Every referral program has four key metrics that can be evaluated in order to determine why your program is or is not successful. We call this the Referral Funnel.
Joined Members are the number of people that have joined your referral program. It is tracked in aggregate and on a rolling basis. This metric sits at the top of the Referral Funnel and is the biggest factor for determining the success of your referral program.
Without new members joining, everything down the funnel is much harder to improve.
This article will go into more detail about the Joined Member metric, show you where in Referral Rock you can track your Joined Members, and give suggestions and guidance for how to improve the number of Members in your referral program.
Goals
Consistently add new members each month through ongoing promotion
Grow your total member base
Metrics to Track
Members added total AND last 30 days (required)
Registration views total AND last 30 days (optional)
If you are using an external email marketing software (such as MailChimp, Active Campaign, HubSpot, etc) to send referral program promotion, we also recommend looking into the open and click through rate for those campaigns to gauge how successful they were.
Questions to Ask
If a low number of members have joined your program or members have stopped joining after an initial period, here are some questions to ask yourself:
What promotion have you done?
How many customer touch points is the referral program part of and are there other places to include it?
How often have you promoted the referral program?
How many people have you promoted your program to?
When looking at the graphs, are there days/times where you see spikes in registration?
What promotion did you do leading up to that spike?
How long after that campaign did the registrations drop off?
Are you still using that promotion method?
Ways to Improve
Promotion Suggestions
Add passive asks to your different customer experiences - wherever you interact with your customers is an opportunity to mention your referral program. These small interactions bring awareness and subtly remind people that your program exists without interfering with their primary experience.
Common places include:
Emails (newsletters, promotional campaigns, transactional emails, email signatures)
Website (nav bar, CTA buttons, footer)
Customer portal and in-app experiences (behind a login)
Checkout and Confirmation pages
Train Sales and Service Reps
Social Media
Online Chat
Increase the frequency of promotion - send another invite/promotional email or relaunch your referral program all together.
A single invite email isn’t enough. We recommend actively promoting a new referral program at least a few times a quarter (once a month at the minimum) through email campaigns and/or social media.
Don’t forget to send invite emails to new customers if you’ve already launched as they might have missed the initial campaign.
Ask for referrals during moments of joy - where in the customer journey are your customers the happiest? Identify these moments of joy and find ways to ask customers to refer their friends and colleagues.
People are far more likely to share your business when they’re happy with your product or service.
Automate ongoing referral promotion - referral promotion isn’t a one-time event. Setup recurring workflows, event-based invites, and other automation to promote your program over time.
Simplify Registration
If registration views are high but joined members are low consider auditing your registration process with these ideas:
Reduce registration fields - simplify registration by reducing the number of fields your members need to fill in. Start with just name and email if possible.
Register Members with one click - skip initial registration all together by utilizing One Click Access links when promoting your program. The One Click Access feature automatically registers your members as soon as they click on the URL inside your email marketing platform (Mailchimp, Active Campaign, HubSpot, etc).
Grab Attention with Rewards
Rewards are a great way to grab your members’ attention and get them to share your program. Are your rewards enticing and relevant?
Increase the reward value - rewards are meant to excite and encourage your members to join your program and share. Try increasing the value of the reward (especially if you have a high customer value) to get more people interested.
If margins are tight or you can’t afford a higher reward, consider offering a larger reward for the first referral only (subsequent rewards are at the standard amount). This is a great way to get people engaged without overpaying.
Change the reward type - if you’re confident in the reward amount then maybe it’s the reward type. Trying something else that’s more appealing to your members. Ideas include gift cards, cash payouts, swag, credits, etc. Feel free to get creative as you know your audience best or better yet, ask them directly what type of rewards they would like to see.