Podcast

Learn from Fast Growing 7-8 Figure Online Retailers and eCommerce Experts

EPISODE 283 55 mins

Turning Your Customers into Your Sales Team – Referral Marketing



About the guests

Raúl Galera

Kunle Campbell

Raúl Galera is the Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy, an app that allows ecommerce brands to set up and run customer referral programs. Raul currently leads ReferralCandy’s partnership efforts, working alongside agencies, media and tech companies. Referral marketing is a blend of organic content, community marketing and influencer marketing. Word-of-mouth is a powerful channel for both successful global names as well as new, niche brands.



On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Raúl Galera, Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy – a customer referral platform that gets shoppers to refer their friends and drive word-of-mouth. The company has worked with over 30,000 brands since launching in 2009.

 

In today’s market, a company’s long-term success is closely linked to their cost of acquiring new customers. Cracking the right marketing mix that enables consistent acquisition and retention is what keeps marketers up at night.

 

It’s safe to say that every brand wants more word-of-mouth referrals. There are many advantages of word-of-mouth marketing, most of all that it doesn’t cost anything. But building a reputation that drives organic customer acquisition is not just about creating buzz or being seen more. It starts with a solid product and an even better customer experience. But that being said, there are systems you can put in place that make referrals a bit more likely. This is where a platform like ReferralCandy comes in!

 

In today’s episode, Kunle and Raúl talk about all things referral marketing. You will get to hear about what it takes to build a solid base that breeds loyal customers, the right time to activate customers, what incentives to offer and other best practices. This is a great episode for marketers – regardless of your industry or scale!

 

Here is a summary of some of the most important points made,

    • Referral marketing is a numbers game
    • Having a solid product and great CX is essential
    • Offering future discounts as rewards works well for smaller ticket, regular purchase products
    • Offering bigger rewards to the friend rather than the advocate can deter oversharing
    • Influencer marketing and community marketing are the hot trends for Referrals
    • ReferralCandy packs features that can run your referral programs on autopilot

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Raúl discuss,

  • Pre-requisites of referral marketing
  • When to ask customers for referrals
  • Type of Referral Rewards
  • Current Trends
  • Best Practices
  • Features of the ReferralCandy platform

Timestamp:

  • 12:30 – Meet Raul and ReferralCandy:
    • Chief Advocate and partner manager at ReferralCandy
    • Launched in 2010
    • Worked with 30,000+ brands
  • 14:40 – Pre-requisites of referral marketing:
    • This is a numbers game
    • “You need volume to make referral marketing work”
    • This is one aspect of a customer-centric approach
    • Having a base of good customer experience is essential
  • 19:58 – Tapping your happy customers:
    • Notify them soon after delivery of the product
    • Adjust rewards as per customers
  • 21:50 – Type of Referral Rewards:
    • Future discounts – work well for small ticket/ regular purchase products
    • Cash / Gift rewards – work well for not frequently purchased products
  • 25:05 – Word-of-mouth vs Referral marketing:
    • Referral marketing lets you track performance
    • Makes it easier to incentivise customers
    • “Referral marketing is like Word-of-mouth on steroids”
  • 32:20 – When Incentives become counterproductive:
    • Knowing what triggers your customers is critical
    • Offering bigger rewards to the friend rather than the advocate can deter oversharing
  • 37:40 – Trends in Referral Marketing:
    • “Influencer marketing is Referral marketing on steroids”
    • Merchants keep influencers/affiliates separate from customer referrals
    • Community Marketing
  • 43:15 – Platforms for building communities:
    • Facebook Group is best for B2C
    • Slack groups are also getting popular
    • Brands experiment on Instagram as well. Clubhouse might become popular too
  • 46:40 – Best practices for Referral programs:
    • Promote your program frequently
    • Link your program to your subscriptions/product bundles
    • Leverage email marketing
  • 48:30 – ReferralCandy Features:
    • Preset pages/templates
    • You can set it to run on autopilot
    • Strong anti-fraud checks
    • First-click attribution model
    • Built-in integration with Klaviyo and Mailchimp
  • 53:15 – Special deal for 2xers

Takeaways:

  • Referral programs only work off a solid base of product and CX
  • Referral rewards must be tweaked as per the product and audience
  • Offering bigger rewards to the friend rather than the referer can deter oversharing
  • Referral programs need to be sufficiently promoted across all channels

Links & Resources

Tweetable Quotes:

“Influencer marketing is Referral marketing on steroids.”

Facebook Group • Continue the Conversation

The eCommerce GrowthAccelerator Mastermind Facebook Group has just launched.
It is a community…

✔️ for founders and experts passionately involved in eCommerce
✔️ for the truly ambitious wanting to make an impact in the markets they serve
✔️ for those willing and open to help and share with other members

Here is where to apply to join the Facebook group
>>http://bit.ly/ecommercefb<<

———–

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by:

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses.
Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo.

Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and  grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction,  and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments.

Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.

This episode is brought to you by Rewind – the #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses.
Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind.

Cloud based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!

For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io,
reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’

This episode is brought to you by Famous.

Famous enables brands on Shopify to easily build beautiful landing pages and product pages that include custom video, animations, and more. All pages built on famous are optimized for storytelling and selling on desktop and mobile.

Famous’ software allows you to build your pages in minutes without code, so you don’t need a developer. You just need to want to build a better experience for your customers. Famous has worked in the past with many leading online retailers including Honest, Justfab and more.

You can try it for free at famous.co/2x.

About the host:

Kunle Campbell

An ecommerce advisor to ambitious, agile online retailers and funded ecommerce startups seeking exponentially sales growth through scalable customer acquisition, retention, conversion optimisation, product/market fit optimisation and customer referrals.

Learn from eCommerce Entrepreneurs & Marketing Experts


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