Set up a referral scheme

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Idea: Set up a referral (affiliate) scheme

Reward your existing customers, influencers, industry thought leaders and other brands for referring new users to your product. You can reward them with a commission (money), free credit, or swag for each sign up.

Note: the best way to generate word-of-mouth referrals is by having an amazing product, but referral schemes are a good way to keep your product front-of-mind and to trigger sharing.

How to: a step-by-step guide

The simplest (and most common) way to run a referral scheme for SaaS is to offer your referrer 30% commission on any revenue from customers they refer

If your customer pays £15/month, your referrer earns £4.50/month
Normally this is paid for the first year, or until the customer churns

Use a tool like Rewardful to setup your scheme

This will give your referrers access to:

A dashboard to manage their account
Tracked links so their referrals are correctly identified
Ads and marketing messages (for your referrer to share)
Reporting to track performance: link click, sign ups, conversion to paid accounts

Reach out to your loyal customers and influencers of your buyer and invite them to your scheme

Rewardful - Instant Affiliate & Referral Programs for Stripe

Growing a subscription business is hard Everyone knows it's hard (and expensive) to grow a SaaS business, especially in the early days. Getting traction is critical and marketing is becoming increasingly difficult as people become desensitized to content marketing and advertising. Referral marketing is based on trust and relationships, and cuts through the noise.