How to create a customer referral program

Referral programs are an excellent way to reward your customers and help them earn rewards themselves. By rewarding existing customers for their referrals, you can build word-of-mouth marketing campaigns that can help increase customer loyalty and retention. Plus, when your customers share their experiences with your company on social media or with their friends and family, they become brand advocates who can influence others to do business with you as well.

The key to any successful referral program is making it easy for your customers to refer others while also providing them with a great incentive for doing so. In this article, we will go through referral ideas and discuss how to implement this program in your business.

Customer Referral Program Ideas

1. Referral incentives

Offer existing customers a reward, such as a discount or a gift card, for every new customer they refer.

When you’re creating your referral program, it’s important to consider what kind of incentives you want to offer. A good way to get started is by thinking about what kind of reward would motivate a customer who already loves your product or service.

For example, if you offer a customer a $50 gift card when they refer a customer to you, this is a good way to incentivize customers to share your business with others.

2. Referral bonuses

Provide bonuses to customers who reach a certain number of referrals within a certain time period.

For this kind of program, it’s important to offer a bonus for achieving a certain number of referrals within a certain time period. This can be a $50 gift card to your business or to amazon or some other general-use incentive.

In addition to offering rewards that are meaningful to customers, it is also wise to make sure they’re easily accessible and easy for them to use.

3. Exclusive deals

Offer exclusive deals or discounts to customers who refer their friends and family.

The power of a referral program comes from the word “referral.” There are plenty of ways to reward customers for referring their friends and family, but exclusive deals are one of the most powerful.

An exclusive deal is when you offer a special discount or freebie to customers who refer their friends and family. For example, if you own a carpet cleaning company and someone refers someone to get their carpets cleaned. Maybe you give them a 10% discount on their next cleaning for the referral. Another idea is 5% off per referral up to 10 referrals a year.

4. Social sharing

Make it easy for customers to share your products or services on social media by including social sharing buttons on your website or in your email marketing campaigns.

Make it easy for customers to share their experience and referral with friends and family: Include a link to the referral program in all of your customer communications, whether they come from email marketing campaigns, direct mail pieces, or any other channels you use.

5. Referral contest

Host a referral contest with a grand prize, such as a $100 gift card or something else that will ensure action if taken.

Some good theme ideas for this is having a new year kick-off contest, a march madness contest, spring cleaning, back to school, and Halloween.

How to set up the referral program

Once you have the idea for your referral program, how exactly do you implement the referral program?

You can create a customer referral form on your website that you can link to with promotional material.

Here are several examples to execute the program:

Have an automated email go out to the customer after the service and give them a $50 voucher to share with friends and family. All they need to do is use their last name when scheduling and they will get $50 off. Each month select a person who referred business and give them $100 amazon gift card. This is a great way to incentivize referrals but not pay too much out.

Have a referral form with a field asking who referred you business and have your customers share that form with friends and family on social media.

Do a big giveaway and have your customers enter the giveaway by referring people into your service.

Setup a Referral Program for your business

Referral programs are an excellent way to grow your business and increase sales, but they can be difficult to create and manage on your own. If you need help brainstorming or implementing a referral program in your business, set up a free 30-minute strategy session to discuss your business.