The philosophy of Dropbox’s referral program was very plain. Since the product offered storage space in the cloud, they decided to reward people with more free space not only for referring their friends but also for accepting an invitation.

In order words, we’re talking about a 2-side referral program for a compelling product, that rewarded both sides for completing the desired task; registering for Dropbox.

The details that made a champion:

It was part of the onboarding process

People had a clear view of the benefits

Ridiculously easy invitation process

People knew their referral status

"Referral marketing strategies are a comprehensive set of processes that encourage consumer advocacy with incentives to drive revenue growth. They’re also the only marketing channel that allows your brand to leverage word-of-mouth advocacy in a measurable way. 

• Craft the program structure
• Who are your best customers?
• How can we target these customers and what’s the most compelling incentive we can offer?
• What’s the goalpost to succeed?
• Design the user experience
• Discovery
• Sharing"

To help marketers understand the performance benchmarks for referral marketing campaigns Referral SaaSquatch put together a well-designed infographic.

This is a list of 6 alternative ways to keep your referral marketing program going strong.

1. Offer rewards that matter

2. Engage employee advocates

3. Remove unnecessary hurdles

4. Market your referral program

5. Dedicate resources to maintaining it

6. Be transparent

In order to achieve virality, there are specific steps you need to take. And while they might seem insignificant if you look at them one by one, all of them together can make your virality rate explode.

1) Leave happy customers behind

2) Boost your Referral marketing campaigns with Paid Advertising

3) Optimize your Open Graph elements

4) Include multiple sharing options

5) Use the right marketing widgets

6) Do Referral Program A/B testing

7) Select the appropriate incentive

Average time to verify an email address

The average time to verify an email address is 1 hour and 21 minutes. However, the data is not linearly distributed at all. Indeed, 50% of subscribers verify their email address in less than 2 minutes.

How many referrals to be in the top 10%?

On average, in order to be in the top 10% of the list, you only need to refer 1 person. If you refer two people you are, on average, in the top 5%.

Which engagement emails are the most effective?

The open rate is quite high for all emails, averaging 49.1%. Not bad. The most opened email (not surprisingly) is the “Welcome email” with 62% open rate.

The CTR of emails like “New Referral” and “Promoted email” is relatively low (1%). The CTR of emails like “Gained Positions” and “Lost positions” is quite high (5% and 7%).

Which social channels are the most effective?

All social channels have a high conversion rate but two in particular stand above everything else: the old fashioned email (26%) and Whatsapp (28%). What do these two seemingly different tools have in common? The answer is simple: they are meant for personal communication.

Vendor websites might be one of the most used information sources by B2B buyers, but they're towards the bottom of the list in helpfulness and trustworthiness, according to a report from TrustRadius [download page]. Instead, free trials, product demos and referrals are among th

"User age is the most important factor in referral schemes. And I’m not talking about their time on Earth but time since signing up to your service. Time since signing up is the most important factor to consider.

• The biggest volume of invites, both successful and unsuccessful, are sent out during the first couple of days since signing up. Which makes perfect sense because users are still in the discovery phase and learning about any referral programs in the process.Which would mean that there will never be a better time to set up some messaging and triggers around the referral program.
• There is another peak around day 30 that coincides with the end of the trial period for must users. 
• The probability that an invite is successfully accepted increases with each new invite the company/user has sent. That is, the more invites someone sends, the higher the probability of success, or vice versa."

Used by almost 9 in 10 respondents, email marketing is the most popular channel used by B2B marketers to acquire customers, according to The State of Pipeline Marketing Report 2016 from Bizible. 

When it comes to revenue impact, though, there’s a clear leader: word-of-mouth (W-O-M). Asked to choose the activity or channel with the biggest positive impact on revenue, more than one-fifth (22%) of respondents pointed to referrals and W-O-M. That was more than double the share of each of the next-most influential channels: content marketing (9.1%), SEO (9.1%) and trade shows (9.1%).

Did you know that 84% of B2B buyers start their buying process with a referral (2013 Edelman Trust Barometer)?

84%. And by the way, should a company pursue those referrals, 3.6% are converted to a sale (Implisit, 2014).

Let's do the math. Suppose a universe of 100 suspects who are friends of your clients (not an unreasonable assumption!). 84 of them will start their buying process with a referral from your clients. Suppose you had a program in place where you secured those 84 as referrals. On average, 3.6% will turn into sales, or 3 new clients. Right in your backyard.

My bet is that very few B2B marketers are dedicating 84% of their efforts and resources towards this. Probably just the opposite, where 84% of resources goes towards inbound and outbound tactics. The actual figure? 39% of marketers are using referral marketing regularly, and a quarter of them say it has brought in more than 50% of their new customers (Gigaom Research, 2014).

Talk about a disconnect.

Clearly, a startup can't quite rely on referrals, but anyone other than that may be missing out on an opportunity. Huge opportunity.

Let's sketch out a straw man proposal that you may want to kick around a bit...

A road less traveled would be working your client base for referrals, and as referrals come in, execute an Account Based Marketing approach for each referral, utilizing a marketing automation package to deliver content, track and score. So how does this work? Thankfully, there are technology components that can be linked together to make this happen:

• Probably the best referral platform we've seen is from Influitive (influitive.com), as it is geared towards the B2B marketer. As you search through referral platform providers, be aware that many are geared towards the B2C environment. 
• As the referrals are generated, they flow into your CRM, and from there, your ABM strategy kicks in. CRM needed, not required.
• And to execute on the ABM strategy, your marketing automation system is used to nurture and score your prospects.

OK, some resources:
-Referral Marketing articles: http://www.scoop.it/t/the-marketing-automation-report/?tag=referral+marketing  
-ABM articles: http://www.scoop.it/t/the-marketing-automation-report/?tag=account+based+marketing 

Want to kick the idea around with us?: hello@marketingIO.com

marketingIO

Outbound B2B sales are becoming less and less effective. In fact, a recent survey found that connecting with a prospect now takes 18 or more phone calls, callback rates are below 1%, and only 24% of outbound sales emails are ever opened. Meanwhile, 84% of B2B buyers are now starting the purchasing process with a referral, and peer recommendations are influencing more than 90% of all B2B buying decisions.

Why are more and more buyers avoiding salespeople during the buying process? Sales reps, according to Forrester, tend to prioritize a sales agenda over solving a customer’s problem. If organizations don’t change their outdated thinking and create effective sales models for today’s digital era, Forrester warns that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020.

The answer to the shift away from reliance on outbound sales could reside in social selling, the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. With social selling, salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing educational content and answering questions. As a result, they’re able to build relationships until prospects are ready to buy.