The traditional methods of advertising with billboards, mailers, print ads and displays as a marketing strategy are often cost prohibitive. Instead, digital Ad campaigns are taking the world by storm. With an increase in awareness and competition, marketers today no more sit down and wait for their potential consumers to discover and engage with them.
Thus, there has been a vast shift in traditional marketing methods from outbound marketing to more interactive inbound marketing techniques. Inbound marketing is effective with SEO, email marketing, blogging, social media, and referral marketing.
A good marketer should practice all these tactics and not rely on only one. In the business industry, the word of mouth strategy is not new. Previously this strategy was a time-consuming process. Many times customers would forget to refer to your brand. With the advancement in digital marketing, marketers are now using referrals as an effective way to expand and strengthen their customer base.
Whether your business is small or large, referral marketing is a best practice for promoting your brand.
Referral marketing is one of the cheapest and fastest marketing approaches that use a word of mouth strategy. It involves promoting a business’s service or product using the current customer base to bring in new clients.
Benefits of Referral Marketing:
Increases Engagement And Traffic On The Website
The existing customer who refers your brand to another person will continue to visit your website to regularly claim incentives and rewards. Thus, it will increase engagement and revenue.
Through a referral marketing program, businesses can increase their website traffic, which causes an increase in high conversion rates. With the help of a traffic analytics tool, you can track the total number of visits, unique visitors, and duration. The analytics tool can help you determine the ratio of mobile to desktop traffic.
You can also monitor the location from where your traffic is coming. Using these metrics, you can collect and compare your competitors’ information.
Expand Your Clientele
Your existing customer base can help you reach out to a more diverse network of people. That means your current customers can promote your products on behalf of your company. Thereby saving your time and extending the client base simultaneously.
Improves Customer Retention Rate (CRR)
An increase in customer retention rate is one of the benefits of referral marketing. Those customers that are part of referral programs, in all probability, will remain loyal to your brand over a long period.
Builds Customers Trust
Since people will probably buy from your brand when recommended by some friend or family member. Therefore, referral marketing builds a relationship of trust with customers. Different surveys show how suggestions and reviews play a vital role in the decisions made by customers.
Customer Loyalty
Individual marketing attracts more customers since most people require an exceptional experience with the company. With the help of one-on-one marketing, people are more likely to become loyal customers. Referred customers usually have a lifetime value, making them turn into valuable customers.
Cost-Efficient
Though you will be spending some incentives, referral marketing is a cost-effective strategy contrary to traditional advertisements. As a result, this marketing strategy will help in generating more excellent ROI value.
Automation
At the initial stage, you need to work to set up the right referral marketing program. Once you are sure it is running smoothly, you can relax and enjoy its benefits. Your customers would be doing the majority portion of your work, and you only need to monitor the process less frequently.
The following are the ten best referral marketing tools and apps for 2021:
1. Invite Referrals
Invite Referral is an easy-to-integrate referral marketing software that grows business and acquires a new customer base through referral marketing. The software integrates with various e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and bigcommerce. The referral widgets can adapt to multiple devices and platforms. Consequently, making it easy for customers to send referral invites. If a customer wants to join the referral program, they need to download the mobile App to send invites. The coupons are sent to referrers via email for driving referral sales.
The software provides a comprehensive analysis of the referring program by tracking each share and click. It offers you to track the most influential referrers and thus monitor individual customer’s data. The WYSIWYG editor can help in designing each referral marketing campaign.
The software offers different types of customer referral programs. These include a giveaway campaign, a top referrer contest, and a Goal-Based Customer Referral program.
2. Invitebox
If you wish to add a referral program real quick, then Invitebox is the one for you. Click on copy and paste their code of widget on your webpage. However, if you need to customize the program, then definitely it will require some time. Despite that, it is still the best tool to kick start your referral campaigns.
It does not matter if you are an e-commerce business or a Software as a Service company; for both cases, this tool works perfectly well. The only difference is the type of incentives each company is offering to its existing customers.
Invitebox offers four kinds of referral programs:
- Instant Rewards: It involves rewarding the customers instantly when they refer your brand in their circle.
- Goal-based Rewards: Setting a target number for referrals and then rewarding them if they meet this target.
- Referral Contest: Rewarding those customers that bring a significant number of referrals within a time limit.
- Sweepstakes and Giveaways: Making it a random pick over a specified time frame. The higher the referrals, the greater the chances of that customer winning.
3. Ambassador
If you are looking for multi-purpose software, then Ambassador should be your go-to referral marketing application. It includes all aspects of marketing such as referrals, influencers, partner, and affiliate programs on a unique forum. It provides you a platform to manage and supervise all your customers, brand advocates, or ambassadors.
Like many other referral marketing applications, it allows you to personalize the campaigns based on customers’ type. It also provides you the opportunity to message and examine all the areas at the same time.
Ambassador software is no different from other referral tools on the list. However, it provides a slight edge to the advocates of the brand too. The majority of the professionals have recommended this marketing tool since it gives positive results.
4. Referral Rock
With referral rock, brands can grow by putting word-of-mouth marketing on autopilot. The tool allows you to customize the layout of your referral program according to user experience. Referral rock helps you build a seamless referral program that will want your users to engage and participate. The easy-to-use software contains an advocate portal. The portal will provide advocates with various ways to join, share, and track results.
Referral rock software can help you set up your referring program in days with an iterative method and does not require any complicated integrations. It provides you to automate your referring program completely by launching customized campaigns. These campaigns engage your clients in dual-sharing rewards, social sharing, and much more. If you want to track the performance, you can use Google Analytics that contains valuable data.
Referral Rock is an ideal referral tool for e-commerce businesses as it can easily integrate with companies like Shopify, SalesForce, Zapier, WooCommerce, and many more. The App focuses on the sales funnel to build the customer touchpoints for your referral marketing campaigns.
5. Revetize
The user-friendly software tool – Revetize – allows brands to solve multiple issues at once. Revetize is a referral marketing software that offers businesses a variety of services. These services include user interaction, lead generation, and management of a business reputation.
The software is affordable to local and small businesses. The tool allows brands to gain referrals, manage online reviews, promotions, follow-ups, campaigns, and referrals. The positive aspect of this referral marketing software is if you don’t know how to use it. You can book your demo with their operator via SMS. They will walk you through each step from setting up to the final program completion.
6. Amplifinity
Amplifinity is a referral marketing software designed for large-scale referral programs, suitable for mid-size companies. The software allows brands to run multiple marketing campaigns in parallel. The software is integrated fully with a large variety of CRMs, including Salesforce. The integration automates the tracking process of referrals from the time of acquiring till follow-ups.
Amplifinity provides 100% accurate data and analytics, making your tracking reliable. In this way, brands can determine their programs’ performance and identify the areas of improvement. With its flexible facets, businesses can personalize their tool with their goals. The powerful software allows brands to customize incentives for each customer and deal. The referral marketing tool provides its advocates with a seamless experience with Single Sign-On (SSO) integration.
7. Genius Referrals
Genius Referral provides you an opportunity to manage all your customers, affiliates, and employees from a single control panel. The software comprises in-built tools that track the conversions as well as the performance of advocates. The advocates can learn about any new referral or bonus in real-time through this tool. It also transfers incentives to each advocate automatically by monitoring their performances.
Genius Referral allows you to set up and run your referral program within minutes. It offers you to customize multi-tiered campaigns with different currencies. Marketers can schedule payout through various options such as PayPal, Vouchers, and gift cards. The excellent part about payment in this platform is that brands can schedule automatic payouts to save time and energy. The tool allows you easy sharing of your referral program with just one click on different social media platforms. Businesses can launch their campaigns by notifying their customers through email marketing and sharing on social media.
8. Mention Me
Mention Me is a simple, efficient, and refer-a-friend software customized for your customer base. The platform takes traditional word-of-mouth marketing online and creates rewards for your customers to make them your advocates. Moreover, the software is that it provides A/B testing. You can test each factor of your campaign and optimize your program. The testing ensures your performance increases after some time.
Another powerful feature of the software that makes it unique is Name sharing. It allows customers to refer to using their name at the checkout. Customers can get access to discounts by entering the name of the referrer. Mention Me verifies the names of both referrers and referees before awarding them. The referral marketing tool provides various options to customize your program design according to your business needs and objectives.
9. Referral SaaSquatch
It is a market-oriented software that provides an opportunity for businesses to carry out referral and loyalty programs for their customers. It is a perfect choice for companies with more than 100,000 customers, either business to business or business to customer organizations. SaaSquatch increases the lifetime value of referred customers. It also provides incentive offers and bonuses for the brands to employ them in their marketing strategies.
The following are the benefits of using SaaSquatch:
- It helps you track customer behavior, such as their purchasing pattern and actions.
- It consists of triggers that award the users on installing the App and their first purchase.
- It allows you to prepare some creative gizmos and the rules for different programs.
- It contains custom-made themes and automates email notifications for cellphones.
- It includes a security management feature that permits the brands to avoid any fraudulent activity.
10. Hello Referrals
The Hello Referrals marketing tool works best if you want to track your referral program and its stats. The marketing software comprises tracking and analysis tools for managing referral campaigns. It allows you to send, receive, and monitor your business referrals without a fuss. Also, it gives you the option to stay connected with your referrals with personalized communication. You can continue your networking and keep yourself updated through this platform. Moreover, it allows you to send messages, plan meetups, and set up events to ease the buying process.
A vital advantage of this App is that it also tracks the performance of your network. It gives you complete details about how each partner is putting in efforts to transform various opportunities into a profitable business.
Find Your Best Marketing Tool
Now you know which referral tools will work for your marketing. Each marketing tool has its unique features, decide on your business needs. If you are a start-up, then go for more straightforward software with limited features. But if you aim to grow your business quickly, you have numerous options for an advanced version. Several factors can help you determine which one will best suit your business needs, such as the type of company, size, goals, and niche. But decide on the one that suits your business needs.
