Colibri Group Case Study: 20% of revenue lift from the referrals

Colibri Group brands, like many other professional educational solutions, have the inherent power of word of mouth. Working professionals tend to share learning opportunities with their colleagues and fellow niche workers. The Colibri Group team was looking for a powerful marketing partner to boost the referral channel and turn it into a growth strategy.

About Referral Campaign

Talkable launched with Real Estate Express first and then expanded to 6 other niche-specific websites. The team at Colibri worked closely with the Talkable Customer Success team and executed best-practices recommendations. Colibri started seeing impressive results right away. Talkable referral programs bring anywhere from 6.8% to 20% of revenue in a given month, which is almost 4X higher than the industry average. Proving once again, that brands that harness organic, positive word of mouth, translate to big Referral Marketing results. 

Highlights:

• Since Colibri customers seldom buy second courses after they purchased the first ones, the Talkable team came up with the idea to provide a gift card incentive to advocates. For brands where there is low purchase frequency and high AOV, oftentimes Talkable will recommend integration with a digital rewards company like Rybbon, or Tremendous.  
  
  
• To promote two different courses for 1 brand, Talkable launched two different campaigns on the multi-product landing page. This placement brought 37% of all referral revenue YTD 2021. 

• Talkable recommends to offer different reward options within the referral placements, as this widens choice for customers and motivates them to share with a larger number of friends (see the green text on the screen).  Promoting Real Estate Express through McKissock Real Estate and Superior helped to increase annual revenue by 1%.

• For the holiday season, some Colibri group brands offered higher rewards and the results spoke for themselves. Real Estate Express saw a 10% higher advocacy rate and 40% more revenue compared to the ongoing referral offer. 
  
  
• The advocacy rate on Allied Schools is 17.7%, which is 20% higher than the benchmark; and the conversion rate is 81%, which is almost 3X higher than the benchmark. Allied Schools have a strong, loyal base; its students come back for continuing education. Talkable referral program not only helped with the acquisition but grew the brand's retention numbers.

Results

• From 6.8% to 20% of the referral revenue
• 3.5X ROI
• 2X YoY referral revenue growth
• Talkable referral program is now part of the onboarding process for acquired businesses at Colibri.