Referral marketing is instant and direct when using SMS messaging and can be a great opportunity for your business to leverage positive consumer experiences. It is important to think about brand experiences that inspire social impacts. Consumers love to connect with their friends and family about brand experiences that they remember such as memorable marketing incentives or interactive purchases that stimulated emotion. If your product brings delight to your consumers why can’t it do that for their friends. It can and we will explain how it is done and how effective it can be using SMS messaging.
Let’s explore how easy it is to create a referral marketing strategy using SAM and also why referral marketing is so important to your brand perception.
Creating a referral program
With SAM, referral marketing is made easy with our smart automated referral feature. Platform operation to create a SMS message referral program is made simple.
For our visual learners, check out this video on how to create a referral program using SAM.
First, operators need to give their referral program a name. This will be displayed on the webform they receive a link to so make sure it is relevant to the reason you are hosting your referral program.
Second, operators have to create a description. This will also be displayed under the referral program name. Usually a motivating message is advised to get them to complete the form. You know what gets your consumers going.
Third, operators have to fill out the message body. The message body is the message that the person being referred will receive as a verification for their completion. Our best practice here is to tell operators to grace their recipient with a thank you message with steps on how they can redeem their offer for the completion of their referral.
Fourth, operators have to set an expiration date for how long the referral program is being hosted.
Fifth, operators have to select specific fields they want the referrer to fill out. These include phone number (bread and butter), email, name, birthday, gender, marital status address, postal code, city, countrystate the webform select the fields that they would like to collect
Lastly, after you have sent the campaign, operators want to check the referral campaign reporting to convert the new referral data you have to be used in future campaigns.
Now that you know how easy it is to create a referral program using SAM. Let’s explore reasons why referral marketing using SMS messaging is important.
Brand image points
When a consumer has a positive brand experience they are willing to share that with others. That shared sentiment can make your brand image some points. If you come to think about it, the foundation of a brand’s loyalty is built on community.
Appeals to your clients image
When you select a specific consumer to refer someone else for a product or service opportunity with your brand. It shows that you value their perspective and opinion. That can have positive consequences between that consumer and their brand loyalty to your business. It is always more cost effective to keep the same consumers than going after new ones.
Referrals close deals faster
The reality of the sales cycle comes with a lot of consistency and creativity. Some sales scenarios take 5 engagements and some take more or even less. Although, if you research referral rate benchmarks by industry, product and service. You can see that referrals help close deals faster. Why? Well, there is already an established relationship between your consumer and that can trickle into the relationship they have with their friends in family if you make your consumer an evangelist.
Want to create your own referral marketing program using SMS messaging? Hire SAM.