8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 1

8 Steps
to Initiating the Right
Launch Sequence for your
Referral Program
 Contents
Introduction 3
Part 1: Planning your referral program 4
Step 1: Decide who will “pilot” your referral program 5
Step 2: Take advantage of your sales team’s know-it-alls 6-7
Part 2: Designing your referral program 8
Step 3: Design a program that fuels referrals 9
Easy registration options 10
Personalized advocate referral methods 11
Referral program management 12
Sales enablement tools 13-14
Step 4: Select rewards that motivate referrals 15-16
Part 3: Develop promotions for your referral program 17
Step 5: Promotional placement that prompts advocate recruitment 18-20
Step 6: Promotions that propel advocate referrals 21-22
Part 4: Launch and optimize your referral program 23
Step 7: Roll out your referral program 24
Step 8: Optimize your referral program outstandingly 25-26
Conclusion: Oh the places you’ll go . . . with a referral program 27
About Amplifinity 28
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 3

Referral marketing
delivers ROI which surpasses traditional
digital marketing solutions
In fact, nearly half (43%) of marketers who regularly use referral programs have
acquired 35% or more of their new customers via referrals, according to Gigaom
Referral Marketing
Research’s Digital Marketers Survey. That is double the percentage of new customer Automation Defined
acquisitions through email marketing.
Referral marketing taps into your
This makes perfect sense when you consider the large amount of noise your brand valuable customer, partner, and
has to try and break through because of the over saturation of content marketing. The
best way to filter out the noise is to capitalize on the trust of customers, partners, and
employee base to motivate and
employees by emailing them to refer your company directly to prospects. incentivize advocates to refer their
personal and professional network
Whether you’re an expanding enterprise or an ambitious start up, in order to make your to your product or service with one-
referral program successful you’ll need to launch a program that reflects your specific to-one personalized social posts,
business and promote it through channels that reach your advocate demographic.
email, or offline messages. Referral
This e-book will explore the 8 step process of launching and promoting a referral marketing automation enables the
program that empowers your business to drive revenue growth. automation, tracking, and attribution
of referrals while streamlining the
reward process to run referrals as
a consistent channel for demand
generation. This allows companies
to reach target buyers at scale in a
personalized way.
 Part One
@
Planning your referral program
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8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 5

Decide who will “pilot” your

Step
referral program

When you’re considering launching a referral program there are three types of
programs you should consider.
How to select a referral
program
1. Customer referral program – Targets customers that want to share the value of
your business with their personal and professional network. A customer referral
• Choose a customer referral program
program is an ingenious vehicle to increase customer engagement and is the most
if you have a strong customer base
common type of referral program because it naturally taps into the customer’s peer
who has access to potential buyers.
relationships that have comparable needs to their own.

2. Partner referral program – Targets ambassadors and referral partners to enable • Implement a partner referral
them to advocate for you. When implementing a partner referral program you gain program if you have an existing
the ability of leveraging the large pool of potential ambassadors who interact with base of referral partners that are
the target buyers while improving the productivity and success of current referral under performing.
partners and new referral partners by easily automating the referral process.
(Note – You may want to consider multiple partner programs if you have different • Start an employee referral program
types of partners.) if you have a large employee base
that has access to potential buyers
3. Employee referral program – Targets your business employees and incentivizes or if your industry is restricted from
them to refer their friends and family to your business. An employee referral rewarding customers. Additionally,
program is a lucrative addition to a customer or partner referral program. an employee program would be
selected if your goal is to recruit
high quality employees.
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8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 6

Take advantage of your

Step
sales team

Sales has the most interaction with customers and

partners and can therefore contribute a great deal
Referral program benefits
of insight into the strategy and tactics to create a for sales
successful program.

Take advantage of that knowledge and ask your sales • Get more high quality leads
team:
• View the advocate who
1. How are they currently getting referrals? made the referral in your
Your business may already be acquiring referrals
but not consistently. By asking your salespeople
CRM to call, pre-qualify the
how and when referrals come in you can understand referral, and receive a warm
how to streamline in a way for sales to continue what introduction by the advocate
is already working while leveraging technology to
generate even more referral activity.
• View an advocate’s activity to
2. Can they help recruit advocates? create positive engagement
If yes, you’ll want to integrate your program into your
CRM and make it an easy one-click invite from a
contact record. • Improves the lifetime value of
your customers
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
3. Would the sales team appreciate the
ability to input referrals on behalf of
advocates?
When salespeople or a member of the customer
success team are communicating with an advocate,
there is an opportunity to ask for referrals. You’ll
want to consider providing the ability to input verbal
referrals in order to track and attribute them to the
right advocate, and make it effortless on the part of
the advocate.
4. Do sales leaders want support to ensure
that sales follows through on referral
leads?
If so, you’ll want to send emails to each salesperson
on a regular basis that notifies them when they get
a new referral lead and when their advocate has a
successful referral. Referral automation software can
automate this process so marketing never has to worry
about manually managing the emails.
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5. Is sales management interested in specific program metrics to
help manage their team?
If yes, you’ll want to include reporting dashboards on sales referral program
performances so that this can be tracked. Leaderboards and rankings by teams or
individuals can help motivate achievement of the goals.
6. Should you consider more than one referral program?
Even if you’re only catering to one advocate group, there are a number of reasons
why sales might urge you to consider more than one referral program. If you have
different styles of communication with different customer demographics or partners,
different reward strategies to motivate behavior, or a variety of referable products,
it would be advantageous to implement more than one referral program so you can
tailor the advocate experience to maximize the performance of the program.
7. How should referral leads be routed?
Consult with your sales leaders and consider allowing referral leads to route to the
salesperson that has the strongest relationship with the referring advocate. This
provides extra incentive for salespeople to develop great relationships with their
customers and ask for referrals often.
8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 8

Part Two
Design your referral program
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Design a program that

Step
fuels referrals

Determining the design decisions of your referral rocket

is step 3 in launching an outstanding referral program.

Your referral design decisions include:

1. Selecting a registration option that makes

it easy to participate

2. Choosing referral methods that are

personal

3. Picking program management tools that

contribute to the ease of use

4. Choosing features that enable sales

8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 10

1. Easy registration options Standard registration is a common choice for a partner

program as it makes sense to collect tax information and
Select a registration option that provides the lowest mailing addresses up front to ensure tax compliance and
barrier for an advocate. seamless reward distribution.

Single Sign On (SSO) – The lowest barrier for your

advocates is to utilize SSO from a user community or
subscription based product. This saves advocates time
Program Design Tip
and encourages participation by leveraging credentials
that they have already established to grant direct access White labeling your referral
to referral tools.
program so it carries your
Social registration – Social registration is becoming brand’s look and feel infuses
more popular as a means to join the community. Few authenticity and increases
people or businesses can say that they don’t have some advocate registration because
type of social media account. This means that instead
of your customers, employees, or partners having to of its identifiable branding.
register and create another set of credentials to access
your referral program they can just use the one login that
is most ingrained in their mind.

Standard registration – If you still require a more

customized single or multi-step registration process
and SSO or social registration doesn’t fit your business,
standard registration provides exactly what you need.
8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
2. Personalized advocate referral methods
The more empowerment tools provided to advocates,
the more likely they are to make referrals. In order to
appeal to all advocates, consider the following referral
methods when designing your program:
• Social sharing (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
• Email
• Personalized URLs
• Printed cards
• Suggest a lead
• Verbal referral codes
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By offering advocates the option of personalizing the
referral process with their preferred communication
method you increase referrals made. But after your
advocates make a referral, waiting to see if a referral is
successful can be frustrating, especially if they don’t
know where in the process their referral resides. This
can lead to calls to the sales team or support team if
advocates don’t have full transparency into the program.
Provide advocates with a personal portal showing
their referral activity and status to ensure a positive
experience and additional referrals.
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3. Referral program management
Ensuring that your referral program is tax compliant
and updating the program’s content are two necessary
features to enable easy program management.
Another capability that helps take the pressure off your
marketers is powerful content management. The ability
for your marketers to update, edit, and optimize content
and program settings without help from IT resources is
important to keeping your program flying high.

Once your advocates reach rewards of $599 dollars,

your marketers have to start that annoying process of
getting their tax information so that finance can report
their reward earnings.

By incorporating a tax management feature the W-9

form can be automatically sent to an advocate with their
reward contingent upon completion.
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4. Sales enablement tools Client Tips

An essential element of sales enablement is visibility.
Sales teams that have the ability to view where a lead A highly regarded business
originated, who referred the lead, the success of an services client leveraged their
advocate, and if an advocate needs further nurturing
empowers sales to increase the percentage of
sales team to promote their
successful referrals by providing them with necessary referral program with sales
insight. enablement tools that recruited
advocates and nurtured referrals
A prominent client saw the need for enhanced sales
visibility and integrated their referral program data into
resulting in an 81% increase in
their CRM system to allow the customer success team to program participation.
view a customer’s referral status before calling for their
quarterly business review. This way they were able to
recognize advocates for their efforts and start calls on a
positive note.
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 14

4. Sales enablement tools (continued)

However, sales wants more than visibility in the referral

program. To get your sales team helping to drive referral
success, provide tools such as sales nurturing, advocate
recruitment, and CRM integration. These components
will enable sales to:

• Prioritize referral leads

• View the advocate who made the referral to quickly
qualify
• Recruit advocates directly
• Input new referrals on behalf of the advocate

Sales enablement is crucial for a company with a direct

sales team or partner team that engages with advocates
and results in:

• Increased participation by advocates and sales

teams
• Improved quality of customer conversations about
referrals
• Enhanced referral leads follow up

With these sales enablement tools incorporated into your

program design you give your salespeople the power
make your referral rocket take off.
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Select rewards that

Step
motivate referrals

While 83% of prospects are willing to refer, only 29%
actually do (Texas Tech University). Loyalty might
make an advocate willing to refer your business but
rewards are the main incentives for advocates to follow
through on referrals and for prospects to make the
jump to becoming customers.
Once you select one or multiple types of rewards, create
a reward strategy that motivates continuous advocate
engagement.
Consider these referral reward strategies that will
enhance your program’s appeal:

When designing your reward process, the reward Reward Choice – Reward choice lets an advocate
should be considered relative to your cost per lead choose their reward. This makes the reward more
(CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA) while still large personalized than a predefined reward and improves the
enough to motivate action. Some types of rewards you program’s performance.
should consider offering your advocates are:
Double Sided Rewards – Double-sided rewards
• Monetary incentives by check reward both the advocate and their referral. This gives
• Bill credits advocates an extra incentive to refer as they will provide
• Loyalty club points or brand value to their contact.
currency
• Exclusive access to new
products or features
• Charitable donations
• Gift cards
• Payroll/paycheck deposit
• Coupon codes
• Swag
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
Multi-Stage Rewards – Multi-stage rewards spread
out the time period that the reward is distributed. This
is highly useful when a business has a long sales
cycle or when the definition of a successful referral
includes a retention period. Multi-stage rewards
keep the advocate engaged and incentivizes them to
participate in helping close the sale.
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For example, let’s say that a business offers a $100 reward
to an advocate upon a successful referral. If a referral is only
considered successful upon staying with the business for
three months it leaves the advocate waiting a long time to
receive that reward and makes it less likely for an advocate
to continue referring during that three month period. But
if the fulfillment of the reward is split up so the advocate
receives $25 upon their referral becoming a customer and
the remaining $75 when their referral has stayed with the
business for three months, the $25 will keep the advocate
engaged in the referral program and continue to encourage
referrals while they wait for the remaining $75.
Consider implementing one or more of these three reward
strategies to give your referral program the power to offer and
deliver rewards that motivate and excite advocates to refer.
8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 17

Part Three
Develop promotions for your
referral program
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Promotional placement that

Step
prompts advocate recruitment

No matter which promotional channel you use, the best

practices for messaging are universal. Be very clear as
to what you ask for (a referral) and what your advocates
can get by taking that action (the reward).

For instance, a large SaaS client offered up their reward

at the front of their promotions resulting in increased
involvement in their referral program. This leaves the
question of where you’re promoting these incentives to
your advocates.

Here are 7 promotional channels divided by the type

of program (customer, employee, or partner) that they
empower.
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
Promotions for customer, employee, and
partner programs
1. Homepage – The homepage of a website is a key
place to let customers, employees, and partners
know about a referral program. This same concept
applies to the homepage of your employee intranet
or partner portals when recruiting employee or
partner advocates.
2. Email – Current email campaigns are an
exceptionally effective way to promote a referral
program and build awareness by including a link to
the program in the footer. In addition to your current
email campaigns, create dedicated emails that
emphasize the benefits of your referral program. If
you have regular newsletters, make sure the program
is advertised in a prominent location.
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Promotions for customer and partner programs
1. Targeted Display and Banner Ads – Targeted display and banner ads can be
placed on vertical or relevant pages for customer and partner programs. This is an
especially promising technique for partner programs because of the opportunity to
find the types of partner advocates you’re searching for on vertical websites.
2. Online Product or Account Center – If a business has an online subscription
product or an account page for specified groups of advocates, promoting your
referral program through it is ideal. By placing calls to action along the side,
bottom, or top of the page you can take advantage of the visibility.
3. User Events – User events are an exceptional way to interact with customers
and partners on a personal level and establish a face to face relationship. By
adding a kiosk to a user event you gain the ability to bring customers directly to
it and register them for your program in person while gaining the opportunity to
encourage referrals immediately.
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Promotions exclusively for customer 2. Sales Invite – Empowering sales with the tools to
programs invite advocates to a referral program directly from
a CRM will allow you to invoke the relationship and
1. New Customer Invite – The completion of a trust a salesperson has built with their customers.
purchase is a great time to ask your customers That personal relationship makes customers more
to participate in your referral program. A security willing to accept the invite as opposed to a mass
company recognized this through observing that invite to your whole database.
their customers are happiest just after they have their
system installed. In response to that information, they
automated a triggered invite into the program when
a customer responds positively in their customer
satisfaction survey. This automated event became
the top way advocates were recruited into the
program.
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8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
Promotions that propel
Step
advocate referrals
Promoting to already established advocates is just as
important as promotions that aim to recruit advocates.
Here are six different kinds of promotions that further
incentivize advocates to refer:
1. Sweepstakes – Adding the additional incentive of
an entry into a sweepstakes every time an advocate
makes a new referral increases an advocate’s
motivation to refer. This can be especially useful
seasonally, when coming to the end of a busy
season or during a slow growth period.
A large telecommunications client ran a promotion
where any customer who made a referral was
entered in a drawing to receive an iPad. The result of
this promotional strategy was a significant increase in
referral activity.
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2. Tiered Rewards – Tiered rewards offer advocates
rewards that increase as the amount of successful
referrals increase. This drives repeat engagement
in the referral program as a result of the increased
incentives offered.
For instance, a large cable company doubled the
amount of bill credits rewarded once an advocate
achieved 3 successful referrals. This increased
repeat participation in the program.
3. Special Offers – Special offers are great to promote
at any time. It allows you to reengage your advocates
by offering them a deal that’s too good to pass up.
A client that provides a business management
solution created a countdown clock for advocates
that built a sense of urgency and encouraged
increased referrals to get the special offer. The result
was increased engagement in their referral program.
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 22

4. Promote with sales and customer success –

Enable sales and customer success with the data on
Client Tips
the advocate activity in the program so they can help
define the ideal prospect to refer and encourage A home security client regularly
more referrals with each interaction they have with saved families from burglary and
advocates.
carbon monoxide poisoning.
5. Retargeting – Marketing should track all program They understood that this
metrics and use that data to encourage referrals. success created an opportune
Key targets would be special offers to top advocates
time to ask the members of the
or communications to advocates who logged in, but
didn’t make a referral. family to become an advocate
and refer. By making the
6. Automated email reminders – Automated emails ask during a point of brand
reminding advocates of their referral program activity
and status can also help to encourage program
excitement they obtained higher
engagement. commitment and involvement in
their referral program.
8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 23

Part Four
Launch and optimize your
referral program
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Roll out your referral

Step
program

Once you’re ready to launch your referral program In addition, you’ll need to roll out advertisements
marketing, sales and customer success needs training that make a large impact to capture your
to integrate your program into their process. advocate’s attention.

This training should include: Make sure that you:

• The program structure and reward • Get creative with your promotions
• How the program will be promoted to the advocates • Emphasize both the advocate and prospect reward
• Clear definition around the role of marketing, sales • Advertise 24/7
and customer success in the program • Change your promotional message up often
• Any changes to the lead assignment rules/process • Create special promotions for specific times of year
• How to view referral leads in their CRM or events
• Where to see if a lead comes from a referral • Use every one of your available channels to promote
• How to view an advocate’s activity so you can your referral program
be informed of their success (or failures) before
engaging with them
• How to interact with advocates to get information
about their referral
• How to invite advocates to the program
• When the right time is to make an ask for a customer
to become an advocate or an advocate to make
more referrals
• When and how advocate ownership should be
transferred to the customer success team (If
applicable)
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Optimize your program

Step
outstandingly

To craft a referral program that keeps you ‘in the know’

make sure to regularly check key reports in order to
Client Tips
optimize your program. These reports should include:
A telecommunication client ran
ROI Dashboards – An ROI dashboard empowers a a report on the top advocates
brand to quickly see the referral program’s progress and
the channels that are serving the referral program best. that are referring and contacted
This is a good place to start to see if you have any trends them individually by phone
that can be improved. Metrics like the value of each to thank them and show
advocate, revenue of each advocate, and the number of
their appreciation for their
successful referrals by month and year are only some of
the metrics that empower the ROI dashboards. efforts, resulting in increased
involvement in the program.
Touchpoints – Touchpoint management tracks the
effectiveness of promotions that recruit advocates.
This allows for promotion adjustments to be made to
maximize enrollment.
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 26

Advocate communication preferences – Track which

communication channels advocates use to make
Client Tips
referrals. Understanding their preferred channels
enables you to remarket to this key audience in a format A SaaS client created links to
that they’re inclined to interact with. track what promotions were
Test rewards – Take the time to test the effectiveness performing the best. They then
of rewards. By trying out different reward types, reallocated efforts to the best
amounts and methods you can then look over the data performers and eliminated the
to determine what offers the greatest incentives to
ones that weren’t performing.
advocates and referrals.
 8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M
Oh the places you’ll go . . .
Launching a referral program is an advantageous move
for your business. After all, research has shown that:
• Customers are 400% more likely to buy a product
recommended by a friend. (Nielsen)
• Leads generated from referrals convert 4X better
than marketing leads. (emarketer)
• The LTV of a referred customer is 16% higher than
that of non-referred customers. (Harvard Business
Review)
• Referred customers churn 18% less than non-
referred customers. (Marketing Business Review)
27
with a referral program
If you want to become a part of these statistics don’t
start the final countdown to launch unless you have
referral features and promotions designed with your
business goals in mind. Ensure that the referral program
you launch will effortlessly engage advocates, motivate
prospects, and empower your sales team.
Promote your referral program early and repeatedly. And
finally, don’t let others’ limitations determine how high
you fly. Whoever said the sky was the limit never had
referral automation software.
Contact Amplifinity to help understand what you need
in your referral program to take your business to new
heights.
Learn how Amplifinity’s referral software will launch your
revenue growth. Request a demo today!
8 S TE P S TO I NI T IA T IN G T H E RIGH T L AU NC H SEQU EN C E FOR YOU R R EFER R A L PR OGR A M 28
@

Amplifinity’s referral automation software turns customer,

employee and partner advocacy into revenue. Our
platform provides complete tracking and management
of referrals with 100% accuracy so no referral is missed.
Enterprises like ADP and DIRECTV trust Amplifinity
to enable high-quality acquisition while providing an
engaging, fully-branded experience for their advocates.

Amplifinity.com