The buyer’s journey has changed drastically compared to what it was several years ago. This is mainly due to the growth of the internet, as well as changes in consumer expectations.
Prospects today will complete more than half of the buying journey before even speaking to a sales representative for the first time.
Marketing automation software can help you reach customers and improve the chances of selling to them. The customer journey doesn’t end there though.
After making a purchase, customers will interact with your business in several ways. These interactions can provide more opportunities to improve the customer experience and help encourage referrals.
Automating the referral program is one of the best decisions you will take.
Steps to Built The Automation Funnel
There are several referral programs available that offer simple integration points. Therefore, referrals should be a part of your process.
Whether you add the referrals to a CRM platform, scheduling software, or mailing lists, you’ll benefit from including it. Automation permits you to save time and free yourself up from having to do redundant, manual data entry tasks and outreach.
You’ll find that there is a wide range of possible approaches to automating your referral program. Some companies use complex systems that need a lot of integration, while others may not need any at all.
There are three crucial points related to automation that are worth exploring, as follows:
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Promote Your Referral Program
If your happy customers are unaware of the program, how will they know whether to participate in it or not? You will need to put forth effort to promote the referral program from day one.
Promotions won’t require too much effort. You can mix the promotional strategy with automation to get great results.
Some common tactics include newsletters and confirmation emails with a blurb/link in the email signature. Or you could even direct buyers to it via the payment confirmation email you send upon purchase.
You can also use social media and member accounts on the website for promoting the referral program.
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Sync the Program With Your Sales Processes
Businesses often choose to automate referral programs so they can keep leads in sync across different platforms.
Syncing disparate systems in the manner has many benefits. For example, you might want to have benefits rewarded when customers exhibit specific desirable actions or behaviors.
Although you have many options here, most businesses choose the easiest route by linking their referral program directly into their CRM.
By keeping track of this information, you can increase your customer base. It also makes it simpler for your business to target specific customers in tailored ways.
The referral program may also be connected to some of the apps you use frequently.
This allows you to push information to and from the referral platform. Other systems will maintain everything in line.
All of these actions work together to help you to create a fully automated process, which will save you both time and effort.
Furthermore, to finalize the sales process, you can use tools like ClickFunnels PayPal app to offer various trusted and easy payment options to your customers.
Simplifying the payment process makes buying from you hassle-free and helps customers build trust in your brand.
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Remind the Participants About the Program
Sometimes, you’ll need to keep reminding customers about your referral program to keep it top of mind. Everyone stays rather busy these days, and they can simply forget about telling others to try your products out.
For customers who go inactive, you’ll want to have reminder programs in place that can deliver your messages via any of a number of different mediums such as email, SMS, pop up messages when they login to your website, etc.
If you can highlight the best portions of the program in this message, it might persuade them to refer someone immediately to receive the incentive.
Even if you have a range of promotional activities active, a simple reminder message can be the most effective way to get them back referring new prospects to your brand.
Conclusion
There are several referral program solutions available that can help you track and manage referrals apart from helping with the award distribution.
The key point is that you should have your automation strategy fully in place as soon as you can to support your referral program, ideally upon initial launch. It not only makes things easier for you, but it will also help customers refer others to you.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain. Image sourced from PicPedia.org.
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This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Elena Tivari
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- How to Automate Your Customer Experience for Referrals - March 2, 2021
