Welcome to ReferralHero, the go-to place to 2X your business through referrals. ReferralHero has been used to scale 1000s of businesses by turning current customers into brand ambassadors. Are you ready to 2X your business?
In this article, we’ll cover:
- What is a referral link
- How does a referral link work?
- Why you should use a referral link
- Referral link generator
- Examples of successful referral links
What Is a Referral Link
Referral links simplify referral tracking and give insight into the impact word of mouth has on your business and the entire referral marketing funnel. Referral links track the journey the referred leads go through on the way to your final purchase conversion event.
Why are these links useful? So that you know who brings friends to your business and who you need to reward!
A referral link is a unique URL that is made up of two parts:
- Your landing page or website URL and
- The referrer’s unique referral code tracking parameter.
For example, www.mybusiness.com/joinmyreferralprogram/?mwr=i8nvad
where www.mybusiness.com/joinmyreferralprogram/ is the landing page you would like your referrals to visit
and i8nvad is the referrer’s unique referral code, which allows businesses to easily track who the referral came from.
Every customer that enrolls in a referral program gets a referral link. The referral link is then shared to friends and family to help drive traffic and sales to your business. When a referral sales conversion happens, the link tracking ensures that the correct referrer gets rewarded for their referral efforts.
How Does a Referral Link Work?
Referral links are a win-win-win method for tracking what works.
They benefit you, the referrer, and their referrals.
Let’s break down how they work:
1. Generate Referral Links
Referral links are generated and assigned to each of your referral program subscribers. The program subscribers can be the existing customers you import into the referral program, those added via email invitation, or any new organic customers. You can use referral program software to auto-generate and assign the link to the subscribers as soon as they are added to the program so that they can start referring.
What’s happening at this point:
- Subscribers get created in the referral program
- Unique referral links are generated and assigned
- Subscribers are shown unique referral links and start to refer
2. Encourage Participants to Share
There are a variety of ways your program subscribers can share their link. The most common include sending through email, SMS, or social media. The sharing process is extremely easy if you are using referral software. All your subscribers have to do is,
- Copy the link and manually share it anywhere they like
- Share on popular social media platforms, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
- Share within private social chat groups, e.g. Whatsapp, WeChat, or Facebook Messenger
What’s happening at this point:
- Each link click is tracked. You know who your most passionate advocates are
- Optionally, you can allocate “points” to each social share activity to encourage subscribers to share more
3. Referrals Click the Referral Link
Once a link is shared, the next step is to get the friend to click the link. Clicking the link will bring and track the referral to the corresponding landing page. Many businesses use double-sided rewards to encourage the friend to click, i.e. give $10, get $10.
4. Referrals Convert
Once the referral has clicked the link and they are on your website, we want them to convert or opt-in to a signup form, book an appointment or make a purchase! The conversion step will close the loop between the referrer and the referral and reward the participants.
What’s happening at this point:
- The referral converts on the landing page and you get a new subscriber or customer!
- Referrer unlocks their reward
- Referral status is updated according to your marketing funnel
Why You Should Use a Referral Link
Referral links make referring your business much easier for you and your customers!
Here’s an example of a situation when a referral link is NOT used:
- Anne is your regular customer and loves your business. She wants to share your business with her friends!
- She sends your website to her friend Jane.
- Jane visits the landing page and signs up for your newsletter.
- Jane is identified as a “direct conversion” in your analytics dashboard and even worse needs to somehow manually tell you that she has been referred.
- You have no idea and are unable to automatically track how many of your customers are being referred through word of mouth!
This simple example shows that without the referral link, referral activity tracking is basically impossible or very time-consuming.
Referral links make it much easier to gain insights on referrals and track word of mouth!
Referral Link Generator
A referral link generator is included in most referral software which turns specific website page URLs into an URL with your customers’ referral tracking parameters. Automating the generation of referral links as soon as a participant signs up makes tracking easier and increases the likelihood that they will share your business.
Let’s take a look at how referral links are generated with ReferralHero:
Step 1: Specify Your Referral Landing Page URL
Step 2: Generate Referral Links
For existing contacts:
Import directly from your CRM or a CSV file that contains the list of your existing subscribers. Referral links will be generated automatically once the import is completed. You can send your imported contacts a ReferralHero Welcome email which includes their created referral link and other relevant program info or use your own email service to send out the referral link.
For new contacts:
New subscriber referral links are automatically generated when they sign up, make a purchase, or book an appointment on your website using ReferralHero’s plug-and-play widgets or your own signup form.
Examples of Successful Referral Links
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