One of the best times to ask advocates to share your brand with friends is immediately after they have had a positive experience. In addition to capturing new customers, you can also drive repeat sales from advocates who have gathered rewards. This could be right after they make a purchase, receive the product in the mail, or complete a customer survey and provide a positive review.
Although there are ways to manually send an email to groups who have completed a certain action, automation will free up resources, eliminate manual errors, and ensure your customers have a seamless experience with your brand. Friendbuy lets you automate your post-purchase strategy by integrating with your tech stack. Friendbuy has partnered with Okendo, Delighted, and Klaviyo to help you optimize your referral program with a post-purchase strategy.
Integration for Automated Email Flows
The integration with Klaviyo allows you to create flows to send reminders to advocates to refer their friends. Friendbuy customer Sports Research does this to drive referral program awareness.
By linking the flow to a triggered action, such as leaving a positive review, customers will receive targeted email messages, prompting them to refer a friend. Choose whether to dynamically insert personal referral links or link customers directly to your referral landing page, where they can share through other channels such as email, Facebook, SMS, and more.
You can also add time delays to your flows to ensure customers receive messages at the optimal time. For example, you could wait 7-10 days to ensure the customer has received your product and had a chance to experience it before prompting them to make a referral. Klaviyo’s predesigned templates allow you to send modern, stylish emails that capture attention when opened. Drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy for any marketer to design beautiful emails.
Integration for Leveraging Customer Reviews
Another post-purchase strategy to consider is the opportunity to leverage customer reviews. Asking for customer feedback after a purchase is a great way for a brand to determine who their potential Advocates are and who would be suitable for making a referral. They’re feeling good about your brand, so this is a good time to prompt a referral and provide an incentive for sharing.
Customer review platform Okendo allows merchants to forward review request emails to Klaviyo. This integration allows you to send referral links to customers after they have left a positive review. Friendbuy customer Alen does this to delight its already-happy customers and prompt more sharing. You must have both Okendo and Klaviyo integrations for this to work. In Klaviyo, set up a triggered email flow when a customer completes an Okendo review. Determine what review results you want to trigger an email—typically four or five stars—and set up a filter.
In order to leverage this workflow, you’ll need to make sure you set up a program like Okendo to generate customer reviews. Rachel Tyers, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Okendo says, “The ability to gain an intimate understanding of your customers and products using the data your customer reviews provide is a huge added advantage. With this data, you can quickly fine-tune your brand’s messaging and offering to create marketing campaigns that are extremely effective and efficient. We’ve seen brands achieve a 423 percent increase in revenue-per-recipient using review data to aid targeted email marketing campaigns in this way.”
This is in addition to the increase in conversions rates and average order values merchants experience when populating product pages with social proof. “On average, customers are 4.3X more likely to purchase after interacting with Okendo reviews and experience a 15 percent increase in average order value,” explains Rachel.
Post-Purchase Referral Strategy
After a customer makes a purchase, you have several opportunities to capture their attention and encourage referral sharing.
Post-Purchase Overlay
Your post-purchase referral marketing strategy should start with Friendbuy’s post-purchase overlay as soon as a purchase has been completed. This widget appears on the order confirmation page and prompts customers to share with friends and family. You can customize the content to include a message to the customer, a coupon code, a personalized URL, and multiple sharing options—the approach is totally up to you.
Order Confirmation
Trigger a referral email after a customer has completed a purchase. They’re already in the mood to buy and might make a second purchase if you give them a good enough incentive. A CTA that gives them a discount on a future purchase is appealing.
Order Fulfillment
Trigger a referral email after an order has been fulfilled. Include a time delay that allows them to experience the product first. Your brand is top of mind, they’re excited about what they just bought, and they may be inclined to share with friends and family.
Positive Review
Ask for reviews so you have positive content on your site that can build trust. Trigger a referral email after a customer provides a positive review. They’re feeling good about your brand, so this is a good time to prompt a referral and provide an incentive for sharing.
Positive NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Friendbuy’s integration with Delighted allows you to prompt a customer with the opportunity to refer once they’ve provided a positive NPS score. You can either include a personal referral link on the “Thanks for Submitting Your Feedback” page or immediately redirect the user to your refer-a-friend landing page once their score has been submitted. These customers, who are now called “promoters,” have shared the intent to recommend your brand to their friends and family, so including the ability to refer is a great strategy.
Create the Ultimate Referral Tech Stack
Friendbuy is constantly working to find new ways to enhance our customers’ referral programs. By creating integrations with companies like Delighted, Okendo, and Klaviyo, we make it possible for you to truly integrate referral marketing into your brand. Automation is the key to scaling your business through referrals or any other marketing channel. With partners that add automation to email flows, the customer review process, and NPS surveys, you can create meaningful interactions and seamlessly promote your referral program.
For more tips on how to boost your referral strategy and take your program to the next level, read Referral Marketing: The Essential Guide.
