[Referral Basics] 🛠️ 2 important referral integrations and why they matter

In our last newsletter, people voted to learn more about integrations. The challenge is, there is a lot to cover and not everyone needs (or cares about) every integration.

Integrations can be a deep rabbit hole depending on the systems you use, your business workflows, the scale of your referral program, and what you're comfortable automating.

For today, we’ll start with the basics (based on the 2 most important metrics):

• Make it easy for people to share your business

• Track referrals to see who referred who and when a referral converts

If you want to learn more, we're hosting a live office hours on July 24th at 1pm EST showing how to set up integrations (basic + advanced use cases) in Referral Rock.

Now, let's dive in.

🔗 Build sharing into your customer experiences

The number #1 reason referral programs fail is lack of promotion. The more places people can share from, the better your program will perform.

Not everyone will share the same day they hear about your program or buy from you. Maybe they’re still feeling things out or maybe they don’t know anyone needing your product or service.

Integrate your sharing experience across all your channels and customer interactions, so you stay top of mind. This reminds people to share and makes it easy to do so when they’re ready.

Here are some of the most common share places:

• Your website (banners, site navigation, CTA buttons, etc.)

• Email newsletters (Mailchimp, HubSpot, or other software)

• Customer portal or behind a login (embedded in-app)

• Checkout and landing pages

• Mobile app

• Business cards, postcards, or other printed material

• In-store signage

• Social media 

• Sales/service reps (train to ask for referrals)

🎯 Track referrals to give sharers the credit

The goal of all referral programs is getting referrals (obviously) but there is more to it. Tracking referrals lets you see if referrals click your share links, engage with your website, and convert. Then it shows who referred each person so you can issue any rewards.

Here are some of the most common places to track and capture referrals:

• Your web forms such as contact us and request a demo (i.e., HubSpot Forms, Typeform, Custom or other platform)

• Checkouts or payment pages (i.e., Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.)

• Scheduling tools (Calendly, Acuity, etc.)

• Site Analytics (Google Analytics 4)

Depending on your business needs and workflows, you may need additional integrations. Here are a few common use cases:

• Automate reward fulfillment: configure your reward rules to determine when a reward is earned and then automatically fulfill it

• Issue rewards when you want: trigger rewards based on the events and activities you set in your CRM or other system of record

• Enrich your data: send emails and create reports directly from your existing systems by syncing your referral data

Happy to chat more about your exact integrations and answer any questions in our upcoming webinar (signup below).

-Mica
Head of Operations

🎓 [Webinar] Mastering Referral Program Integrations

Join us on July 24th at 1pm EST for an interactive workshop on referral program integrations. If you can’t join live, register anyway so we can follow up with the replay and supporting material.

We’ll cover:

• Integrating sharing across all your channels and customer interactions

• Tracking and converting referrals

• Advanced use cases and questions from participants