How to Build a Refer a Friend Funnel with Gather

In this article we show you how to maximise your efforts in launching your Gather Refer a Friend campaign.

We discuss the following steps in a typical Refer a Friend Funnel:

  1. The Importance of Identifying your Referral Funnel

  2. Maximising Returns

  3. Launch Phase

  4. Continuation Phase

  5. Key Trigger Points

  1. The Importance of Identifying Your Referral Funnel

In any referral funnel there will be drop-offs at each stage. However, with specific triggers in place, to keep the wheel turning, your Gather Referral Campaign will maximise conversions and grow your customer/subscriber database. In this article we help you identify your funnel and the key points to maximise conversion.

Typically we see the highest conversions, approximately 30%+, when a customer sends an invitation to their friend and they become a customer.

However, the lowest conversion in the funnel is when you attempt to convert your customer base to become advocates. Including as many triggers or Calls To Action (CTA), to your customers to become advocates, will maximise conversion rates and the rest of the funnel will take care of itself.

As soon as you activate your Gather Refer a Friend campaign you need to place CTAs in as many points as you can in front of your customer base. If you map out your funnel then you can identify the points where you can trigger your customers to become advocates.

2. Maximising Returns

Launching a referral campaign to your existing customer database will increase the Return On Investment (ROI) of other efforts you have in place for building a customer database; for example Facebook or Google advertising. If you can turn customers acquired, through advertising, into advocates this with increase the ROI of the original advertising and the lifetime value of the customer will increase when they bring you an additional customer.

A Gather Refer A Friend campaign compliments your advertising and grows your customer base with newly referred friends who wouldn’t necessarily have heard of your brand.

3. The Launch Phase

A typical referral funnel begins when you activate your Gather campaign and send out email marketing to your existing customer/subscriber database. In this communication you tell your existing customers/subscribers about your campaign and trigger them with a call to action (CTA) to start referring through your website. Using the links Gather gives your customer/subscriber they then open the Gather referral widget on your site.

We always recommend that the CTA links through to an advocate specific landing page that explains to your customer/subscriber exactly why they should become an advocate of in your campaign.

Your customers/subscribers then start making referrals, using their own unique link, through email or social media to their friends. The friends can then click on their unique, trackable, invitation link that lands on your site. This will prompt the Gather referral widget to open on your site where they opt-in to receive their reward.

We encourage you to link friends through to a dedicated landing page on your site that tells them why they should join and why their friend has referred them and why their friend is a customer of your brand.

The friend, if you choose, will receive a reward code and make a purchase or subscription.

4. Continuation Phase

Once the friend has redeemed their reward, they then land on the order/subscription confirmation page and through Gather’s popup you can ping them and ask them to join the referral program just like their friend did. They are then directed to the original Gather referral widget where they sign up becoming an advocate and the cycle begins again.

This is the typical successful referral funnel which you will have running on your campaign.

5. Key Trigger Points

As we mentioned earlier, to maximise conversions of customers to advocates the following triggers are recommended in your funnel:

  • Communications with Customers: If you send periodic emails to your customer base, e.g. a newsletter, you can include a banner that says refer a friend and you can send them to the referral program.

  • Referral Success Emails: Advocates will get an email from your Gather campaign every time they make a successful referral.

  • Advocate Dashboards: You can choose to to send advocates a weekly email with a summary of their performance. You can use this to trigger them to make more referrals as they can see how many more referrals they need to complete a tier or to get further rewards. Gather sends data points to Mailchimp or Shopify to facilitate this.

    The following triggers target both new and existing customers to become advocates:

  • Adding Customer Referral Links to Customer Receipts: New customers, through advertising, will make a purchase. On the receipt you can include a link to your campaign inviting them to join your referral campaign, directing them into your funnel.

  • Adding Customer Referral Links to Order Confirmations: You can also use Gather to include an overlay on your order confirmation page inviting them to make a referral, which will direct them again in to your funnel.

So remember: to maximise the returns from your referral campaign, identify your funnel and add as many trigger points in front of customers, as you can, to ensure conversion to advocates and the friends will follow.

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