Run a Referral Program
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how to invite customers to join the program.
- Describe the customer journey across the referral program lifecycle.
Review the Promotion
After choosing the rewards and audience, and activating the content assets, namely the email and the widget, review the promotion. The guided flow provides a summary of the stages that advocates and their friends go through during the promotion lifecycle.
Yasmin uses the summary to visualize the promotion journey from launch to completion. Each stage shows the content asset in use. She reviews the summary and saves the promotion.
Check out this video that summarizes how you can create a referral program and design its promotions.
Start the Referral Program
Yasmin activates the promotion on the day she wants to launch it. Advocates can start joining only after the promotion is activated. Once activated, journeys are created in the promotion’s Marketing Cloud Engagement business unit for each promotion stage that contains active email. These journeys automatically send email to advocates and their referrals as they progress through the promotion stages.
Now that everything is set up and live, let’s understand how advocates engage with it.
Follow a Customer’s Journey
Sana Khan (she/her), a loyal Cloud Kicks customer, receives an email about the referral program. She decides to check the details later, but forgets. A few days later, Sana receives another email about the invitation.
She thinks about it for a minute and clicks the Join Now button in the email, which redirects her to the Refer a Friend widget in the Cloud Kicks experience site.
Because Sana is an existing customer, she already has a contact record. So she sees the widget in the Advocate Not Registered state. She clicks Join and receives an email thanking her for enrolling in the program. The email also includes her unique referral code.
A few days pass before she starts referring her friends. A reminder email prompts her to initiate referrals.
At this point, the widget in the experience site changes to the Registered Advocate state. Sana enters her brother’s email address to invite him to sign up with the brand. She then invites some of her friends by sharing her referral link on social media.
In the meantime, her brother receives an email with Sana’s referral code. He too puts it off, so a few days later, a friendly reminder email nudges him. He clicks the referral link, which takes him to a sign-up page, where he enters his details. Soon after, he receives a thank-you email with a $20 voucher from Cloud Kicks.
Sana’s brother uses the voucher to buy a pair of sneakers. Immediately after, Sana receives an email with a reward—a $20 voucher that she uses right away.
As advocates begin joining the program, you can track the referrals and understand their impact on overall program performance.
Resources