring both sides of customer advocacy-derived transactions are rewarded, it is the customers who will see the benefits, rather than the advertisers.

As a whole millennials represent $200 billion in spending power.

Ecommerce merchants are engaged a constant battle for the attention of fickle consumers. It is now generally accepted that Americans spend about 25 percent of their online time, across devices, on social channels.

The very rare outlier companies like PayPal and Dropbox have hogged the headlines by driving insane, viral growth with their customer referral programs. If you’re benchmarking your referral program against theirs to gauge how you’re doing, it’s easy to get discouraged.

Extole announces the three finalists for the first annual Advocacy and Customer Experience Award, to Honor the best referral marketing program of the year.

Extole announced the launch of its official partner program with ten industry-leading marketing technology providers: Adobe, Branch Metrics, Bounce Exchange, Demandware, Ensighten, Marketo, Optimizely, Tealium, Vibes and Yozio.

Total Retail discusses why Hanna Andersson’s Extole-powered referral program has been able to drive such strong customer acquisition and revenue.

Referred customers are better customers — they’re worth more, they’re more loyal, and they refer more new customers. Chris Duskin talks to Loyalty360 about how referred customers lead to brand loyalty.

John Egan notes rising spending in social media marketing. Using data from Gigaom and Extole’s “Workhorses and dark horses: digital tactics for customer acquisition” report, he examines whether that’s a good thing.

Today referral marketer Extole announced it has landed $14 million in a Series C round led by Scale Venture Partners.

Extole’s new survey of retail digital marketers reveals that email, referral marketing, and SEO are the most effective acquisition channels. Spending is up on email, social, and mobile, while display, content, and paid search have see significant spending declines. Ayaz Nanji discusses the survey’s surprises about channel effectiveness, budgets, and more.

In Fortune magazine, Jennifer Alsever writes about how companies like Nomad are turning customers into advocates on social media using referral marketing.