For a more detailed understanding of Referral Rock, check out our Definitive Guide to Referral Rock.

Referral Marketing is when you promote your products or services to new customers by using the influence of your existing network (customers, partners, etc.). Referral marketing is founded on the idea of word of mouth marketing but is a more proactive and scalable way to generate new customers.

There are many terms used in referral marketing and each company may use a slightly different term than another. While most are clear, it is important to highlight the two that change the most between companies and platforms: Member and Referral.

Member - This is the sharer (the person that is referring your business to new customers or users). Common types of Members include existing customers, affiliates, partners, and employees.

Other terms for members include: advocate, referrer, influencer.

Referral - These are the people the members share you with, who are engaging with your business for the first time. Hopefully, they will become new customers or users. A referral could be a friend or colleague of the member (if the member is an existing customer), or someone in the member's network (if the member is an affiliate).

Other terms for the referral: friend, lead or new customer.

As you spend time in your Referral Rock account, you will see a few more terms that are much more straight forward.

Reward - An incentive you give to either the Member, the Referral, or both! (Configurable when you edit your program).

Program - A referral program (we'll call them “Programs” for short) is how you get the word out about your business by utilizing word-of-mouth marketing with your existing customers and/or contacts to generate new business.

There are three main pages in your Program; The Member Landing Page, the Member Dashboard, and the Referral Page.

Member Landing Page - Individuals register to participate in your program here before going directly to their own Member page. The Member also receives a registration email with a summary of the program and helpful links. For more detailed information regarding the Registration page, click here.

Member Dashboard - Members are given their unique URL and social share buttons to share with their friends directly on this page. The Member can also come back to check on the status of their Referrals. For more detailed information regarding the Member page, click here.

Referral Page - The Referral page is where a Referral will view information about your company and services for the first time and where you will want to make clear your desired call to action. The Referral can view then take action on any offer you may provide. (i.e. click to your website for purchase, fill out a contact form...). For more detailed information regarding the Referral page, click here.

The program design is important because it will help to customize your program to fit your brand. The Program Editor allows you to customize all components of your referral program and is one of the most integral parts of your admin console. Pages within the program editor include the Share, Rewards, Portal, Emails and Promote pages.

There are two other things to consider when designing your program.

Once a referral program is launched, it is important to manage it as needed. There are certain aspects of a program that may need special attention and depending on how they are set up, may require manual approval. Learning how to manage each component is vital to a program’s success. Some items that may need to be manually managed include: Members, Referrals, and Rewards and Payouts.

Team Management

Referral Rock also lets you Manage your Team by adding team members and assigning specific roles. There are several different roles to which a team member can be assigned: Admin/Account Owner, Manager, Operator, Supervisor, and No Access.

If you want team members to bring in new members for your program, but not have program management privileges, you can add them as recruiters.

Integration With Your Business

There are multiple touch points for integration and ways to connect your Referral Rock account to other systems. These integration points include Conversion Tracking, Customer Feed, Referral Routing, and Member Sync.

External System Integration

The Referral Rock API gives you programmatic access to the data within your Referral Rock account. To see the list of all available endpoints check out the API Reference Page. There are a number of integration options that can be done using either the Referral Rock API, our integration scripts, or our Zapier app.