This ebook outlines how to build an effective referral program by leveraging passionate customer ambassadors who can influence new customers. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration, providing effective incentives for referrals, and measuring campaign success through analytics. By engaging customers and implementing a well-managed referral campaign, businesses can significantly boost brand awareness and customer acquisition.

1. An Ambassador eBook
Building an Effective
Referral Program

2. Building an Effective Table of Contents
Referral Program
Contents
Introduction...........................................................3
Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen...... 5
Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to Refer........8
Chatper 3: Measure, Analyze, Profit.............. 11
Conclusion.......................................................... 17
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3. Building an Effective Introduction
Referral Program
Introduction
Its no secret that consumers today are less trusting of
what companies say about themselves than what their
friends recommend. After all, you’d trust your friend more
than an online banner right?
Building a strong base of passionate ambassadors is criti-
cal to any business’ success at influencing new customers
and keeping your brand at the top of people’s minds.
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4. Building an Effective Introduction
Referral Program
Just one well-planned incentive can spread throughout the
Internet, raising awareness, driving traffic and acquiring
thousands of new customers with the click of a button.
By rolling out an effective, monitored and well-managed
campaign, you can ensure maximum returns and a rabid
fan base ready to mobilize on the streets for your business.
But what actually goes in to a successful referral market-
ing program? In this eBook, you’ll learn the techniques you
need to get your program off the ground and start generat-
ing a wave of brand ambassadors to mobilize and promote
your brand.
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5. Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop,
Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen
Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate,
and Listen
Carefully consider who your most satisfied customers are.
Have that person in mind? Good. Now take some time to
think about what makes him/her engaged with your brand.
Ask yourself:
What do they find valuable about your business?
Where are they sharing your brand?
How are they sharing your brand?
The scope and diversity of online channels for word of
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6. Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop,
Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen
mouth referral programs is staggering. Before you start
casting off content and hoping to get some bites in the vast
sea of social media activity, take a step back and look at
where your resources can be best directed.
Are your customers sharing their best customer service
experiences? Or perhaps they’re sending pictures of your
product and brand. Depending on the medium, looking at
how your customers are already sharing on social media
sites can help better direct your campaign to maximize ROI.
Also take into account where and at what time your com-
petition is active as well to make sure your message stands
out from the crowd.
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7. Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop,
Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen
Once you have a better idea of your target brand ambas-
sador base, you can begin crafting your core message and
values. Work to find a message that is consistent and best
targets your core base of supporters, and make sure to let
your fans know what value your referral program brings to
the table.
Along those lines, teach your brand ambassadors about
what types of friends they should be targeting and best
practices for going about it. Taking time out to educate
your first ambassadors can add value to your program and
position you as best suited to bring in new referrals from
other businesses with similar intentions.
Be sure to provide some direction to your first wave of am-
bassadors, either through informational materials online or
direct engagement. Whatever the medium, education can
get your campaign revved up right from the onset.
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8. Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective
Referral Program Incentives to Refer
Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to
Refer
Once you’ve identified and segmented your most passion-
ate supporters it’s necessary to have some incentives in
place to back up your requests for referrals. And what bet-
ter way to get people pumped up to promote than with a
customer rewards program? (Hint: There’s no better way).
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9. Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective
Referral Program Incentives to Refer
Incentive programs tap into people’s instinctive desire to
help each other and to be recognized and rewarded for
their kindness. But of course, the type of reward you offer
can be a difference maker when in comes time to sign-up
for your brand ambassador program.
ESTABLISHING INCENTIVES
After deciding the structure you want to pursue for your
brand ambassador program, you will need to decide on
how much you want to pay for referral rewards. The bal-
ance here will be the same as most marketing decisions:
how do you make sure that you don’t spend more money
getting the customer to you than the customer will produce
in revenue?
The difference, though, comes in calculation. Instead of cal-
culating simply how much financial incentive the customer
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10. Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective
Referral Program Incentives to Refer
needs to come to you, you also must consider what finan-
cial incentive a customer needs to promote your product to
their friends and what they think of as a “good deal” when
offering their support for your business.
Taking the time to fully calculate the ROI from a social me-
dia referral campaign can be very vexing and time consum-
ing. For now, just make sure your customers are respond-
ing positively and actively engaging in your campaign.
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11. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Chapter 3: Measure, Analyze,
Profit
Going beyond the glitz and glamour of rewarding custom-
ers, there are a number of logistical components that must
be stored and measured to gain the most utility from your
campaign and better understand how successful it is, in-
cluding having a clear idea of the benchmarks you’d like
to reach.
Once you start the program, create a schedule to track,
evaluate and optimize your program to direct resources
where the most activity is generated.
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12. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Key back-end requirements that must be managed for suc-
cess include:
Building and maintaining a database of existing and re-
ferred customers.
Automated marketing resources to keep customers en-
gaged.
Send updates to social networking sites on a consistent
and real-time basis.
Update records to know how many ambassadors have
signed up, and adequately reward those who have made
successful referrals.
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13. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Many businesses choose to overlook data for a number of
reasons (lack of experience, laziness, etc). This is a bad
idea.
There are huge gains to be made by combing through data
and seeing what works best for your program in the form of
optimization and increased ambassador engagement.
Having a lot of data on hand is irrelevant without having a
clear understanding of the key performance indicators that
drive success on referral programs. Looking back at action-
able metrics can help truly define the ROI from your invest-
ment:
Brand mentions in social media: Tracking how, when and
where your fans mention/share your brand can help opti-
mize your engagement strategy and better segment and
engage new ambassadors.
Customer loyalty: Analyzing how often a specific fan is
mentioning your brand and sharing content can help better
define your target supporter.
Conversion Rate: By tracking conversion rates across mul-
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14. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
tiple acquisition channels, your business will better under-
stand which platforms drive sales and locate where your
engagement is most effective and where to direct resourc-
es.
Always keep your analytics in mind when testing out new
campaigns. If you’ve never tested out referral marketing
with your business, keeping track of your successes and
shortcomings can help optimize your program as it grows
and evolves.
But to truly analyze all of the data and keep up to date re-
cords is a herculean task. Luckily, there are a number of
resources that offer solutions to the headache of managing
your campaign. Using a brand ambassador software can
help track and manage the inner workings of your cam-
paign and ensure you’re getting the most bang for your
referral marketing buck.
An effective SaaS brand ambassador software platform can
attribute new customer activity to the appropriate ambas-
sador, automate a number of campaign logistics, like issu-
ing rewards and re-engaging neglectful ambassadors, and
free-up much needed time to run the other components of
your campaign.
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15. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Most importantly, be sure to consistently check the suc-
cesses and failures of your program. Otherwise, you will be
missing out on a crucial data to help your business’ refer-
rals skyrocket.
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16. Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure,
Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Referral Program Worksheet:
Print out and use this flowchart to keep yourself organized
when moving forward on your programming.
Listen to your current
fans
Where are my fans
What is my value Where are my fans
sharing my
to fans? active online?
content?
Develop incentives to
refer
Type of Reward
(Cash, Gift Card, %
Commission)
Cost of Incentive/ Is our reward
Value to fans profitable?
Measure and analyze
data
Optimize programming
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17. Building an Effective Conclusion
Referral Program
Conclusion
An online referral program is only as
effective as the amount of brand am-
bassadors it is engaging. When cus-
tomers are engaged with your prod-
uct they’re inclined to refer friends
and family, but it helps to set-up in-
centives to promote through concrete
rewards.
By rolling out an effective, monitored
and well-managed campaign, you can
ensure maximum returns and a ra-
bid fan base ready to mobilize on the
streets for your business.
So gear up and get ready because
the future of online referral market-
ing is knocking on your door, and it’s
about time you answered.
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18. Building an Effective Conclusion
Referral Program
Ambassador enables any company to easily track, man-
age & reward their advocates for referring customers and
driving conversions. Receive actionable channel-specific
metrics; including shares, clicks, conversions, revenue and
clicks per share. Ambassador can be fully integrated into
your website, maintaining your look & feel while providing
a frictionless experience for your advocates.
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