Best Practices and Challenges in Structuring Referral Programs for Individuals, Organizations, and Public Sector Clients | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

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Emily G.
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Interesting questions. I think Q1 may depend partially on the type of product. Is your company B2B, B2C, or a combination of self-serve/enterprise? We explored doing referrals at my last company (which was both B2B and B2C), and went back and forth a bit on what would be the right approach.
Tracey Chapple
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We are B2B
Rob Lamoureux
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1.
We went back and forth on this. We ultimately settled on rewards for individuals but included ones that were of benefit/value to the organization as well. Main driver for this decision was the fact that individuals were doing us the favor/referral. Yes, in some cases, they needed organizational go ahead but, more often than not, it was their decision provided it wasn't against corporate policy or they were comfortable overlooking policy (many of our best advocates did). Plus, honestly, advocacy and reference-ability boil down to the individual. An organization can be happy/satisfied with your product/service but it won’t matter if you don't have the right person willing to share their experience and who understands the value in it even outside of incentives/rewards. So, we included incentives like gift cards (using Tango and with specific criteria/limits) that are 100% targeted to the individual referrer. We also included things like a free pass to our annual customer conference and hotel coverage at the conference. These have value to both the individual and organization. Finally, we included blocks of advice line hours and training credits. These were more targeted to the organization but, again, also held value to the individual. The interesting thing is that we added advice line hours and training credits based on advocate feedback, yet our most popular incentives/rewards by far were gift cards and conference-related perks.
2.
We allowed public sector customers to join our program and found some great advocates in this sector. While we could have excluded rewards from them, we didn't. We found that these customers did a good job policing themselves when it came to incentives/rewards. They wouldn't redeem if they couldn't and we wouldn't perk without their permission in advance. We also found that while things like gift cards were always off the table, they could often get approval to take advantage of user conference passes.
3.
Can't help with this one. Sorry.
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Maria Braune
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hey Tracey Chapple - we are both B2B/ B2C and we structured our referral program around charitable donations due to the fact that we are in the Finwell software world and our legal/ compliance team were not okay with just giving out $$. We have many clients who have their own charity within their organization so it was also a win- win for them b/c they could make the referral + provide $$ for their internal charity. Now, we still have an adoption problem b/c not everyone wants to open up the rolodex but messaging about how they can make a big difference for a charity of their choice.
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Tracey Chapple
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Thank you both so much! I suspect we need to push back harder with legal if we want to make this program successful. We are also looking at passes to our customer conference as incentive.
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Rob Lamoureux
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Highly recommend customer conference passes as an incentive. That was a big win for us. Often hard for customers, even your best advocates, to justify attendance because of budget constraints. Passes as an incentive/reward gave them something to work toward, so they were more inclined and excited to take part in advocacy activities, particular references, since it could help them earn a pass and, as a result, better justify attendance within their organization. Plus, when we added an incentive to cover two nights hotel at the conference, it had a huge side benefit. We saw advocates more willing to sign up for speaking at the conference, since this came with a free pass. They could then use points they earned for hotel, making it even easier to justify attendance since then they were only on tap for airfare. Plus, these were key contacts we wanted to attend, so it was a win for the advocacy team and company as well. As far as legal, we made it clear that we weren't randomly incentivizing or rewarding customers. And we weren't “paying” them to do something for us. They had the option to participate whenever and however they wanted. And it was up to them to select a reward if they chose to. It really was a reward versus an incentive. We also worked with legal to come up with specific eligibility requirements and limitations. For example, an advocate was only eligible for one conference pass a year. Gift card redemptions were limited to a max of $50 every 12 months. And nothing could be redeemed if an advocate wasn't active for 90 continuous days (regularly earning points over that timeframe). This helped us get over the hump with legal. With this said, we never were able to offer any sort of software or services discounts. Too many issues from a revenue recognition standpoint. However, I think we came to a good middle ground. Good luck!
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Christine Newman
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Curious what everyone is using for their referral programs?
Tracey Chapple
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Do you mean as a vendor/tool? If so, we assessed 4 vendors - Referral Rock, Extole, PartnerStack, and impact. com RR and Extole were our top 2 and we are planning to move forward with RR. Happy to give more details 😊
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Rob Lamoureux
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Same question as Tracy. Also, by referral do you mean customer referrals/references? We were using Influitive for our advocacy program/hub and then switched to Base. We used both for referral/reference automation. Just prior to leaving my last role, and considering future direction/plans, we had started having conversations with userevidence.
Christine Newman
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Yes meant tool, thank you!