A Referral Program Checklist

Here, in the Gather Academy we have a number of detailed how-to articles to help you along the way.

At Gather, we want every campaign to maximise it’s ROI. So, in this article, we provide you with a checklist to ensure that all areas of your campaign have been addressed and your campaign is ready to be activated.

Let’s get started!

1.Design Advocate and Friend Banners

Branding is paramount to your campaign success. Branding allows your to personalise your campaign and make it stand out to existing and potential customers.

Here at Gather we really like Canva as a tool for designing professional, affordable banners and pop-ups. find Find out how to upload your designs to Gather here.

Here are a few key points to remember when designing banners:

• We recommend 1000px wide X 400px high

• Leave a border/blank space at the bottom (approx the bottom 1/3 should be blank)

• Test out your banners on a computer and mobile device to ensure pictures and text are correctly displayed

• Include the main creatives for your campaign

• Create a banner for your advocates and one for their friends.

2. Add a Refer a Friend Landing Page to your Site

A typical referral funnel begins when you activate your Gather campaign and send out email marketing to your existing customer database. In this communication you tell your existing customers 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 they then open the Gather referral interface on your site.

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

Include in the landing page the following:

• Your pitch: Why they should join your campaign

• The same banners used in the campaign

• A set of frequently asked questions and answers

• A link to your campaign (opens the embedded campaign).

3. Add a Friends Landing Page to Your Site

This is the page your advocate’s friends land on when they click on their link to accept their invitation from the advocate. This page should include;

• A strong hero image / header

• A pitch telling them why they should join their friend and sign up

• A list of Frequently Asked Questions

You can choose in your campaign preferences how you would like the Friend’s opt-in form/event to load. E.g. on page load as a pop-up or with a JavaScript trigger.

4. Add a Clickable Call To Action to your Website’s Homepage

Your homepage is a good area for adding a subtle CTA to prompt customers to refer their friends. This is unlike a product page or a category page where the visitor will be more focused on making a product purchasing decision.

Some of our customers add to their homepage a CTA banner to refer-a-friend. The banner links to a refer -a-friend landing page which provides more information on the program. Alternatively, a subtle clickable link in the footer of the page can take them to the refer a friend landing page.

5. Add a Clickable Call To Action to your Website’s Template

Some of our customers include subtle refer a friend CTAs in these area of their site:

• A top notification banner on the site

• As a menu item

• The site’s footer.

All refer a friend CTAs usually direct customers to a refer-a-friend landing page, which provides more information on the program (as noted above).

6. Add a Clickable Banner to the Bottom of Every Email Newsletter Sent

As noted in point 2, including CTAs in several places ensures that your referral funnel is successful. Provide existing customers with the opportunity to join your campaign by including a clickable banner button to all email newsletters you send out. You can find the link you need to insert in your banner in the integration section of your account.

7. Create a ‘Launch Refer a Friend Email’ in your Email Marketing Application

Gather integrates with MailChimp and Robly and Klaviyo. Regardless of your email marketing application, a great CTA is to initiate a refer a friend program email to launch your campaign. When you are ready to launch your campaign you can trigger your existing email subscribers with a call to action email introducing your campaign. As noted in point 6 above, this will include a clickable banner button that will land them on your refer-a-friend landing page created in point 2.

8. Add a Refer a Friend CTA at the Bottom of Transactional Emails, e.g. Shopify Receipt Emails

By adding a CTA link on the bottom of transactional emails or receipts you are able to target new and existing customers. On making 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.

9. Add a Refer a Friend Pop-up to the Order Confirmation page (Post Purchase)

Probably the most important CTA you can include to funnel customers into your referral campaign is by asking them to join your referral program when they are at their most engaged, post purchase. Gather not only facilitates referral campaigns, but also pop-ups on your site. A great time to trigger someone to join your referral program is when they have just made a purchase. With Gather you can include a pop-up, which opens on a order confirmation page that links them back to your referral campaign.

For information on how to set up a pop-up, refer to the following article.

10. Add Gather Link to the Refer a Friend Landing Page

With Gather, you are able to embed your referral interface anywhere on your site using a floating button which launches the refer a friend sidebar interface (refer to the integrations section for the links required).

That said, sometimes you may want to launch the referral experience from within certain parts of the page. In this article, using a little coding know-how, we show you how to add a call to action anywhere in your site.

11. Set Rewards and/or Upload Coupon Codes (generate them first if need be)

The key things to remember when uploading discount codes are as follows:

• Files must be in the .CSV format

• Remove all columns from your spreadsheet except for the codes

• Name the code column: Code

• No more than 1000 codes can be uploaded in a single sheet, so split up excess codes and upload each sheet.

For more information on how to generate codes and upload them to your campaign, see here.

12. Personalise your Campaign Messaging

• Social media messaging

  Gather allows your advocates to invite their friends using Social media, including Twitter, Whatsapp, Facebook and LinkedIn. In the Editor section of Gather you can personalise your messaging. For more information please read the following article.

• Email invitation messaging

  Set the tone of your campaign and personalise the messaging using the Editor section of your Gather campaign. With Gather, you can send the email invitations on behalf of your advocates, or, your advocate can send their invite direct from their native email client. Check out the links to find out more on how to do this.

13. Set your Campaign Preferences

Gather has a number of default preferences set to your campaign. Please ensure your review and change the preferences according to your particular requirements in order to maximise your campaign gains. We have a useful article on how to do this here.

14. Add the Gather Merge Tags to Mailchimp Newsletters so that Customers know their Referral Progress.

When a new referral takes place, Gather pushes to MailChimp a number of merge fields which are unique to your advocates and their friends. By using the tags Gather provides to Mailchimp you are able to provide your subscribers with you personalised information on their progress through your reward program. For information on the benefits and how to use the merge tags, refer to this handy article.

• add the Gather script to your template. If you're on Shopify this will be done by activating the campaign

15. Activate the Campaign

Once you are happy with your campaign and have completed a test run - you are ready to hit the activate button!

16. Check the stats in the Dashboard

Monitor your campaign, using the campaign dashboard and Advocate’s section of your campaign. If you have enabled fraud detection on your campaign you will need to monitor your advocates for any pending invitations that require approval.

As always, let us know if you have any questions on your campaign!