Eliminating common referral program struggles

Recently, Amplifinity announced that with the Amplifinity Base referral software, you can launch a referral program to the market in just 7 days. For those of you wondering why that is such a big deal, allow me to explain.

The whole reason getting a referral program to market in seven days is even a possibility is because Amplifinity Base removes common referral program struggles that put implementation of a referral program on hold.

The struggles Amplifinity Base eliminates include:

• The need for dedicated resources or heavy resource consumption
• Management of tracking and reward fulfillment
• IT implementation and participation
• Understanding referral program promotional strategies

Is there a referral program expert in the house?

First, marketing is in the era of “do more with less”. It is rare to have dedicated resources that can be assigned to a particular demand gen program. That means, that while we have good intentions, we are limited and need fast and easy in order to bring a new program to market.

The resource issue isn’t just about having a warm body, most companies are still getting their feet wet with referral marketing and may not understand how a program even works, let alone how to design and build it. Any marketer that has built a lead nurturing program understands that there is a lot of content needed for automating communications. Because of this, most marketers think that if they want something brand authentic they’re going to have to write every page and email from scratch.

Not true! We’ve created lots of referral programs and were able to take appropriate wording and prefill all pages and emails. Marketers can use a paint-by-numbers approach to pick responsive templates, fill in brand colors and images, and then tweak copy. That means you don’t have to be a referral marketing expert to create the content needed for a referral program.

Ensuring proper tracking and reward fulfillment is scary

Once a marketer gets their head around the idea of tracking referral leads and fulfilling on communications and rewards when they reach various stages of the buying process, it can seem positively overwhelming. Remember that resources issue we discussed?

But, if all of the tracking of a referral lead as well as the communications and reward fulfillment can be taken care of for you from an automated system, that doesn’t sound so bad does it? And if all of your advocates have a personal referral homepage where they can make referrals and see their activity and status of rewards in real-time, that takes all of the operational hassle of running a referral program off your plate.

Now to add to that, if all of that communication and triggers and reward fulfillment can be setup in less than 7 days, that would be pretty impressive, right?

IT says I have to wait 8 months for that integration

Most software programs require integration into our systems of records. But the resources to make this happen are rarely within the marketing department. More often than not they are a shared resource and getting their time is difficult. It can also be costly if there is a charge-back model in place.

So when a sexy new technology or idea comes up that marketers think will increase quality demand gen and help the business grow, it feels like a Herculean task to bring it to fruition. But if there is a way to automate integration in less than 30 min of work, that would be doable, right?

This isn’t Field of Dreams, how am I going to get people to join my program?

Savvy marketers get that they need to promote a referral program in order to make it work. But what works? Where should you start? As part of the 7 day implementation, your personal Success Manager will share with you how companies like yours have promoted their programs and what works for the most successful programs. Furthermore, they help train your marketing colleagues and help with training Sales to ensure that everyone knows how the program works, how they can drive advocates to it and how to follow up on these high quality leads.

How to launch a referral program in 7 days

Still sound too good to be true? The infographic below outlines the daily steps to launching a referral program in 7 days. If you want to get to market fast, here’s how partnering with Amplifinity can make it happen.