Building brand awareness is imperative for your business in order for you to reach more potential clients. High brand recognition contributes to building a community and keeping customers loyal. It is important to stay active in the minds of your consumers to keep them coming back to you.

However, it can be difficult to build a brand that stands out in a crowded market. To achieve that, you will need a solid digital marketing strategy and the right focus on your target audience. We have some ideas about how to accomplish this. Below are some marketing tips you may find helpful for achieving the goal of increasing the recognition of your company.

Nonetheless, it is best to take one step at a time and begin with the concept of brand awareness. What does it mean, and why is it important?

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is crucial, no matter which industry your company operates in. In a nutshell, it stands for people’s ability to recognize your brand. The higher your brand awareness, the better results advertising and campaigns will achieve. Knowing your brand may encourage a lot of consumers to choose your company to fulfill their needs as the go-to option. As such, there is a great need to build a strong brand identity and become a top name in your industry.

This is also an essential aspect for both B2C and  B2B companies. More than 75% of B2B leaders admit that a strong brand is crucial for their growth plans. So no matter who your target is, it would be nice to stay in their minds for longer. 

Why is brand awareness important?

Reaching potential customers is not a piece of cake; countless businesses are fighting to reach a similar target audience. Keeping your brand at the forefront of people’s minds is the first and one of the most important stages of the marketing funnel. It is crucial for acquiring more clients and building a community.

Brand awareness campaigns support expanding your audience and help to search for the best strategies. There are plenty of digital marketing tactics that may come in handy with this matter. For starters, it would be good to focus on the type of content you publish and how you encourage people to visit your website. In such terms, referrals can be a huge support. They will help you to reach a broad audience and increase your engagement rate. 

How can a referral program boost brand awareness?

What can you do to use referral marketing for a brand engagement campaign? We are here to show you. But first things first, before you use a referral program to boost brand awareness, you should choose the best tool to do so. In our opinion, it is EarlyParrot, and we will explain to you why.

Making noise about your brand

Once you have created your campaign (with EarlyParrot, this can happen in the blink of an eye), you will be able to reach new customers. Thanks to offering incentives, your regular customers will be more willing to spread the word about your business and invite their friends or family to join your community. By using referral links, you will be able to track who is the best brand ambassador and maybe reward them even more than usual. 

Your customers can share their recommendations and links across social platforms and become part of your content marketing strategy. What you need to do is to design the messages for them to share. With EarlyParrot, you can create the content of each sharing page and message that your customers will publish. Think about valuable content that will have a major impact on the recipients and boost social engagement. You will see that social media users appreciate such content and visit your website as a result. 

Branding your communication

Speaking of communication, it should be clear as day which brand is behind this content. You need to focus on your visual brand identity. About 3/4 of customers recognize a brand via its logo. So put it in a visible place when creating a communication widget. Moreover, it is also important to brand your rewards. Once a new customer earns a gift for, e.g., registering to receive your newsletter, it should be clear who will send it. This will stick in their mind and place you one step closer to your ultimate goal, which is remaining in their memory. With EarlyParrot, you can add an image to each incentive, no matter if it is a welcome gift or a referral reward. Keep in mind the above and add your logo to the pictures of them. Visual content has a significant impact on increasing visual brand identity, so remember to brand all graphics or videos that you post too.

Taking care of your SEO efforts

One of the most crucial aspects of any content marketing strategy is SEO. It supports boosting conversion rate and keeping your position in search engine results high. When you hear SEO, the first thing that comes to mind is probably keywords. This is the right association, but it is also crucial when making blog posts or other pieces of content. When it comes to referral marketing, links matter the most. Add the name of your brand to referral links in order to boost brand awareness and support your SEO effort at the same time. If you take care of your SEO comprehensively, you will see the results – a high position in search engine results and branded referral links that are a claim to fame. 

Staying in touch with your clients

Keeping your customers in the loop allows them to feel a sense of community, and thus brand awareness to increase. Inform them about each change in the program or other general ones. It would also be great to provide customers with some valuable content like whitepapers, ebooks, or infographics. Help them expand their horizons. 

In this regard, list building is a crucial aspect to keep everything in order. EarlyParrot supports this process too. Once a given client registers on your site, they will receive an email with an invitation to join your referral program. By inviting each of your customers and informing them about upcoming or earned rewards you will keep them in the loop and expand your brand community, which is the main point of referrals. Plus, you can add some extras to these emails too. 

It is important to note that EarlyParrot supports most of the commonly used email marketing providers like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and AWeber, so it won’t be a problem to integrate this tool with your apps. 

What else can you do to build brand awareness? 

There are plenty of digital marketing strategies for boosting your company’s recognizability. But none of them will bring outstanding results by themself. To support your referral efforts, you need to use the synergy effect and choose which ones would work best together. We have some propositions.

Social media marketing 

Being present on social media allows you to stay in customers’ minds for longer. Let’s consider a situation when a client receives a referral link from a friend and visits your site, but isn’t convinced. As they scroll through Instagram, they notice your advertisement and are encouraged by quality content on your profile. Acquisition of a new lead would be the cherry on top if you handle it properly. Inspired by your Instagram content, the potential client may return to your site, use a referral link, and join your program. Doesn’t that sound promising?

Guest posting 

Be present on many channels and… websites. Make the most of the possibilities offered by guest posting. Promote your business on different sites and industry platforms by writing informative and interesting texts that refer to your business. Remember, however, that this should not be an intrusive promotion – you should gently suggest checking out your company or its products. Thanks to such occasional guest posts, you will have the opportunity to reach a larger group and acquire new customers. You can capitalize on the reach of the pages your posts are published on and catch their audiences’ attention. It’s a perfect solution.

There is one catch – the content must be valuable and high quality. It should be insightful and full of interesting facts or stats. Otherwise, hardly anyone will want to collaborate with you. It is also crucial to offer something in exchange, such as a post on your blog or backlink. The conditions depend on both parties, but do not forget that no business activity is one-sided. Ask and receive, that is the main rule. 

Affiliate marketing 

This kind of marketing is often confused with referral marketing, and although they act on similar principles they differ from each other quite significantly. Both are about recommendations, which in the case of affiliate marketing are made by affiliates, i.e. people who have gathered a large audience on social media. They recommend your product and provide affiliate links to followers, allowing them to purchase with, e.g., a 10% discount. The combination of these two recommendation channels may turn out to be very effective. For example, a customer sees a video on YouTube about your product but is not fully convinced. If a friend also makes the same recommendation, though, success is guaranteed.

It is worth using omnichannel marketing to increase brand awareness – you can increase revenue by as much as 23% by presenting your brand consistently across all platforms. In addition, too many channels and advertisements can cause readers to become overwhelmed, which is the exact opposite of what you want to accomplish. Therefore take care when deciding which channels and ads to ignore.

Over to you

Increasing brand awareness is a significant step towards building the appearance of your business. Remaining at the forefront of people’s minds by gaining their recommendations is a good way to stay relevant. But to have everything under control, you need a good strategy and  tools. One of them is EarlyParrot, and it will assist you from the first minutes of the installation process. 

Thanks to EarlyParrot, you will be able to use the full power of referrals and plan an entire omnichannel strategy too. Once you launch your referral program, this tool will handle the communication on your behalf and automate every process. Moreover, you will be able to track the performance of your program at any time. 

Thanks to such support, you will have more time to take care of other strategic aspects and plan, e.g., collaboration with affiliates or social media posts.

Ready to boost your brand awareness?

The SaaS industry is a demanding one. In order to promote your products successfully you need to attract potential customers and stay step further ahead of your competitors. Moreover, you need clients to stay with you for a while and spend some money on your solutions. It is not a piece of cake.

Additionally, it is not so easy to create a marketing campaign about SaaS products. Digital products are harder to promote than physical ones since you can’t show customers how beautiful they are or encourage them to choose from a large variety of designs, for example. It is hard to present why the product should be chosen by potential customers when they want to see visual proof. 

People talking about your product provides similar evidence for digital products. In this case, what can you do to make a buzz about your SaaS? One way is referral marketing, or to be more precise, creating a referral program with EarlyParrot.

Let’s start from scratch, what are the benefits of referral marketing for SaaS businesses?

Why is it worth starting a referral program in the SaaS industry?

The following reasons should convince you to set up a referral program for your customers. As a SaaS business you need to take care of your leads; they should have a long lifetime value and be high quality in order to deliver you some results. What are some reasons to fall in love with referral marketing if you run a SaaS business? Does the referral process give you qualified leads and increase revenue? Let’s find out!

Greater customer lifetime value and lead quality

As we mentioned, customer lifetime value matters across all industries, but in the SaaS field it is even more important. When it comes to referral customers, they have up to 16 times longer lifetime value. This means they stay with you longer, trust you, and spend more money on your solutions. Moreover, thanks to a referral strategy, your churn rate may decrease too. Doesn’t that sound promising?

In addition, as a SaaS, you need to build an audience of qualified and knowledgeable people who will be able to use your solution, as well as people who are familiar with the challenges it can solve. All the boxes will be checked when using referral marketing – your clients spread the word about you to their friends in the industry, which means they will be knowledgeable about the field and have experience in the area.

People are more likely to trust referrals from known people than strangers

This is always one of the first advantages stated about referral marketing. No surprise, since it is a very important aspect and the main power of referrals.  Advice from your friends is probably worth more than that from influencers, as you can probably say from your own experience. After all, our close ones are close for a reason. They are reliable, and that is one of their big plus points. When it comes to referrals, the same applies. If clients have doubts about what to buy, they may ask their friends. If they recommend your site and share a referral link too, it’s mission accomplished. You will probably gain new, loyal customers this way, provided you meet their expectations and deliver a great user experience.

It decreases costs

Referral marketing is relatively low cost. The price of the software shouldn’t burn a hole in your pocket, plus it can help with lowering other expenses like customer acquisition costs. Referral links can bring you a 25% higher profit margin. As one of the cheapest distribution channels, it can be said that referrals marketing is highly reliable. Moreover, it does not require big investments in resources either. No need for an IT team or a bunch of marketing people, you can do it yourself provided you choose the right software to support you. What’s more, creating campaigns is also a very easy process that doesn’t require much time. 

Referrals build brand awareness

Generating a buzz around your brand might get you some fame. Riding a wave of popularity can build your brand positioning in many people’s minds. Moreover, you may become the go-to solution when a given company hits bumps on the road. Needless to say the more people who know about your brand, the more will be curious about your solution and test out a free trial and/or buy your product.

Great examples of such buzz are Uber’s referral program and the latest flavour of the month, Clubhouse. People were curious about the latter, and its popularity went wild recently, with everybody talking about it and asking for referral links.

Referral marketing software – why choose EarlyParrot?

You might ask yourself why it is so important to choose the right referral software. Well, without a good tool you won’t be able to achieve any of the above results, at least not on a large scale. What criteria should the best software solutions meet?

• Implementing and integrating it with other apps/programs should be easy.
• It has to be simple to create a referral program and track its performance.
• This should make it easy for you to follow the analytics of your programs.
• You must be able to customize your campaigns as much as you wish.

And we have some great news – EarlyParrot meets all of the above requirements!

So now it is time to show you how to use EarlyParrot to its fullest potential. Let’s start from the beginning – the installation process.  

#1 It takes up to 15 minutes to install

EarlyParrot is so user-friendly that it will guide you through the installation process step-by-step. You don’t need to have an IT degree to install it, as the tool will advise what to clink and when. Moreover, the whole process only takes up to 15 minutes, so there is no long-term plan or implementation strategy needed. 

#2 Creating a referral marketing campaign is quick and easy 

Once the software is installed, you should focus on creating your referral marketing campaign. You need to start by establishing your goal, which for most SaaS businesses is simply generating more sign-ups.

Now it’s time to click next and start your campaign. The first step here is choosing a reward system. You have three options to choose from: Reward Unlocking, Top Influencer, or Fast Lane. Once you choose the system, it is high to establish the rewards themselves. Think about what would work best for you – cash incentives, free gifts, extended free trials, or perhaps something else?

EarlyParrot allows you to name your reward, establish a target, and choose whether it will be a welcome gift or a referral one. In other words, take care of your reward structure. Moreover, you can even upload an image of the reward. No worries if you are creating your first campaign. An explanation appears on each text box when the pointer hovers over it to help you decide what to type into each one. What’s more, this referral program software will not let you hit next until you complete all of the required fields.

In this step, you can also design a unique coupon code to be sent with a referral reward email. Small things that matter!

#3 EarlyParrot handles communication on your behalf

Communication is an essential factor when it comes to building relationships with your customers and improving the user experience. Thanks to EarlyParrot you have it covered! What’s the plan? Start by writing the content of invitations.

The first step is to invite people, so you need to design messages and their content for customers to be able to share across social media channels. You have Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to choose from, as well as messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber, and Telegram.

Speaking of invitations, you should invite people from your customer base to join your referral marketing program, and it is very easy to do so. You can import your existing customers via CSV. Such a massive injection of participants will allow you to hit the ground running with your customer referral program.

However, let’s return to your communication. You can design emails too. First, fill in the “From field”, i.e. your name and email address. Then you can choose email templates and triggers. There are various options depending on the type of email you want to send. Once you choose the template you can go to the next step.

The most crucial aspect when it comes to sharing pages is their design. You can set how sharing widgets will look for your referral program participants. Also, sharing widget activity and the appearance of reward widgets can be customized according to your taste.

In keeping with the sharing topic, referral links can be branded. This will be a great boost for your SEO efforts, and may also help improve brand awareness. 

#4 The analytical aspects of your campaign are not a secret anymore

EarlyParrot’s dashboards allow you to get a quick overview of each of your campaigns. Additionally, you can edit them any time you log in to the platform.

It is possible to track the number of invites sent out, shares on social media, conversion rate, and more crucial indicators. Since there is no ready-made recipe for working together with people, it is important to follow such KPIs. The program needs to be adapted to continuously changing market needs and preferences. Monitoring such measures helps also with arranging or redesigning your referral marketing strategy.

As a recap, to run a successful referral program you should focus on analyzing your referral model and providing some tests from time to time. Only this way will you be able to stay up to date with market trends. And EarlyParrot is on duty!

Over to you

There may be a perception that referral marketing is timeless, even though online marketing trends change all the time. Recommendations from friends will always be precious, and that goes for SaaS companies too. In this industry, more money is involved than the consumer market, which means the risks are greater. So good advice from a reliable source is even more valuable for SaaS businesses.

We hope that after reading this article you will be curious about referral marketing and want to give it a try with EarlyParrot. It could drive you increased traffic and help with decreasing costs. If you want to dive into the topic even deeper by reading more about starting your own referral marketing program, feel free to check out this article.

Are you running a business, but your customers are not fond of signing up for your newsletter or even creating accounts? It’s hard to communicate with customers that leave no information for you to get in touch with them. And as you surely already know, communication with clients is the essence of a well-functioning business. So forget for a moment about hyped social media and creating content for the masses – let’s go back to good, old e-mails.

What should you do to make visitors to your website more likely to subscribe to your newsletter, create an account, or leave their contact details?

Focus on list building. You probably already have an e-mail list, but you need to expand it and encourage more people to sign up. It’s easier said than done, but it’s a crucial step for success. No worries though, we’ve prepared some guidelines that will help you build a professional e-mail list and encourage new customers to sign up. And we will advise about how to use EarlyParrot for this purpose. 

But let start from the very basics – why is list building worth the effort?

Why should you focus on e-mail list building?

Having a solid e-mail list allows you to expand your brand and stay in touch with your customers. E-mail is a preferred communication channel for 73% of Millennials, which shows that e-mails still have what it takes despite the rise in popularity of social media. So why not use them to your advantage?

Additionally, list building allows you to reach a broad audience. You can acquire customers from the farthest corners of the World and thus expand your brand awareness. Moreover, it gives you a general view of the buyer, bringing you closer to the possibility of personalising the offer and communication towards them. List building also makes it easier to divide your audience into smaller segments.

It goes without saying that e-mails are a longer form of communication, and you can simply include everything you need there. The number of permitted characters are not as limited as in the case of social media platforms or even SMS marketing. You can describe everything in detail and add graphical materials, photos, GIFs, or even short videos to your messages.

A big plus about e-mail marketing is that it can be personalised, whereas it’s hard to directly address each follower on social media. In fact it’s almost impossible. E-mails are a completely different story though, as you can personalise not only for the recipient but also the sender. Yes, it’s nice when you say hello directly using the person’s name, but it’s even better when the sender field also says something more than just company X. It’s a good idea to use names, for example Anne from company X. This makes your communication more human. Keep in mind that bulk e-mails are quite simply not the best solution if you want to bond with your customers. Moreover, personalised emails have a higher open rate (18.8%) than bulk ones (13.1%) – almost a 6% increase. 

The more personalisation, the more friendly and open the relationship will be. Remember that a signature at the end of each e-mail should also include a person’s name in order to complete the mission successfully.

Great news – you can set all of this up with EarlyParrot!

How to make the most of e-mail list building?

The creation of an e-mail list can take many forms depending on the target and industry, though it will be effective regardless of these. Below you will find some examples that might inspire you. Create, test them, and then evaluate the results.

Synergy effect: list building plus referral marketing 

Are you up for referral marketing? Hopefully the answer is “yes”, because It could bring a great synergy effect together with e-mail marketing. If you’re an EarlyParrot member, the effects will be even better. So how can this referral marketing platform help with increasing your brand awareness and gaining new subscribers?

Let’s start from the very beginning, i.e. the registration process. When a new customer signs up, they will receive an invitation e-mail about joining your referral program. This is the best moment to invite them, since a customer will be most convinced about your brand just after signing up and may be curious for more. 

There is also a kind of saving when a new customer registers thanks to a referral link or coupon code, as the cost of new client acquisition in this way is almost imperceptibly low.

You’re probably wondering how creating e-mails looks in EarlyParrot then. Well, it is effortless – you can simply choose which types of e-mails you want to send to your subscribers and which you don’t.

You will draft each of these e-mails yourself – both the topic and the content are up to you. An important tip here is to remember who exactly the recipient is, because the language and the way you address your audience is very important. The content of an e-mail addressed to teenagers should differ from one that will be sent to business people, for example. The subject must be catchy, as the number of e-mails sent per day is huge and so yours must be unique and stand out if the recipient is to open it.

Ask for feedback via surveys

Surveys are a great way to get feedback and encourage your existing customers to become more involved. It’s important to listen to your audience, as doing so will allow you to improve the quality of the content you provide them. 

Suppose a customer hasn’t set up an account but has signed up for your newsletter and made a purchase on your website. By sending this client a feedback survey, you can find out why they chose not to set up an account and decided to only subscribe to the newsletter. Thus, you will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your communication, which can be a game changer for e-mail design and list building. Who better to advise you than the recipients?

Remember that with EarlyParrot, you can modify your campaigns at any time, so if your referral communication is not the best then ask your audience for their opinions and make adjustments accordingly.

Let them sign up

The option to sign up must be clearly visible on your website. A user will not search long and hard for a place to sign up – it has to be obvious. Integrating the ability to sign up from your landing page is a key aspect of the success of your list building, so just a friendly reminder that this takes a matter of minutes with EarlyParrot. Think about where you place the Sign Up button. The option to subscribe to your newsletter should also be visible, but not too intrusive. You can choose different layouts for your subscription form. 

One of the most popular types of subscription form is a pop-up that appears when a user first enters your website. But it’s easy to overdo it – pop-ups on each subpage would be too intrusive and the visitor may simply leave as a result. It can be just annoying to have to click close on each subpage.

You can create fixed or floating forms too, which won’t be as annoying for visitors. A fixed one is placed in a specific part of the website and stays there until the client views it or pulls it back. When it comes to floating forms, they may be placed in each part of your site and won’t disappear until the visitor takes action.

Segmentation is important

When you have been runing a business for a long time, you can often forget about the basics. And segmentation is one such fundamental aspect. The division of your target group into smaller segments is important not only in terms of positioning your offer, but also from a marketing perspective. 

Communication should be tailored to the recipient. We have already mentioned the differences between creating content for teenagers and businessmen, and the same rules apply here – when you divide your clients into smaller groups, varied communication with them may be necessary. If your offer undergoes a repositioning over time, your channels may also need to change accordingly. 

Therefore, regardless of what you create right now – an e-mail copy or a pop-up newsletter, say – remember who your recipients are and how to speak to them. 

Social proof as a decision factor 

Social proof has its power, and if you run a referral campaign then you should definitely be aware of it. Nothing convinces customers to make a purchase more than hearing a positive review from another user, especially if they are a friend or family member. Sharing social proof is a good way to gain trust and thus encourage potential clients to leave their e-mail addresses. 

How to present social proof? You can share positive feedback on social media and encourage customers to make their referrals right there. The more people who see them, the better. EarlyParrot allows you to design your own share widget on which you can compose the message that will appear together with a shared referral link as a post on, e.g., Facebook.

It would also be helpful to include a testimonial area on your website. If you are running an online store, customers’ opinions should be placed visibly near the relevant product descriptions. Don’t be afraid of customer feedback. Even if there are negative comments they may be constructive, while positive ones still greatly impact upon a hesitant customer’s final purchasing decision.

Surprise them with a lead magnet

First things first – what are lead magnets? They are additional free materials to encourage users to leave their contact details. What could these materials be? They could be e-books or webinar invitations, for example. If you arrange lead magnet action in return for registering for your newsletter, the details about this must be clearly formulated and highlighted in the communication. After all, it’s supposed to be an incentive for encouraging people to sign up.

A lead magnet is also a good way to get rewarded for joining or inviting someone else to a referral marketing program. Remember that regardless of what purpose you use a lead magnet for, you should emphasise it in your communication. 

Thanks to easy integration with the most popular e-mail marketing providers, EarlyParrot will make this task much easier for you.

Start to build your e-mail list right now

Building an e-mail list is a task that stretches over a period of time. It’s impossible to set a deadline for it because it should be continuous work that relies on new ideas to encourage more customers to become your subscribers.

The right level of communication, frequency, personalisation, and the style in which you establish relationships with your customers has a significant impact on whether or not they will, firstly, read all of your e-mails, and secondly, ultimately use your services.

Right now, the eCommerce market is very crowded. The pandemic has forced many retailers to switch to digital, and thus the competition is fierce here. Maybe you didn’t experience this for yourself, or on the contrary you are feeling the competition’s breath on your back. No matter which situation is closest to yours, it’s useful to know some good ways to support your eCommerce performance. 

So let’s assume that, unfortunately, your customers aren’t breaking down your doors right now. It may be a challenging situation, after all you need customers if you are to stay on the market. Why are customers not visiting your store? You have to answer this question yourself. Perhaps, as mentioned before, there’s too much competition in your sector, and you can’t get through potential customers or maybe they just don’t know you are. If you’ve read our text on ways to increase sales, you will know that referral marketing is one of the most suitable strategies in this case. Why not give it a go? It’s worth trying new solutions that will interest customers, and perhaps they will stay for longer and make some purchases.

Now let’s start from scratch. Why should referral marketing be your cup of tea?

Referral marketing in a nutshell

Referral marketing is based on the relationships you manage to build with your customers. In this respect, it’s worth taking care of the customer experience, since almost 90% of customers say that they would be willing to pay for something if they have a good one. By building relationships you can create a community, and this is the perfect foundation for acquiring more and more customers. The support of your eCommerce operation through referral marketing can become really visible, and all this with relatively little effort. 

So what’s the drill? First you need to create a program and set the rewards, then let your clients know about it. When customers engage in it and share referral links with their friends, you will most likely see an increase in sales. 

If you are wondering if recommendations really have that much power, we have some numbers to back it up. Over 90% of customers trust referrals from their friends over those from other sources, e.g. influencers. In addition, take into account the desire to win a prize. People are competitive by nature, so why not make the most of this. Encourage both your regular clients and those who visit your site for the first time to participate and try to win the referral trophy. You can choose the prizes differently for both groups – the rewards system is up to you.

Thanks to referral marketing, you can also lower your CTAs, extend your reach, and increase customer engagement and loyalty. It will drive up your conversions for sure – referrals can convert up to 30% better than other marketing types.

However, in order to prepare a referral marketing program well, you will need the help of a tool. EarlyParrot may be a game-changer for you! Why is it so great?

Reason no. 1: easy installation and seamless integration

Let’s start from the very beginning, which means the installation process. If you are worried about your IT skills, there’s no reason to be. EarlyParrot does not require any, and the whole process would guide you through it step by step. The installation won’t take you more than 15 minutes. 

What to do first? Pasting the code is the most important step. For everything to work properly, you need to have tracking on both the landing page and the share page. You can paste the code manually or use Google Tag Manager. Now click the Verify Installation button.

If you use Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento, that’s great. For other platforms, you can contact EarlyParrot and they might be able to make it work for you as well. If you have chosen one of the aforementioned three, what you need to do now is to set up a webhook. Thanks to this, the platform will know about every new purchase made on your website. EarlyParrot does its job at this point, which is to detect whether a given transaction was initiated from an email or not. If this criterion is met, a notification or reward will be sent to the referrer. 

Now it’s time to create your program, design communication, import and invite your customers, then you can go live. But hold your horses. We will show you some big pros of EarlyParrot before you gain countless new customers. 

Reason no. 2: convenient program creator

The program creator is very handy and intuitive. What’s more, it shows you which aspects need more improvement. For starters you can decide on your goal, which in the case of eCommerce would be more sales.

The next step is the reward system. You can choose who you want to reward by picking from the three options Reward Unlocking, Top Influencer, and Fast Lane. 

Once you choose your system, you can then create the rewards. Select its criteria, and decide whether it will be a repeat reward or not. If so, define the target. Add more specifics like image, name, and description. You can also write a coupon code in a reward email, in which case you need to create that. 

Here you can create emails, invites, and share pages. Another great advantage at the end when you are required to integrate the program with your landing page, share page, and eCommerce platform. You won’t be able to click finish if you don’t configure this properly. What’s more, all changes are saved automatically.

Reason no. 3: personalized communication

If you are worried about your communication, you have absolutely no reason to be. EarlyParrot allows you to define all the details of your communication with customers. You can customize the invitations that your customers will share on social media, and no EarlyParrot logo is visible at any stage. 

You have many social media platforms to choose from: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber Messenger, and Telegram. As you can see, your clients have a wide range of possibilities to spread the word about you and your program. Therefore you should enter a short message that will appear in the post when your client shares the link with their friends or family.

E-mail personalization

Another aspect that can be customized is emails. EarlyParrot will send emails on your behalf, so you should write your customers the highest level messages.

If a customer feels like they have received another bulk email, it won’t do much good. Do you know that personalized emails have an average open rate of nearly 19%, compared to 13% for those that are not. You probably open emails that contain your first name more often than those which don’t. It’s a natural mechanism. Therefore, if you want a customer to feel cared about, personalization is a must. Whether it’s an invitation email, one informing about a reward, or a thank you for their first referral, you should address every user by name. Moreover, don’t forget about the content. First, it should be grammatically correct and spell checked. Typos are the worst possible mistake in the copy, so double check before saving your template. And remember about the title, which should be catchy.

What’s very cool about EarlyParrot is that you can add the kinds of emails you want to send. You can choose to send, or not, an email upon a customer reaching X numbers of referrals, a welcome to the campaign, or every time a new customer is gained from a given referrer, for example.

Don’t forget to add the ‘email from’ field, which is your signature under the message. Also, the address from which your emails are sent is an important aspect, otherwise recipients might consider them to be viruses or spam.

Share page personalization

You can edit the share widget. There are four styles to choose from: full widget, slim, one line, and referral URL. You can edit HTML code if you want to, or choose to leave it as it is.

Reason no. 4: everything at your fingertips

After logging in to your account, you will have all your campaigns in one place. You can view all parameters related to each of them on the dashboard. You can analyze the statistics of each campaign step by step, and also choose the time period you are interested in. Do you want to check how the previous week went, or review the entire last month? No problem.

It’s crucial to have such information at hand. Thanks to it, you can check what types of campaigns work best for your recipients. If a certain campaign is not effective enough, you can refine it or create a new one in its place.

Reason no. 5: support on cue

If you are going to invest in an external platform, it’s essential to be able to count on support. And with EarlyParrot, that’s certainly the case. For starters, you can download a demo version to get to know the whole system. It has limitations though, so if you need more campaigns then you’ll need to purchase paid access –  but there is a free trial available. You will always have a chat box on hand where you can ask questions, or search for answers in the knowledge base or the blog.

If you would prefer to contact us by email, you can reach us at [email protected] and you will receive a reply as soon as possible. 

As we have already mentioned, if your store uses a platform other than Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento, feel free to let us know and we will try to find a solution. When it comes to the process of creating the program, you can also count on support for that. The platform dictates the sequence of steps and shows which elements must be refined before the program goes live.

Let’s create a referral program!

Creating a referral marketing program can be a real turning point for you. Regardless of whether your eCommerce is having a hard time or customers visit you in their droves all the time, you can never have too many, right? A solution such as a referral program will build brand awareness among potential and current recipients, which translates into better sales results. 

Nevertheless, creating a program without a good tool will be practically impossible. That’s why EarlyParrot comes in handy. It’s an intuitive tool that’s effortless to use, thanks to which you can easily create a program that will bring the desired results. The reasons above are only a brief introduction to what EarlyParrot is capable of, so download the demo and check it out for yourself!

Let’s imagine that a potential customer is in need of a certain type of product, but they have no idea where to look for such an item or which brand would be best to buy from. What’s the solution? Ask a friend. That’s how referral marketing begins.

Referral marketing is gaining popularity, but it is still not a go-to solution for many businesses. This is a pity, because 92% of consumers believe in referrals from people they know well. As it is also known by some, word-of-mouth marketing is very easy to implement and it won’t cost you a lot of money either. 

To make the most of this type of marketing, though, you will need a well-tailored referral program. And we will tell you how to run one with EarlyParrot!

But let’s start from the very beginning, which is why you even need referrals.

Why should you start a referral program?

Creating a referral program can help you acquire new customers relatively quickly and cheaply. Information spreads very quickly between customers, and if you promise rewards in return then it will happen even more so. Research shows that customers who visit your website thanks to recommendations will spend 25% more money there, and the probability of them recommending you to someone else is three times higher than in the case of other customers. As you can see, referral marketing not only produces results but also builds trust.

Such solutions are also relatively easy to monitor. Thanks to using an appropriate tool, such as EarlyParrot, you can track all referrals and see how they affect sales. You can have all of the most important KPIs at hand, and you can analyze the performance of your program whenever you want.

What exactly is a referral program?

In short, it is a system of rewarding customers for recommending your store. Your existing and future clients will gain rewards for making an appropriate number of referrals according to your set criteria. Your clients can share referral links or codes with their friends or family, who then visit and use your site. That’s basically it: rewards are distributed afterwards, and you gain another client.

One of the most popular programs of this type that you may have heard about is Uber: you share a code with your friends and both of you can save some money on your next rides.

In order for the program to fulfill its task, you need to choose the right incentives. It is crucial to the success of such a program. In the case of Uber saving money is the reward, but it is not always the best solution. Sometimes it’s better to offer a product or service as a reward. The situation depends on the type of business and, of course, your target audience.

How can EarlyParrot help with your referral program?

EarlyParrot is a referral marketing platform that will improve the implementation of your program. Its installation is simple and only takes a moment, only requiring a computer and 15 minutes. You can easily implement a program into current purchasing processes. You don’t have to change anything, so customers can shop and log in as before. One difference will be an opportunity to participate in the referral program. Both new and existing customers will be informed about the possibility to join the program, receiving a notification with this information. 

After successful implementation, you can set up a reward system of when, to whom, and what will be delivered. It is up to you what and how referrers and referrals will be rewarded for their cooperation. 

Another important feature of this platform is the ability to brand communication with your clients, without an EarlyParrot logo. Feel free to customize emails and pages as you wish. You can also take care of your relationships with customers thanks to broadcasted messages, so you can be sure that everything is running smoothly and your subscribers are taken care of.  

This tool can be easily integrated with the most popular platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Magento, Typeform, MailChimp, and many more. Why not give it a try?

Referral program for SaaS

If you are planning on taking a SaaS solution live, it could be very beneficial to start a referral program too. How to make this happen with EarlyParrot?

If you are about to implement a referral solution just before launching your SaaS, then great. You can increase engagement among your early adopters, and they will be able to share their referrals via social media, messengers, or emails from day one. Why is it a good idea to start a referral program together with your SaaS?

First of all, you can improve the engagement rate from the very beginning and build bonds with your users. The stronger the relationship and the trust is, the longer they will be with you. On top of this, more referral leads means lower CTAs. Everybody wants lower CTAs, especially at the beginning of their journey. 

Thanks to the recommendations of your referrers, your reach can extend immediately. If you encourage people enough, they will talk about you. Nothing gains attention like the buzz made by users and being a newbie on the market. People are curious about such solutions and want to see what the hype is about.

Thanks to a referral program, you can also find out if your SaaS is liked by users (they will not recommend something that they don’t) and which of your brand ambassadors have the greatest clout. It is worth rewarding them accordingly.

In the case of implementing a referral program with EarlyParrot to an existing SaaS solution, there are yet more advantages. 

You can set premium features or discounts for your biggest fans and most active referrers. You can also adapt the program to existing strategies to drive the best results, and even set the time at which program invitations will be sent. 

Referral marketing in eCommerce

If you are an eCommerce provider, referral marketing may be beneficial for you too. How to surprise your customers with a referral program? We’ll tell you what EarlyParrot can offer your eCommerce to boost sales and gain more loyal clients.

As you have already read, EarlyParrot can be implemented with most eCommerce providers like Shopify, Magneto, or PrestaShop. So if you have 15 minutes spare then you can install this solution to your website right now, and thanks to referral marketing you can drive more conversions. Did you know that referral leads have a 30% higher conversion rate than conversions from other channels? That is a great score. Thanks to implementing a referral program you can gain more trust and improve your brand image. Thanks to broadcasting messages you can also build relationships with customers, making your website a go-to place for buying products in the categories that you offer. 

As with SaaS solutions, EarlyParrot supports your business with expanding its reach. The more people who share their opinions about you on social media or via email the better. Reducing CTAs in eCommerce is also a very important aspect. 

The timing of encouraging your customers to take part in the program is crucial, and it is best to do so as soon as they finish shopping and are satisfied with their purchases. Thanks to EarlyParrot, invitations are sent automatically, so you don’t have to worry about remembering to do so. This is similar with rewards, in that as soon as a given client meets the criteria you have set, notifications will be sent.

Building your links with a referral program

It might be surprising that referral marketing is a great way to build your email lists. Thanks to such a solution you can check whether new subscribers joined via referrals or not, and reward them accordingly. Not only can you ask them to share referrals, but also remind and motivate them to be more active. 

You can integrate EarlyParrot with your CRM or autoresponder and let the magic begin. The platform will determine whether a new subscriber was referred or not, and only send a reward if they were. It works with all the most popular autoresponders and CRM like MailChimp, AWeber, Infusionsoft, or ConvertKit. If you use software that is not on our list then reach out to us and we’ll figure it out.

Why is it a good solution to let EarlyParrot help with your subscribers? You will get to know them better, and find out who has the power to improve communication. Thanks to rewarding your subscribers you can build a loyal community, which is essential for your brand image. 

Why should you choose EarlyParrot?

First of all, it is very easy to implement and even easier to use. There is also a free demo that you can use to see if it’s your cup of tea. We are almost 100% sure that the answer here will be yes. Moreover, this platform has got your back. It helps to show you which parts of the program need improvement before it goes live. You can also choose the best rewards: coupon codes, secret links, downloadables, or account upgrades. No matter which you choose, the platform will automatically send it to everyone who meets the criteria set by you.

No worries if your website is not in English, this platform provides campaigns in Spanish,  French, German, Greek, and Italian too. 

Data security is the priority here. EarlyParrot is GDPR-compliant, and also has fraud protection. No suspicious emails or web traffic, and all social media shares are confirmed via IP tracking.

Are you ready to start a referral marketing journey?

As you should now know, referral marketing is a low-cost, easy-to-implement solution that is also quite simple to monitor. Thanks to EarlyParrot, referral magic can basically happen by itself. Once you integrate this platform with your eCommerce store or SaaS solution, you will never look back. Referrals will soon come, and you will start to benefit from them as a result.

However, remember to keep your finger on the pulse. In time tastes change and so your rewards may need to as well, or customers might not recommend you so willingly. You must be proactive and track the program’s performance continually.
So, do you want to try a free demo first?