Flywheel Recap: What's Powering the Next Generation of Referral + Loyalty Growth

Flywheel Recap: What's Powering the Next Generation of Referral + Loyalty Growth

As consumer expectations shift and acquisition costs climb, one thing has become clear: the brands winning today are those building deeper, more direct relationships with their customers.

During our latest Friendbuy Flywheel Webinar, we unpacked this very idea, exploring how marketers can turn every touchpoint into a retention moment. From the rise of omni-channel loyalty to the new era of post-purchase engagement, this quarter's Flywheel focused on how leading brands are transforming customers into advocates through smarter, more connected experiences.

The session drew strong participation from marketers, product teams, and growth leaders who joined us to hear the latest updates shaping Friendbuy's Referral and Loyalty platform. Here's a look at what we covered.

Setting the Stage: Macro Trends Driving Loyalty Transformation

We opened the session by looking at the broader market forces changing how brands approach growth.

Acquisition costs remain at an all-time high, making retention the most efficient lever for profitability. It's no longer enough to just bring customers in the door, you need to keep them coming back.

Omni-channel behavior is the norm, with customers shopping across DTC, marketplaces, and retail, expecting seamless recognition wherever they engage. Your loyalty program can't be channel-specific anymore. It needs to follow your customer everywhere they interact with your brand.

Personalization is evolving beyond email, as brands look for smarter ways to meet customers where they are, on their phones, in-store, and across digital ecosystems. Static programs won't cut it. Today's customers expect experiences that adapt to their behavior in real time.

In this landscape, Referral and Loyalty aren't "nice to have" programs, they're growth engines that power sustainable, first-party relationships.

That's where Friendbuy's newest innovations come in.

Customer Spotlight: How Bathhouse Turned Advocates Into a 20% Growth Engine

Before diving into product updates, we heard from Jason Goodman, co-founder of Bathhouse, a modern wellness company reimagining the communal bathing experience for today's consumers. Jason's story illustrated exactly why referral and loyalty matter — and revealed insights that challenged conventional marketing wisdom.

The results speak for themselves: 20% of Bathhouse's new customers now come through referrals, with a remarkable 22% conversion rate on referred traffic. But the numbers only tell part of the story.

The Hidden Cost of "Cheap" Acquisition

Jason shared a perspective most marketers overlook: "When you're calculating CAC, you're only looking at ad spend. But you're not looking at how much you're spending to produce the content, do the analysis, pay content creators, manage influencers — all of that should actually be part of CAC."

This realization led Bathhouse to rethink their entire growth strategy. The "hamster wheel" of paid ads wasn't just expensive in terms of media spend. The operational overhead, constant content creation, creator management, A/B testing, represented a second cost layer that never appeared in their CAC calculations.

Referral changed the equation entirely. As Jason put it: "We built the house once and now we get to live in it forever."

The $70K Super-Advocate Nobody Knew Existed

Perhaps the most striking revelation: Bathhouse discovered a single customer had generated $70,000 in referral sales, approximately 250 first-time customers, without receiving a single cash payment.

The lesson for marketers: Your best advocates are already out there, organically recommending your brand. The question isn't whether word-of-mouth is happening, it's whether you're systematically activating and rewarding it.

Want to hear the full story? Jason shared additional groundbreaking insights including:

• Why referred customers solve inventory problems you didn't know you had
• The "Sauna Glow Effect" — how advocates onboard new customers better than any ad
• His "sea change vs. 2% gains" philosophy that's reshaping how they think about growth
• Why referral isn't just cheaper acquisition — it's better acquisition

👉 Watch the full Bathhouse case study in the webinar replay to see how they activated hidden advocates and built a self-sustaining growth engine.

Receipt Scanning: Closing the Loop Between Online and Offline

One of the biggest highlights of the session was Receipt Scanning, a major step toward unifying in-store and online loyalty experiences.

Here's the problem it solves: your customers don't just shop on your site. They're buying your products at Target, Walmart, Amazon, Sephora, and dozens of other retailers. But until now, those purchases lived in a black box. Invisible to your loyalty program, unmeasurable, and unrewarded.

Not anymore.

With Receipt Scanning, brands can now reward loyalty points for purchases made in-store, via third-party retailers, or on marketplaces — all through a simple, seamless upload experience.  Our system uses real-time AI-powered receipt validation to process receipts, extract data (like SKU, date, and spend), and award loyalty points automatically — no manual review needed.

Friendbuy’s receipt scanning doesn’t just award points — it unlocks powerful personalization and targeting opportunities, by tying offline behavior to first party data, 

• Recommend products based on what customers actually buy
• Trigger automated flows when a shopper hits a purchase milestone
• Identify top-performing SKUs across all sales channels
• Create smart segments by category, brand, or spend level
  

It’s your loyalty program — smarter, more flexible, and fully omnichannel.

We're already seeing early adopters use this to bridge the gap between retail distribution and DTC engagement, and the results speak for themselves.

QR Codes: Referral That Lives in Your Customers' Pockets

Next up: Wallet Passes that Power QR-Based Sharing

If you've ever fumbled through your email inbox looking for a referral link to share, you already know why this matters. Friction kills conversion. And when sharing your referral link with friends requires customers to dig through their inbox, remember a code, or navigate back to your site just to grab their link, you're leaving referrals on the table.

Wallet Passes solve that. Your referral program now lives in Apple Wallet or Google Pay, right next to credit cards, boarding passes, and everything else your customers actually use every day. They can access their referral link instantly and share it with friends on the spot.

It's a small UX shift that creates a massive behavior change. When sharing is always accessible, always visible, and always one tap away, referrals stop being something customers mean to do eventually and start being something they actually do in the moment.

Shopify Gets Smarter: POS, PDP Points, and Coupon Controls

If you're on Shopify, and chances are, you are — this quarter brought some of the most practical, high-impact updates we've ever shipped.

Your loyalty and referral programs just went in-store.

With Friendbuy’s Shopify POS integration, customers can opt into loyalty while shopping in person, earn points for every purchase, and redeem rewards or referral incentives right at checkout. All in-store activity flows instantly into your loyalty program—no data imports, no lag, no channel gaps—so customers enjoy the same seamless experience whether they’re shopping online or at your brick-and-mortar store.

PDP Points Preview answers a question every loyalty marketer has heard a hundred times: "How many points will I get for this?" Now, customers see exactly how many points they'll earn before they add to cart. It's a tiny nudge that drives measurably higher AOVs and repeat purchases — because visibility creates motivation.

And Shopify Coupon Controls give you the flexibility to reward smarter. Create targeted rewards or offers for specific products or collections, offer free shipping incentives, and even let customers combine coupon codes at checkout. With automation and full control built in, you can run multiple campaigns without the chaos—saving your team hours every week and ensuring every promotion works exactly as intended.

Cashback Rewards: Keep Dollars In-House

One of the most anticipated announcements of the session: Cashback Rewards, now in beta for Shopify stores.

Here's why this is a game-changer: traditional loyalty programs reward points. But points require education, perceived value, and often, a leap of faith from your customers. Cashback is instant, tangible, and universally understood.

With Cashback Rewards, your customers earn store credit directly through their loyalty program. It drives repeat purchases, increases LTV, and — critically — keeps those dollars circulating within your brand instead of leaking out to third-party discount sites or gift card resellers.

For performance-driven marketers who want more control over their reward economy (and who doesn't?), this is a tool that pays for itself.

Analytics That Actually Answer Your Questions

We also rolled out new analytics enhancements designed to do one thing: help you understand what's working, who's driving value, and where to double down.

With the new Referral Performance Analytics, you can see exactly how your referral program is driving growth—from how many advocates are sharing to how many new customers and how much revenue those referrals generate. Track share rates, opt-ins, and conversion trends in real time, and see total referred revenue, average order values, and first-time purchases—all in one place.

Because here’s the truth: referral programs don’t fail because the idea is bad. They fail when teams can’t prove impact, can’t identify what’s working, and can’t make data-backed decisions fast enough to optimize performance. These new analytics give you the visibility to do all three.

These updates change that. You get the visibility you need to optimize, scale, and grow with confidence.

Three Takeaways for Marketers

If you take nothing else from this Flywheel, take this:

1. Meet customers where they shop. Loyalty isn't bound to a single channel. Whether your customers are buying on your site, in a retail store, or through a marketplace, your program should be there to reward them. Omnichannel isn't a buzzword — it's table stakes.

2. Leverage data to deepen engagement. First-party receipt data, referral engagement, behavioral triggers — these aren't just analytics features. They're the foundation of personalization that actually converts.

3. Think ecosystem-first. Referral and loyalty are strongest when they're connected to your tech stack, your customer data, and your broader growth strategy. Siloed programs don't scale. Integrated ones do.

What's Next

This Flywheel marks the beginning of a powerful Q4 product cycle. We've got new integrations, advanced analytics, and even more ways to help brands capture value from every customer touchpoint.

But more than that, we're seeing a shift in how leading brands think about growth. It's not just about acquiring more customers. It's about making the customers you already have more valuable, and turning them into the engine that powers everything else.

If you missed the live session, you can watch the full replay to see demos, hear from customers, and get a front-row seat to what's powering the next generation of referral and loyalty growth.

See you at the next one.

👉 Watch the Flywheel Webinar Replay

Interested in learning more? Book time with our team here.

‍

‍

‍

‍