The tragedy of most marketing channels is that they inevitably plateau – any growing company will eventually find a point where their growth halts and they have to find a new channel. Time and time again, the only consistent channel for hypergrowth companies is word of mouth.
Don’t believe me? Consider Dropbox – a billion dollar company built entirely on the back of a referral program. If you want to drive more customer referrals, here are a few tips!
1. Set up a referral program
First, let’s get the obvious out of the way – it’s hard to incentivize scaleable customer referrals without an actual, well-thought and well-implemented referral program.
2. Track the customer journey
To maximize the success of referral requests, they’re best sent at a time when your customers are at their most satisfied – the only way to know this is to track your customer (and their satisfaction, via metrics like NPS) every step of the way and trigger requests during peak periods.
3. Lead Enrichment
The more you understand your customers, the better you can target those more likely to drive referrals. Use lead enrichment tools like MadKudu and ClearBit to deep-dive into your past referrals. You could even squeeze these into a tool like Monkeylearn to “predict” a customers likelihood of referring you.
4. Reward Referrals
Companies that cheap out on referral spending predictably plateau in word-of-mouth growth. Even if you break even on a referral, the virality and customer loyalty a strong referral reward inspires will pay its dividends tenfold in lifetime value.
5. Properly Document It
Many a company has lost out on the benefits of a referral program because most of their customers aren’t even aware it exists. In addition to triggered messaging, extremely salient and well-written documentation is essential
