--- title: How to Acquire Customers Through Effective Referral Campaigns description: Referral marketing campaigns are often confused with lead generation strategies. Referral programs generate leads, customers and fuel revenue growth. image: https://blog.talkable.com/hubfs/phone-coffee-break.jpg --- [![Talkable Logo Blog](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/full%20color%20logotype-min.png?width=120&height=26&name=full%20color%20logotype-min.png)](https://www.talkable.com/) - [Blog Posts](https://blog.talkable.com) - [Case Studies](https://blog.talkable.com/case-studies?hsLang=en) - [Guides and eBooks](https://blog.talkable.com/ebooks?hsLang=en) [Talk to an expert](https://lp.talkable.com/lets-talk-referral?hsLang=en) Best practices # How to Acquire Customers Through Effective Referral Campaigns Referral marketing campaigns are often confused with lead generation strategies. Referral programs generate leads, customers and fuel revenue growth. [Eugine Dychko](https://blog.talkable.com/author/eugine-dychko) Mar 11, 2022 --- See the title of this blog? Notice we used the term “customers” instead of “leads” — that’s deliberate. Turns out, referral marketing campaigns are often confused with lead generation strategies. But referral programs don't *just* generate leads; [they generate legitimate customers and revenue](https://blog.talkable.com/3-reasons-why-referral-programs-acquire-new-customers?hsLang=en). Yes, lead gen yields interesting contacts, but cultivating those prospects takes time. With referral marketing, however, pre-existing customers promote your brand.    In short? Their friends become your new customers.    Really, referral campaigns are an eCommerce marketer’s dream, because the heavy lifting is done among a company’s existing customer base. These current customers, also known as brand advocates, create a ripple effect: One customer refers your brand to a friend, and as this continues, your campaign quickly becomes a self-replicating customer acquisition machine.    Interestingly, your referral campaign doesn’t actually need huge advocacy rates to see big revenue gains. In fact, [Talkable’s practice suggests](https://blog.talkable.com/ebooks/referral-marketing-guide?hsLang=en) the top 1% of your most active advocates generate up to 20% referral revenue, on average.   With all of that in mind, a referral program is only as successful as the promotional efforts behind it. Luckily, we’ve provided best practices behind promoting your program effectively.   ### **Promoting Your Program** Arguably, properly promoting a referral program is the most effective way to bring in new business. The good news? It’s also pretty easy.    First, make sure you’re shouting about your program from the rooftops — your website, that is. **We recommend doing this by:** - Adding floating widgets, site-wide, on both desktop and mobile - Creating post-purchase pop-ups - Building a stand-alone landing page - Promoting via an account dashboard so advocates can track their referrals ![How to Acquire Customers Through Effective Referral Campaigns](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/pic9_menu.png?width=1282&name=pic9_menu.png) Additionally, add various calls to action (CTAs) across your site that drive traffic to the aforementioned landing page. Prominent placements include inside navigation bars, banners, headers, footers, carousels, and product pages.    We also suggest promoting your referral program (particularly its respective landing page) off-site via email and social media. Send a welcome email announcing the launch of your referral program. Following that, send quarterly email blasts to your existing customers to drive referrals and engagement. (More on email optimization later on!)   Be sure your referral marketing strategy also includes social media efforts. Promote your program across all relevant platforms in concise, creative ways through social posts, organic and paid ads, and more.   ### **Creating a Strong Offer** So, your promotional efforts are running smoothly, but customers aren’t sharing and referring your brand at the rates you’d like to see. What’s the catch? Perhaps it’s the offer itself.    Here’s how to check whether your offer is suffering, plus ways to improve it:   - Test the offer for advocates and/or friends to pinpoint whether it’s the reason no one is sharing  - Increase your brand’s friend offer — it could actually be more effective than the advocate offer - Offer a 20% discount — our recommended best practice — on your average order value as a percent or cash discount, but don’t forget your purchase threshold. If your minimum order requirement for friends is too high, first-time customers may not want to risk purchasing from your site.   Recognize, too, that motivating customers to spread the word about your brand won’t be successful unless you [understand what makes them take action](https://blog.talkable.com/how-to-offer-referral-rewards-that-motivate-customers-to-share?hsLang=en). What’s more appealing to them: a dollar-off reward to use on your site or an e-gift card to use elsewhere? It’ll take a little research to find out, but sending a short survey or poll can yield accurate results a little faster.    ### **Optimizing Your Campaign Emails** Earlier, we touched on the use of emails in your referral campaign, but we recommend going much deeper. Optimizing your campaign’s email workflow could mean the difference between good and great referral ROI.    So what does this look like?  - **Personalization** - **Keywords** - **Email body**  - Your intro paragraph should only be 2 to 3 sentences long and include the most important information, right out of the gates.   - Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Make sure they’re easy to read, and remove any jargon or marketing “speak.” - Your CTA buttons and directives should start with action verbs, like: - “**Get** my 20%” - “**Shop** now” - “**Find** my apparel” - “**Start** shopping” - **Considerations**   ### **Improve Your Campaign Even More: Test Everything** Any good marketing initiative should include a series of A/B testing to see if one swim lane works better than another. So while most facets of your referral campaign should leverage A/B testing (i.e., does one email workflow work better than another for the same audience?), the most crucial aspect to test is, of course, your referral types.    Begin [A/B testing your offers](https://blog.talkable.com/how-set-up-referral-program-9-steps?hsLang=en) to discover which reward types work best for your target audience. You can also perform A/B tests on different referral web page designs to discern which version advocates find more appealing.    Additionally, updating copy across your site and other collateral can improve the number of customers who click on your offer (and ultimately sign up). We recommend including your advocate offer in a CTA button — “Get $10” or “Earn $10 Now” — because this tends to spur intent to sign up and share.   As you A/B test, be sure to avoid a common mistake we often see eCommerce marketers make: appealing to an “average” audience. In other words, we encourage you to make **segmentation and personalization** essential elements of your A/B testing efforts. And there’s a big reason for this: 90% of customers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers.  ![How to Acquire Customers_How to Acquire Customers Through Effective Referral Campaigns_AB test](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog%20Images/Posts/How%20to%20Acquire%20Customers/How%20to%20Acquire%20Customers_How%20to%20Acquire%20Customers%20Through%20Effective%20Referral%20Campaigns_AB%20test.png?width=1824&height=993&name=How%20to%20Acquire%20Customers_How%20to%20Acquire%20Customers%20Through%20Effective%20Referral%20Campaigns_AB%20test.png)   Bottom line? The more relevant and tailored your referral offers, the more likely you are to enjoy loyal repeat customers. Consider basing your A/B segmentation around: - **Behavior:** This gives you insight into the behaviors of advocates, occasional buyers, and first-time prospects when interacting with your brand.  - **Purchase history:** This helps determine whether targeted referral prospects are, in fact, first-time buyers or if they’ve occasionally purchased with your brand.  - **Share history:** Use this segmentation to find out who’s sharing about your brand’s referral program and offers.  - **SKUs:** By identifying what a customer is shopping for, you can start creating custom post-purchase ads and pop-ups specific to your brand (we’ve done this!). - **Location:** Update your referral campaign’s messaging to reflect a customer’s location.   Many eCommerce companies we’ve worked with have not only deployed these referral campaign methods, but they’ve also found great success in them. ![rothys](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/rothys.png?width=200&name=rothys.png)     ![toms](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/toms.png?width=101&name=toms.png)     ![colourpop](https://blog.talkable.com/hs-fs/hubfs/colourpop.png?width=149&name=colourpop.png) If you’d like to join the ranks of successful brands like these, [contact the Talkable team](https://www.talkable.com/demo_request) to learn more. [Best practices](https://blog.talkable.com/tag/best-practices) [Referral Marketing](https://blog.talkable.com/tag/referral-marketing) [Growth Marketing Strategies](https://blog.talkable.com/tag/growth-marketing-strategies) [Email Marketing](https://blog.talkable.com/tag/email-marketing) ## Similar posts Referral Marketing ### [6 Reasons Referrals is The Most Cost-Effective Acquisition Strategy](https://blog.talkable.com/referral-marketing-most-efficient-strategy?hsLang=en) Referral marketing is an opportunity to utilize your engaged customers to generate new clients. Customer referral marketing commonly has a lower CPA. Erika Carmichael Sep 16, 2018 Best practices ### [Crush the 2023 Holiday Season with Data-Driven Referral Campaigns](https://blog.talkable.com/2023-holiday-season-with-data-driven-referral-campaigns?hsLang=en) Launch personalized referral campaigns early this holiday season - AI gifting recommendations, limited-time offers, convenient mobile sharing, and... Talkable Sep 27, 2023 Best practices ### [How Referral Marketing Works in Education Services](https://blog.talkable.com/how-referral-marketing-works-in-education-services?hsLang=en) As a referral marketing provider, we can show how a referral program can get your message to potential customers in the online education world. Stacey Ukhova Feb 28, 2020 ### Get notified on referral marketing insights Be the first to know about new Referral Marketing insights from eCommerce industry leaders to build or refine your growth strategy. 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