Leverage Influencer Referrals on Social Media
Description
You can work with influencers and promoters that drive additional members and transactions to your loyalty program. By having the right approach and tools you can track the results of each influencer and give the right set of rewards and incentives to both the member and influencer.
Examples of benefits:
- Member acquisition: Bring in new members that you may not have reached through your standard channels
- Increase transactions: Drive additional transactions by having the right rewards set up specifically designed for influencer and promoters
There are two major success factors to ensure that influencer referrals are successful and brings value.
#1 You need to have the right reward structure both for influencer and members;
#2 The execution needs to be streamlined and efficient to ensure you can amend, update and change the influencers and promoters that you are using
Concept
Give out specific influencer promo codes to a set of influencers (often active on social media or specific events) that gives the person that signs up an attractive offer and enable you to track how many sign up and associated purchases that each influencer has achieved (and reward them appropriately)
Execution
- Identify influencers
- Create unique promo codes for each influencer
- Set up the sign-up reward mechanism for new members (voucher or points)
- New member signup with an influencer promo code
- Run promo code report to identify signups & transactions from each influencer
- Reward the influencer
KPI
- Cost of influencer rewards
- Increase in member growth – > 20% [depends on number of influencers]
- Increase in transactions -> 5% [depends on increase in member growth]
Detailed Execution Plan
This is a typical execution plan (Memberson Loyalty CRM platform used as an example) but there are various configuration options available depending on the awards and criteria for a successful referral.
#1 Identify Influencers
We are trying to drive member acquisitions by using influencers on various social medial platforms. The first step is to identify influencers that:
- The brand wants to be associated with
- Is expected to make a meaningful contribution to the number of new members they can bring in
- If event based, has a connection to the specific event
Let’s assume that you have identified 5 influencers that will make a difference for your brand and that you want to work with.
#2 Create unique promo codes for each influencer
You will set up 5 different signup promo codes, one for each influencer so you can track how many members each influencer attracts and the transactions that those members make on your platform.
For the sign-up promo codes you will need to decide on an additional award you are going to give these members to increase the incentives. This can be items such as vouchers, benefits, Gift-With-Purchase, free event entry and similar incentives.
For this particular walk through how an execution plan may look like we will use $20 vouchers as a specific sign-up bonus related to the influencers promo codes.
We will define 5 promo codes and we will set these promo codes to be available for use. The naming convention of the promo code should be unique to the influencer and your brand to create a connection.
#3 Set up the sign-up reward mechanism for new members
First we need to create or set up a $20 voucher in the voucher definition screen. We will keep it a simple set up (there are many more options available including stock balance, redemption restrictions and validity):
Thereafter we use the rule builder to set up a rule to link the specific promo codes to specific rewards. In this example we will make it simple and just link all the promo codes (if a person is using the promo codes) to the $20 voucher will be issued to this user as part of the welcome package (in addition to the standard incentives). Please see the criteria and action setting for the example rule below:
#4 New member signup with an influencer promo code
Now the influencer campaign can be launched and each influencer may promote member acquisition through social media, podcast or events.
At this stage you would also have clarified what referral fee that each influencer will receive. We would recommend that the influencers receive $x based on each member that has made a purchase of at least $y within 2 months of the start date of the campaign or something similar. However, there may be scenarios where you are only interested in building your membership base and have other criteria for rewarding the influencer.
When a new member signs up the will enter the promo code in the sign up channel (mobile, web, tablet or third-party channel). Please see a simplified form below with the promo code field.
A new member signs up with the influencer promo code the promo code will be recorded against the membership and the rule set up will trigger the issuance of the voucher (based on the promo code). A possible addition is to also trigger a separate influencer EDM based on the promo code used in the same rule.
#5 Run promo code report to identify signups & transactions from each influencer
To identify the members that has used a particular influencer promo code and how much they have spent since sign up you can simply run a member list report and we recommend that you download it to excel so you then can do further manipulation to determine what reward that each influencer should receive, depending on what you have agreed with them.
#6 Reward the influencer
The last step after the campaign is finalized is to reward each influencer based on the results, this is typically done separately by Finance. Alternatively is to get each influencer to sign-up as a member and give them the rewards in terms of merchandise or vouchers that can be used to buy your merchandise.
