Referral Rock is referral program software for teams that earn referrals through their work. Your program advisor sets it up with you, and after launch most of it runs on its own through automations, so one person keeping an eye on it is enough.

This article covers everything in one place: how a program is built, how referrals are tracked and rewarded, and how to keep members sharing. It's useful whether you're brand new, tuning an existing account, or just looking around.

Let's start from the beginning...

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, made more proactive and repeatable.

Before you set up your referral program, take a few minutes to understand the components behind the Referral Rock platform. The Admin Navigation article walks through the main areas of your Referral Rock account.

Building a referral program in Referral Rock comes down to two experiences: the Member Experience and the Referral Experience. Your advisor works through both with you.

In the next section, we will go over the important things to consider and some best practices when building out each of these experiences.

The Program Editor is where you will build out the Member and Referral experiences, including the logic for rewards and the automated emails Referral Rock sends.

In order to gain participants for your referral program, it's important to build the Member experience into every place customers already interact with you. Keep it as simple as possible. The easier it is for your Members to engage with your referral program, the more likely they are to join and continue sharing with their networks.

Referral Rock lets you integrate your referral program across all the ways you interact with customers, including your website, email marketing system, online portal/account page, and much more.

The best referral programs have no join button. Wherever possible, you want existing customers or affiliates to already be in your program with a link or code ready, not asked to sign up for it first. Every step between "I want to refer someone" and "here's my link" is a step where you lose people.

Referral Rock gives you three ways to get members in. Use them roughly in this order:

1. Import your existing contacts. If you have a .CSV of past or current customers, use Import or our Invite Contacts option to load them in directly. Every added contact gets access automatically. From there you can send an Invite Email letting them know they're already in.

2. Auto-enroll from your existing logged-in surfaces. Use Integrated Login Links to enroll customers from places where they're already logged in: your email, your app, your account page. No form, no second login. The customer arrives at the program already a member.

3. Program Landing Page. This is the page where people can sign up for the program if they haven’t already been added as members.

Use Discovery Paths to easily place links or QR codes that direct to your program landing page in the places your customers and contacts interact with your brand regularly. Aim to place your links in at least 4-5 key places.

We recommend making your program landing page accessible from these locations:

For advanced options, you can also see the Integration Docs for technical setup, or Embed the Share Block and the full Member portal with our API.

Once a Member is in your program, they have access to their personal sharing dashboard, built out in the Member Portal. This dashboard shows how the program works, lets your members share with friends and connections, and tracks their referrals and rewards. Follow these best practices so members get the most out of their portal:

Include both what the referral gets and what the member gets. Members want to know what they can give to their friends, not just what they can get for themselves.

Customize the sharing options. Offer the sharing options your audience actually uses. Turn off the ones that don't apply.

Make the dashboard feel like the Member's space. It should be inviting and reflect the language of your business and its processes.

The member dashboard hosts social/mobile messages and email messages that members will send to their friends. You’ll write these pre-drafted messages on the Share page of the Program Editor.

How you write those share messages matters:

Lead with what the friend gets, not what the member earns. Put the friend's reward in the headline, and feature it prominently in all parts of your share messaging. Keep the member's own reward on the member's side of the system only: their dashboard, their thank-you email, their notifications. Mentioning the member's reward inside the message they're about to send turns a gift into a transaction, and the friend can feel it.

Write from the member’s perspective. It's coming from the member (a peer), not from your marketing team. Informal, conversational language wins. "Use my link to get a $20 credit" lands very differently than "You've been referred."

Keep the message and the Referral Page consistent. The message the member sends and the page the friend lands on are one continuous handoff. Same friend reward, same member name, same tone. If the message says "I sent you a gift" and the page says "Welcome to our referral program," the trust transfer breaks and the click goes nowhere.

Once a friend takes the action you defined, the member and friend earn rewards based on the reward rules you set up. See Rewards below.

Now that you have developed a plan for attracting new Members, you will want to focus on the design of your referral experience. For most of your new leads/referrals, this will be the first time they will interact with your business and brand. Make sure that you start the relationship on a good foot by giving off a great first impression!

After a Member shares your business with their networks (through the sharing options on their Member Dashboard), the new leads will start to discover your company and brand. This will drive the new Referral to your Referral Page where they will hopefully take your desired action (i.e. make a purchase, complete a lead form, etc.).

The Referral Form Page is not a generic landing page. It's the second half of a handoff that started with a personal recommendation from someone the friend knows. The page should reflect that.

Once a new lead lands and takes action, Referral Rock needs to capture their information and credit it back to the right member. The right choice depends on your workflow and systems:

Most referrals take a few steps to become a customer, like a quote, a finished job, and a paid invoice. Statuses let you follow a referral through those steps, so rewards go out when the real sale happens.

Referral Rock has four statuses: Pending, Qualified, Approved, and Denied. Match them to the steps your business already uses.

For example, a home services company might set it up like this:

A business with a sales team can use the same statuses for a form, a demo, and a signed deal.

We want to automate this process as much as possible, so we have several integrations options to update a referral's status automatically (Of course, you can always manually update a status from the Referral Rock dashboard):

Referral Rock lets you set referral rewards with simple rules and triggers. Not only does this allow you to map your rewards to events in your sales process (see above), but allows you to determine when, what, and how the reward is fulfilled.

Reward rules live in the Program Editor.

When a triggering event happens (a quote request, a completed sale, an Approved status), Referral Rock runs through your reward rules to confirm all your qualifications were met before issuing the reward. Rules let you specify:

If your sales cycle has multiple stages and the gap from lead to closed sale is long, you can stage a small member reward when the friend becomes Qualified, and a larger member reward when they're Approved.

This keeps the member engaged through a long cycle without breaking the framing of the program.

Referral Rock offers many different types of reward payouts including over 100 gift card options, PayPal, discount coupons, and API/credit based rewards. If the reward happens online, we can automatically fulfill and distribute it for you. If the reward happens offline, we’ll provide you with the tools to easily manage your rewards. You simply set the reward criteria and we’ll take care of the rest!

Now that your program is designed and integrated, it’s time to launch and increase engagement.

Once you have setup your ideal referral workflow, it's time to promote it to your desired Members! Don't expect your program to go viral overnight. Successful referral programs are the result of well thought out promotion plans.

Create a continuous promotion strategy, where you repeatedly promote your program to your audience via all your key touchpoints:

Remember, you want to have a good mixture of both DIRECT and INDIRECT strategies for asking new members to join your program. The diagram below shows the difference between a direct and indirect promotion strategy.

Here are some more great resources for building out a successful launch and promotion plan for your program:

As discussed above, it's important to keep your Members engaged and coming back to your referral program. This way they’ll continue to share and ultimately, you'll get more referrals!

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Questions about setup or day-to-day upkeep? Reach out to your program advisor or our Success team.