How To Run a Successful Referral Program on Shopify

Referral marketing is one of the most powerful tools you can use to grow your business. Not only are customers four times more likely to purchase when sent by a friend, but a word-of-mouth marketing program forms a positive feedback loop. When advocates share, the people they share with are more likely to become advocates themselves, creating a cycle of loyal customers.

We created Conjured Referrals to help merchants take advantage of that cycle. These are a few tips that we’ve learned from our years as a top-rated app on Shopify which will ensure you have a successful and sustainable referral program for your business. 

Create a landing page that you can link from your navigation and marketing emails. Stand-alone landing page campaigns tend to out-perform all other campaign types, particularly when linked from your navigation with a compelling value proposition such as "Get $20 Off" or "Free $$$". You can also create a direct advertising funnel to guide existing customers to the campaign page, thus turning loyal customers into advocates.

A great example of this is Shinesty. They have their landing page linked prominently from their header, with the eye-catching title “Free $$$”. Who wouldn’t click to get free money?

Offer a compelling incentive! Put yourself in your customer's place and think about what you could offer that would get both the advocate and their friend excited. Conjured Referrals offers the ability to give discounts as a standard percentage or dollar amount off, and you can also enable a manual reward if you want to get creative. Don’t be afraid to make the offer asymmetric - you don’t have to give advocates the same thing you give friends. For example, Otherland offers $10 to the advocate and 10% off to the friend:

Also think about what type of offer makes sense for your business. If your product is expensive, $5 off may not be enough of a discount to motivate your customers to share. If your product has a low repeat purchase rate (think mattresses, for example), you may want to offer advocates cash payout instead of a discount off their next order.

Market your referral program to get the loop started. Setting up the program is easy; the marketing is what most businesses lack. A weak rollout almost always leads to an unsuccessful program. Spend time getting the word out about this program to bring in your strongest advocates. We recommend you do that by sending out an email announcement to your customers to let them know you’ve launched a new program.

Remember that our team is always here to help. We offer free styling services on all Conjured Referrals campaigns and are always available through support@conjured.co. We’re a nimble team that’s always improving, feel free to reach out if you ever find that there’s ever something not available which you’d like to see.