Join the Referral Marketing Revolution with Mention Me | Arctic Leaf

Get ready to dive into the latest OnTap with Arctic Leaf discussion. This time, we're disrupting the Referral Marketing landscape with our partners over at Mention Me!

Every OnTap discussion sees e-commerce merchants and industry leaders having open, fun, and honest conversations. This series delivers expert tips, tricks, and strategies around the most relevant industry topics from a panel of e-commerce heavyweights!

During our July discussion, attendees heard from Mention Me panelists Ali Cassis, U.S. Partnerships Director, and Ellis Turnell, U.S. Sales Director, as they dove into how referral marketing is evolving. Host Josh Garellek, Co-Founder & CEO of Arctic Leaf, moderated the conversation and brought his expertise in how web agencies help incorporate these strategies into e-commerce design, development, and marketing. 

Don't forget to download your ultimate guide to customer advocacy from mention me

Those who joined us heard from referral marketing experts about customer advocacy in a changing marketplace, where customer acquisition cost is growing and customer loyalty is shrinking. We discussed how consumers become brand advocates and the network effect of a data-driven referral marketing strategy. We took deep dives into:

• Understanding who your most valuable customers really are.
• How to capture real referral data, not just tracking cookies and discount codes. 
• Developing a framework for customers with a propensity to refer.
• How to segment your customers to garner loyalty while building an extended network. 

If you want to gain important insights and hear interesting discoveries from the live attendee Q&A, watch the full discussion for yourself below! 

Here are the top 3 questions that were asked by attendees and the answers from our experts!

Question: How do you focus on ROI while creating insightful referral and loyalty programs?

Answer: Providing you have robust fraud prevention measures in place to prevent misuse of your program, you can rest assured that referred customers will be high value and incremental. New customers delivered and revenue generated from their orders will be easy to track.

Referrals also drive repeat behavior amongst the existing customers who are doing the referring. Referrers are 15% more likely to repeat purchases after being rewarded for referring a friend.

There's additional value in the form of the first-party data gathered and its impact across your wider marketing strategy. As an example, using referrers as the seed audience for lookalike modeling on paid search and social typically increases ROAS on those campaigns by 30%. Mention Me syncs these audiences directly with Meta and Google. This combination leads to high ROI and drives sustainable future growth through customer advocacy.

Question: How do you stop referrals from being misused?

Answer: There are multiple safeguards against misuse.

1. The unique identifier should be an email address rather than a cookie. Cookies are too easy to get around.
2. Fraud controls should be in place that identify self-referral - in other words, people trying to 'refer' themselves in order to get discounts. Fraud controls can track similarities in IP addresses, cookies, names, and email addresses - even how much time has passed between the share and the attempt to claim a reward. If a referral looks suspicious, you can withhold the reward.
3. Limiting the number of rewards that a referrer can earn for successful referrals during specific time periods. For example, a maximum of 3 rewards in a week, 5 rewards in a month, and 10 rewards in a year. Any further referrals past these limits will not be rewarded.

Mention Me's platform has all of these safeguards in place and makes it simple to dial measures up or down based on the levels of attempted fraud being tracked.

Question: What are some industry best practices on influencer referrals? 

Answer: It's best to create a separate referral program for influencers that exists alongside your referral program available to your customers.

1. They are managed on the same platform but can be completely independent of each other.
2. Avoid measuring success based on promo code redemption. It creates an attribution headache and increases the likelihood of paying out for low-quality customers. Anyone who has followed the influencer's referral should first have to verify their email address before being given a code. When they place an order using that same email address, you recognize the successful referral. This keeps the customer quality high and makes attribution much clearer.
3. Make it easy for influencers to refer in video. Mention Me's 'Name Share' feature enables the influencer to simply ask their followers to enter their name at the checkout in order to get their reward.

To learn a little bit more about our speakers, keep reading!

From the beginning, Josh Garellek has been passionate about technology, entrepreneurship, and building strong partnerships. After starting an independent gaming studio, he fused his passions together in a merger that gave life to the full-service e-commerce agency Arctic Leaf is today. As a recipient of Forty Under 40 by the Ottawa Business Journal in 2019, and a finalist for Top Business Owner in the 2020 Ottawa Awards, Josh has found success through expert innovation, creative marketing, and sales strategies.

Ellis Turnell is the US Sales Director at Mention Me, leading their new business efforts in North America. Ellis has 7 years of experience enabling brands like Michael Kors, Viator, and Charlotte Tilbury to identify and retain their biggest advocates. Ellis will soon be moving from London to Boston - he welcomes all recommendations on what to eat and where to visit!

Alexandra (Ali) Cassis has spent the last 15 years in the e-commerce/SaaS business formerly working for companies like Rue La La, Klaviyo, and Attentive. She is currently the US Partnerships Director for Mention Me overseeing all US Agency and Technology partnerships. She has a deep understanding of the partnership ecosystem and in her new role, she is looking forward to helping educate brands and partners on the value of customer advocacy and how this can be a huge growth driver for e-commerce businesses. In her free time she loves to be by the beach with her spotted chihuahua named Biggie and has never met a Rose she did not like (basic, we know).

Now that you're all caught up, we'd love for you to join us for future discussions! Simply click here and we'll make sure to add you to our early registration list.

As always, feel free to reach out to marketing@arcticleaf.io if you have any questions about anything we covered in this discussion. We hope to see you soon!