E-Commerce Tools And Services: Best Referral Program Software in 2022

Various tools, platforms, and services for referral marketing are discussed in the article below. You will learn the definition of referral marketing and discover the differences between it and word-of-mouth marketing. We also go over the significance of referral marketing: You will find out why referral marketing works and how it works. And, of course, we discuss the best referral program software. This material includes a list of 15 referral marketing services, including Referral Factory, SaaSquatch, Referral Candy, and others. The exploration of how to select a referral marketing software solution that perfectly suits your business is also available in the following material. In addition to that, you will learn what benefits of referral marketing help you get the most out of your interaction with customers. Wondering how to get referrals? Continue reading this article. More tools for your business are described here: E-Commerce Tools And Services.

What is referral marketing? Referral definition

Referral marketing is a planned process where you thank your clients for recommending your business or goods to potential buyers: their friends, relatives, coworkers, or just random people they may interact with.

As a thank you for bringing in the new business, you reward your existing customer with a referral bonus. It happens if they suggest someone who becomes a new customer. Therefore, it is a holistic approach to motivating loyal clients and brand missionaries to recommend your company to their inner circle.

Pay heed to the fact that referral marketing makes use of your company’s current customer base to produce prospective new leads as opposed to other traditional marketing strategies, which are aimed at a general audience.

While referral marketing is a reliable and well-known method of promoting anything to new customers through referrals, there is also a possibility to leverage word-of-mouth as a separate marketing strategy. Such recommendations frequently come up out of the blue, but as a marketer, you may control and impact them by using the right tactics.

Even though referral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing appear to be similar, they differ greatly. Referral marketing is more “intentional” than word-of-mouth marketing, which is the main distinction between the two. A company starts a referral marketing campaign on purpose. Businesses that use referral marketing actively urge their consumers to recommend them to their friends. On the other hand, word-of-mouth advertising can be more impulsive and is frequently launched by satisfied customers rather than by the brand on purpose.

However, word-of-mouth is always a part of your referral marketing, even if you initiate it artificially. But your potential customers may never know about your planned intent to convert them into buyers. Therefore, we frequently refer to word-of-mouth – as a phenomenon but not a separate kind of marketing – while exploring referral marketing processes and tools.  

Why does referral marketing work?

Let’s first discuss why you should develop your referral marketing strategy before moving on to the best e-commerce tools for referral marketing. What impact do recommendations have? Consider the following facts:

• At least five times as many sales are generated by a word-of-mouth impression as by a paid one.
• Word-of-mouth clients spend twice as much and suggest twice as many new clients.
• Referred leads have a 16 percent greater lifetime value and a 30 percent better conversion rate than leads obtained through other means.
• If given the option to choose only one source for information on possible purchases, half of the customers in America would choose word-of-mouth.

Referral marketing and word-of-mouth advertising are reliable, effective, and relatively cheap. An average customer is always pleased to share a positive experience related to a company, good product, or service with others.

According to Jonah Berger, a marketing professor and author of the best-selling book Contagious, there are the following six guiding principles for word-of-mouth and sharing:

• We share things that make us happy. They gain the quality of a social currency.
• We share whatever is on our minds at the time since it acts as a trigger to sharing.
• Things that matter to us are likely to be shared since they deal with our emotions.
• We copy what we observe others doing in public.
• We share things with others because they are valuable to both them and us. In other words, they have practical value or, at least, irrational practical value.
• We communicate through stories rather than facts.

You must keep these principles in mind while working with your referral program. The better you implement them, the more efficient your referral campaign will be. 

What is the purpose of referral marketing?

Utilizing referral marketing is mostly done to increase customer acquisition through word-of-mouth. According to the principles described above, people want to share something they love with their friends, whether in person or online. Peer recommendations are highly trusted. You may be surprised, but 84 percent of consumers are more likely to believe personal recommendations than brand-related advertising. Why? Because people think that the only purpose behind brand-related recommendations is to force them to purchase particular goods or services. And that’s true. 

At the same time, you should not forget that selling good products and services is not only your number one business goal from the perspective of earning money but also the most efficient referral marketing tool: You’re more likely to have satisfied consumers who are already guiding others to your business if you provide quality goods and services. It is always a good idea to encourage customers to recommend your brand to even more individuals and make the most of this natural word-of-mouth.

However, even if customers are happy with your company and willing to organically spread the word about it, they could forget to recommend your brand to others if you don’t remind them. This is a reminder that referral marketing creates. 

Therefore, a formal referral marketing campaign maintains you top-of-mind with your clients, develops long-term relationships with your most devoted customers, and generates a solid base of new prospects.

How does referral marketing work?

You can attract new consumers in an organized and long-lasting manner with the help of a referral marketing campaign. Your referral marketing plan is set up for success when everything comes together – your customers are satisfied, your incentives are appealing, and your program is well-promoted.

To demonstrate how and why a referral marketing plan is effective, let’s go over the mechanics of referral marketing.

Builds social proof to satisfy your customers

More often than you might think, people decide what to do depending on what other people think. People look to others to determine what things to use, where to shop, what to eat, and even what television programs to watch.

You’ve probably seen dozens of times that if everyone is drawn to a certain brand, people believe that it is the best brand for them as well. One of the components of social proof is a referral. They assist in establishing trust with potential customers, resulting in quicker sales. 

Uses social currency to make your incentives appealing

Often, reputation is the number one thing to consider when you think about social currency. People are always eager to spread anything that will make them look cool; they are prepared to “spend” their social capital on a company, good, or piece of content if they believe it will enhance their reputation.

They tend to utilize their social capital to endorse products they believe other people would enjoy. A person wouldn’t likely spend their social currency on a brand that makes them appear terrible; therefore, if they recommend you, this immediately gives your brand a positive impression.

Referral marketing also helps to strengthen your brand and its social value because it comes from a reliable authority.

Hits your target audience to promote your referral marketing campaign

Nobody will recommend you to all of their friends; they will only do it if they truly need or could be interested in your product. Even posting a referral link on social media doesn’t cover everyone: only people who truly share their interests will click on it.

Thus, referral marketing gains the advantage of a built-in filter. Only those who have the greatest chance of becoming consumers are introduced to your company.

Best Referral Program Software

As we’ve already mentioned, your clients are unaware that you will pay them for referring their friends to you. You must thus inform them about that.

However, it is vital to have a smooth referral procedure before sending an email informing your potential referral partners about the possibilities your company offers. You must invest in top-notch referral program software if you want to make your referral programs seamless. And below, we prepared 15 referral marketing tools designed to help you with your online referral marketing efforts.

Referral Factory – all you need to automate your online referral marketing

Referral Factory assists companies in automating the process of signing up, monitoring, compensating, and managing their affiliates, influencers, and consumers who refer businesses to them. By utilizing the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing, referral software aids marketers in acquiring more consumers faster.

Over 1,000 referral program templates are available from Referral Factory, and they are used in many different businesses around the world. In addition to their own referral network, they offer support for 18 different languages and numerous integrations.

With no coding skills required, this referral software solution focuses on branding skills due to its countless template selection. You can access real-time data and utilize their drag-and-drop program builder to decide when to give out rewards. Alternatively, you can automate everything, which, depending on the scale of the software, is typically the easiest option.

Although you will be able to use flexible APIs, numerous connectors, and thousands of configurable templates, the drawback is that Referral Factory might not have a template for your particular sort of business. Depending on your needs, it may be difficult to alter the existing ones.

The following core features of Referral Factory are at your service:

• Templates. Obtain +1000 referral program templates to get the ability to look for a referral program by business type or industry. Using templates made to look like Uber, Dropbox, Tesla, Evernote, and other popular firms, you can also base your “refer a friend” program on the success stories of other brands.
• Adjustable Rewards. You choose the rewards for your users using Referral Factory; they might be anything from an Amazon gift card to cash or vouchers. To see who needs to be awarded, access your data in real-time. Then, simply authorize the incentives with a single click, and Referral Factory will take care of the rest. If you want to automate the issuance of your own incentives, you may use utilize Referral Factory API.
• Campaigns with custom options. You can alter the layout of your campaign using a drag-and-drop builder and a different editor for altering the colors and branding. You can do this without writing a single line of code.
• Streamlined Sharing. Customers of Referral Factory can share recommendations via LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, Email, WeChat, SMS, Telegram, and other platforms.
• Referral Tracking. Your referral program may be easily tracked, monitored, and managed. This referral marketing software solution allows for monitoring the outcomes of your campaign from your dashboard, including information on newly registered users and who referred whom. Alternatively, you may use integrations to transfer the leads to other platforms or export all of your data as a CSV file.
• Monitoring. Monitoring, tracking, and managing your referral program is user-friendly and intuitive. It lets you easily discover who among your clients is referring the most people to you so you can thank them. Additionally, the platform makes it simple for your users to keep track of their own recommendations.
• API. You could require greater adaptability in how you run your referral marketing program as you get to experience it. You can use Referral Factory API to qualify your referrals when they successfully convert, manage new referrals and their statuses remotely, connect your referral tracking process to your rewards issuing, and combine your referral campaign with the business processes you already use.

Referral Factory offers several reasonably priced options, the most expensive of which is $300 per month. All plans come with 15 free trial days to get you started, and you can also schedule a demo to use it first before buying.

Woorise – free referral program software with advanced paid options 

Woorise is an all-in-one lead generation platform and referral tool that enables you to develop referral campaigns as well as a variety of interactive campaigns to gather leads and engage your audience. With its help, you will be able to construct stunning landing pages, intuitive forms, engaging surveys, interactive quizzes, and more.

Woorise provides ready-to-use templates for running highly engaging referral campaigns in which users are given extra entries for telling their friends about the campaign.

A contemporary form builder and landing page builder, 40+ fields, thousands of social actions, 100+ interactive templates, conditional logic, real-time email notifications, multi-language support, and built-in analytics are among the features this referral marketing platform delivers to businesses all across the globe. Additionally, MailChimp, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Google Analytics, and many more prominent marketing platforms are integrated with Woorise.

• Drag-and-drop Builder. Starting with an optimized template, you can then make it your own to fit your brand. With the drag-and-drop campaign and form builder, anyone can accomplish it in a few clicks without any coding or technical knowledge.
• Simple Publishing. Add Woorise campaigns by embedding them as popups, chat windows, exit intent, emails, Facebook pages, or subdomains.
• Landing. Woorise comes with a highly customizable landing page that can be used to link to all of your campaigns or to your key content from a single page. To share relevant links in all the places you need to, use the Woorise bio link page. Consider your email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram bio.
• Entry Control. To simplify your process, Woorise makes it simple for you to access and manage all of your leads in one location. Among other things, you may filter and search leads, amend in bulk, add private notes, manage winners, and send personalized email notifications.
• Individualized Email Alerts. Send personalized emails to yourself, the submitter, or anybody else, or automatically receive a submission summary in your mailbox. After a user fills out your form, utilize conditional logic and merge tags to automatically send customized follow-up email alerts.
• Multilingual Assistance. All languages, including RTL languages, are supported by Woorise. You may quickly design a campaign in the language of your target audience or your favorite language. By instantly translating the campaign into other languages, you may increase your global reach.
• Brand Management Made Easy. From a single account, manage every one of your brands or clients. You can have a totally distinct workspace for each brand or client by adding additional Woorise Sites (workspaces).
• Dynamic Calculators. Without any prior programming experience, choose from a variety of ready-to-use templates or create your own calculator.
• Analytics. Tracking data that is simple to grasp can help you monitor the success of your campaign.
• Integrations. Send information to several connections, such as all of the main email marketing programs, using native integrations, Zapier, and webhooks.
• Data Export. Data from each participant can be easily exported as a CSV file. To export only the information you require, you can set optional filters and a date range.

Woorise offers a free plan that lasts forever, as well as the option to activate a 7-day free trial of any commercial offer. More feature-rich premium plans start at $29 per month.

Ambassador – referral tracking software with powerful options

Customers, influencers, and affiliates can quickly sign up for targeted and customized referral campaigns. Additionally, businesses can manage every ambassador, keep an eye on important performance indicators, and instantly improve referral programs. With Ambassador, you can test and give various rewards for various marketing segments, as well as automate the awarding procedure.

Multi-campaign capabilities, a variety of reward payment options, efficient onboarding and customer support, and simple integration are all advantages of Ambassador. The difficulty in correctly setting up an all-in-one platform is one of its drawbacks. Additionally, it is too rigid for some campaigns, and some of the reporting solutions should be stronger.

The platform’s most important features include:

• Global Coverage. Ambassador’s multi-modal, multi-reward capabilities empower you to grow your international sales funnel and increase conversions. The platform lets you create smarter referral marketing campaigns with intuitive region-specific segmentation due to support for multiple languages and currencies, region-specific payouts, and campaign segmentation.
• Branding And Engagement. Keep your brand at the forefront and your brand advocates engaged with fully customizable module templates and personalized ambassador portals. Use personalized landing pages, custom sharable links, and various engagement tools.
• Insights And Monitoring. Ambassador provides all the data insights you need for decision-making in one platform. Its powerful, intuitive tools let you analyze actionable performance data and optimize your entire referral program. The referral marketing system delivers instruments for A/B testing, conversion monitoring, report customization, fraud detection, etc.
• Integrations. Another perk of Ambassador is its connectivity with other marketing and billing tools. It incorporates open REST APIs, one-click integrations, webhooks, and onboarding support.

Note that Ambassador requests interested clients to get in touch to schedule a software demo and inquire about pricing.

SaaSquatch – referral marketing platform for loyalty and reward programs

In order to increase sales and revenue on a single referral marketing platform, SaaSquatch not only enables you to develop referral networks but also loyalty and reward programs.

For your campaigns with segmented incentives, you can create a number of referral programs, each with a separate set of levels. Afterward, depending on the actions and tasks you allocate, these are dynamically triggered. To get ideas for your forthcoming programs, you can use its detailed analytics to examine the outcomes of your referral campaign.

You may quickly employ pre-made programs and template designs using this software solution for referral marketing, allowing you to concentrate on producing results right away. SaaSquatch’s core features are:

• Personalized Referral Experiences. Utilize a drag-and-drop builder to create distinctive and lovely referral programs, or use HTML/CSS to further personalize your end-user experiences. Using APIs, you can even create your own native solutions.
• Adjustable Rewards. You may reward both the referred and referring user using SaaSquatch. Create incentives for both sides by integrating third parties to offer prizes like gift cards and points, credit and discounts, product features and upgrades, or personalized rewards and cash.
• Client Engagement. You may conduct programs that support your customer journey, including free trials, B2B sales processes, and account activations through customizable APIs, native integrations, and referral program logic.
• Original Content. Users of this referral program software are provided with special links and referral codes to share with their network.
• Conversion Points. With the versatility to customize the points of the conversion provided by this referral program software, you can create the ideal campaign that your consumers would adore. You may either build microsites with SaaSquatch Referral Program Software or insert the referral widget directly into your mobile or web app.
• Automation. With the help of SaaSquatch’s referral program software, you can automatically fulfill prizes.
• Tier-Based Programs. With the SaaSquatch referral program software, you may create more complex, tiered, multi-objective referral programs.
• Gamification. Make your referral program more engaging by using SaaSquatch leaderboards and other gamification elements.
• Integration with Salesforce. SalesForce and SaaSquatch are naturally integrated. You can find the corresponding app on Salesforce AppExchange.

The Pro package from SaaSqautch costs $1,750 per month and supports up to 200k users, three incentive triggers, and one module for your marketplace or program.

Referral Candy – referral program software veteran

A wonderful client referral scheme for those just starting out is available in Referral Candy. One of the original referral software programs that have existed for over a decade. The web application is designed to increase sales for online retailers. It has integrations with numerous websites, including Etsy, Shopify, Magento, etc. Email message templates are also at your disposal.

You may quickly set up the referral program you desire, modify prizes, and alter the appearance of the system without the aid of developers. Campaigns, statistics, and contacts are displayed in the simple-to-use dashboard, and you can create reports to see how your campaign is doing and, if necessary, enhance it.

Not only is Referral Candy simple to set up and use, but it is also user-friendly for consumers to inform others about businesses. It is regarded as being fully operational right out of the box. In addition, the platform is quite inexpensive when compared to rivals. Its other benefits include:

• Automated Invitation. Right after a customer makes a purchase, the system sends personalized post-purchase emails to invite them to sign up for your referral program. Thus, you enroll as many clients as possible through post-purchase popups, landing pages, and referral widgets.
• Individual Incentives. Customers who successfully refer others get custom rewards.  Pick from cash incentives, store discounts, or personalized presents.
• Per-Performance Payment. Pay referral commissions depending on the number of consumers enrolled or the sales volume of your store.
• Rapid Insights. Get access to important information like referral revenue, the number of clients that sign up for your referral program, and traffic from recommendations to your website.
• Avoid Fraud. Recognize questionable transactions and forbid them. Self-referrals, a large number of referrals in a short period of time, and leaked referral codes on coupon websites are a few examples of fraudulent activities that can be blocked with ReferralCandy.
• Integrations. ReferralCandy works with the email, analytics, and remarketing programs you employ. You can easily run integrations with third-party platforms to make your referral marketing attempts even more robust.

A monthly commission for the base plan, the inability to manage several affiliate and referral programs, and a dearth of bells and whistles are some of the platform’s drawbacks.

Referral Candy has a base cost that is $49 per month. For the Premium plan, the business additionally levies a monthly commission.

Friendbuy – referral automation software with email capture widgets

Friendbuy specializes in email capture widgets and referral marketing schemes. Campaigns can be created, while their results can be monitored and A/B tested. The platform provides any business with a robust, turnkey referral engine.

Businesses can profit from widget editing and an established API. With Friendly, you can take generic referral programs and convert any concept into a workable cash generator.

Not only is Friendbuy user-friendly, but it also adds the capability to view a Facebook feed of what others are saying about you when they share your referral link. Also, take note of the fact that the platform supports and makes extensive use of widgets.

The platform’s dashboard might use some upgrades, according to several critics. However, the overall experience looks promising due to the following features:

• Referral Templates. The templates from Friendbuy enable your customers to recommend your brand to their friends via social media, email, SMS, and customized referral links. You get the ability to make your referral widgets unique for a consistent and easy-to-use experience.
• Referral Dashboards. The associated referral dashboards let your customers see their profits, invite others to refer them, and even send reminders.
• Fraud Defense. Because of Friendbuy’s dedication to preventing fraud, you may reliably present persuading referral offers to supporters and friends. You’ll be able to guarantee that referred pals are brand-new clients and stop self-referrals.
• Automation. You can avoid dealing with time-consuming manual intervention by using automated award fulfillment. Coupon codes, store credit, gift cards, and other reward choices are available. Rewards are sent to supporters and friends who are recommended by triggered emails. You can create your own rules to determine how awards should be given out.
• Analytics And Reporting. Analytics in real-time will show sharing activity as well as the proportion of visitors’ referrals that result in new sales and clients. You can optimize each stage of the referral funnel using detailed views.
• A/B Testing. You can A/B test the experience of your advocates to increase conversions and gain more recommendations. The same is about offers, email subject lines, SMS copy, or any other step in the funnel: you can quickly run experiments and track the results for all of your key performance metrics.
• Integrations. By integrating Friendbuy into your tech stack, you can boost automation and make referrals a seamless part of your client experience.
• APIs. By creating referral links on demand, adding personalized incentive triggers, and combining offline purchases, APIs may improve your referral programs.

The Starter package for Friendbuy is $99 per month. You can fully test the platform within a 30-day free trial.

VYPER – referral marketing software for viral campaigns

Running viral marketing campaigns is simple with VYPER. You can utilize the platform’s referral tools to set up campaigns, reward programs, giveaways, and leaderboards. It uses gamification to motivate, engage, and promote “shareability” in order to expand your business more quickly and effectively.

Building branded campaigns that are focused on your brand’s primary objectives is quite simple, thanks to the versatile builder. Your campaigns can be shown as a website chat widget, landing page, or embed form. You can even utilize all three of these options at once. Other advantages include:

• Giveaways. A single Tweet today can ignite a buying frenzy thanks to social media. Through giveaways, VYPER assists you in interacting with your audience and motivating them to spread the word about you.
• Rewards. Give your candidates prizes to keep them interested and boost sales.
• Visual Designer. Using VYPER’s user-friendly visual designer, you can easily adjust how your campaign is represented visually.
• Templates. For your campaign, pick from 8 templates. 
• Display Modes. Use three different display modes to add additional flexibility to your referral campaign.

A flexible builder, lead and referral tracking, a huge range of bonus actions, points for milestones, tiers, and placement winners are among a wide range of advantages associated with VYPER. As for the drawbacks, its free plan has 250 leads and a limit of $250 in revenue per month. And this referral marketing software provides slightly limited options in comparison to other similar solutions.  

You can use Vyper for as long as you like without paying a dime until you are ready to begin your campaign, which costs $149 per month.

Extole – SaaS referral marketing platform with precise targeting

Extole’s referral marketing tool aids users in increasing their consumer base. Marketers may build a comprehensive, dependable, and effective acquisition channel with this turnkey SaaS platform that provides drop-a-hint, friends & family, influencers, ambassadors, nominate-a-friend, and refer-a-friend referral programs.

The platform’s technology not only enables you to run a successful referral campaign but also allows you to target precisely, capture the element of trust, and use social media to influence and attract new clients. Extole powers refer-a-friend programs for companies like Vistaprint, Petco, Shutterfly, and others with a focus on generating the greatest number of advocates from current customers. Extole is an enterprise solution that is most suitable for big businesses with big budgets. It is simple to use, allowing advocates to be tracked and rewarded, gives fraud prevention, and provides useful insights. Just take a look at its key referral benefits:

• Omnichannel Presence. Your referral program must function flawlessly across all platforms, including desktop, mobile, in-app, and even in-store. Extole’s Retail Solution connects to the moments when customers share the most, from program marketing to advocate sharing and program emails.
• Match Your Brand. The retail solution from Extole offers a whole creative journey from sharing to rewarding to sharing once again. Every piece of content in the whole customer journey is consistent with your brand, thanks to the comprehensive sets of instruments.
• Store-Based Transactions. Rewards don’t have to be limited to online purchases. With Extole’s retail solution, you attain a special site-to-store functionality that allows customers to spend rewards in-store or online. The software solution reflects how your customers interact with your business.
• A/B Testing. For shops, the entire referral process is already set up for immediate success. You’ll be able to gauge the effectiveness of your referral program’s adjustments. Extole’s A/B testing will assist you in getting the best results because it offers a simple test setup and variant development.
• Issue Rewards. Rewards are gifts that advocates give to their friends and acknowledgments from brands to their supporters. The reward engine of Extole makes sure that your customers receive the incentives they deserve and that dishonest people don’t.
• Customer Inquiries. Extole’s retail solution includes tools for your call center’s customer service representatives to quickly study and respond to questions from customers about rewards.

At the same time, keep in mind that the system is unable to do geo-filtering. Additionally, several functions require assistance from the account manager.

On its website, Extole doesn’t provide any pricing details. To get the latest prices, get in touch with the company representatives.

InviteReferrals – best referral marketing software for small business

Simple referral marketing software with full referral strategy, design, and implementation is at your service when you choose InviteReferrals. The tool is said to offer unequaled insights into your referral program, monitoring everything from invites, visits, installs, and top influencers in a single, potent dashboard. As a campaign manager, you can operate a variety of customer referral programs, including giveaway campaigns, competitions for the top referrers, and goal-based programs.

The pros of InviteReferrals include its social media features, seamless integrations with external systems, numerous campaign options, reward alternatives, and strong reporting analytics. Below, you can see the extended list of benefits this referral marketing tool offers:

• Support for a variety of platforms Every platform and device can use InviteReferrals. Widgets for referral programs dynamically change their behavior based on the environment. It functions with Android and iOS mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Additionally, InviteReferrals supports emailers and the Facebook timeline app.
• Detailed analytics. Receive invitations that have been vetted by referral channels along with full customer referral program analytics. Every stage is tracked, including shares, clicks, and successful referral conversions (registrations, sales, mobile application installs). You can determine the most effective referrers and track data down to the level of the individual customer, as well as receive weekly or daily program updates.
• Custom campaigns. Without a coder’s assistance, you can design the entire campaign, from the emailers to the refer-a-friend widget, using the platform’s WYSIWYG editors.
• Different sharing options. To spread the word about your company to their friends, your clients have a number of referral methods and sharing options at their disposal.
• Upload email. All email service providers are compatible with InviteReferrals. Major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. are also supported.
• Automation. Automated tracking of referrals, email notifications for prizes and enrollment, as well as numerous other processes are automated. At the same time, you can always search and filter through participants, referrals, and purchases.
• Spam prevention. Your referral campaign comes with built-in safeguards against referral fraud. Among many other mechanisms, it contains a notification system that is spam-proof, the detection of suspect participation, and manual conversion review.
• Multiple languages. InviteReferrals is accessible in more than 25 languages. Contact their help if you need a new language.

The cons of this referral marketing software are associated with a limited number of participants per campaign and slightly reduced design options.

Pricing for Invite Referrals starts at $99 per month for the Basic plan. There is a 14-day free trial that comes with 100 new referrers.

Referral Rock – simple and powerful referral program software

Through word-of-mouth advertising, Referral Rock supports business expansion. It offers a range of features, such as one-click access, sharing to social media, and dual-side rewards, empowering customers to recommend brands in the most customer-friendly fashion. This referral software truly allows businesses to put their referral marketing on autopilot.

Besides, the Referral Rock referral program software simplifies referral marketing with Google Analytics integration, email notifications, and a simple campaign setup. The integrated referral widgets and instantaneous referral attribution are also helpful in turning referral marketing into a reliable growth channel.

Below, you can see the extended set of features associated with Referral Rock:

• Multiple promotions. The platform introduces multiple ways to promote your referral program while you meet customers at the perfect moment on their preferred social media or marketing channel.
• Instant integrations. You can easily integrate Referral Rock into your systems and workflow due to API, SaaS, and CRM automation.
• Customer support. To boost your customer acquisition, Referral Rock offers a dedicated success manager and a proven referral process.
• Single platform. The referral marketing system enables you to manage your most loyal customers and referrals in one place.
• Intuitive start. Referral Rock delivers landing page builders to personalize the referral experience in a user-friendly manner with no need for integrations.
• Easy sharing. Customers, influencers, and brand ambassadors can easily introduce their friends to your brand via one-click sharing on social media.
• Customer-friendly interface. New customers can observe the results in real-time while also getting notifications on progress tracking.
• Automation. Referral Rock provides the ability to automate routine tasks and integrate with the marketing tools you already use.

Additionally, the platform’s widgets are simple to embed. Other advantages of Referral Rock include automatic templated email messages, CTAs, and excellent customer service. Limited reporting and customization options are some of its drawbacks.

Referral Rock’s Starter package is $200 per month at the lowest price point.

Rewardful – affiliate software based on Stripe & Paddle

Rewardful introduces a simple way for SaaS companies to set up affiliate and referral programs based on Stripe & Paddle. You connect your account to the system and let Rewardful track referrals, discounts, and commissions for you. As a result, you can easily discover your most untapped growth channel. Other benefits of Rewardful include:

• Universal platform. Affiliate, customer, partner, and influencer programs are all gathered under one umbrella. You can run all program types from one centralized place.
• Affiliate marketing. Non-customers who participate in affiliate programs must log in separately to access their links, performance data, and commissions. You have the option of making your program invite-only or public.
• Flexible system of rewards. Reward your affiliates for referring high-quality consumers. Commissions are automatically adjusted for all SaaS and subscription scenarios.
• SEO-friendly links. Use a straightforward, concise URL parameter to link to any page on your domain. No unsightly subdomains or redirected pages participate in the process.
• Commissions. Rewardful offers different commission types: Percentage-based commissions, fixed-amount commissions, recurring commissions, one-time commissions, etc. You can limit commissions by a number of payments or months.
• Automation. Commissions from Rewardful are automatically adjusted for full or partial reimbursements. So are commissioning for upgrades, downgrades, cancellations, and free trials.
• Cookie. You can customize the cookie length to fit your regular sales cycle.
• Direct page tracking. Even if a visitor didn’t arrive via an affiliate link, you should nonetheless credit the affiliate. Building landing pages with user-friendly URLs for a partner campaign is helpful.
• Customizations. To pique the interest of new affiliates and ensure their knowledge, provide more details to the affiliate signup page. Additionally, you can add unique HTML and scripts to your dashboard. Add your logo, favicon, and brand-consistent colors to your affiliate dashboard to make it uniquely yours. Your affiliate dashboards and emails should no longer feature third-party branding.
• Easy recruitment. Use the bulk invite feature to send invitations to every affiliate at once. After that, direct affiliates to a signup page hosted by Rewardful. You can manually add affiliates at the same time.
• APIs. For a natural experience, including a referral program straight into your app. Customers can be auto-enrolled whenever they download your app or at any other time you choose.
• A/B testing. Affiliates can create more personalized links with whatever parameter they like in order to assess the effectiveness and conversion rate of various channels.

As for disadvantages, Rewardful requires a Stripe account. So, if you don’t use this platform, you won’t be able to leverage Rewardful. And it is necessary to pay fees if you choose the basic plan.

The cheapest Rewardful option starts at $29 per month + a 9% transaction fee. Other plans are more expensive but have no transaction fees. While the Enterprise plan is associated with unlimited revenue from affiliates, two other plans have restrictions up to $5k and $15k per month for all affiliates.

Mention Me – tools to build acquisition channel together with your fans

More than 300 brands use the Mention Me referral software platform due to its effective referral marketing solution. Users of the platform can record actual conversations using the “Name Sharing” feature. The businesses claim that when used with other social sharing options, this can result in up to 35% more referrals.

A/B testing and client success team insights into best practices are also included on the platform that is fully customizable for your brand. This software facilitates a simple consumer experience. Its dashboard for reporting is broad, providing excellent information on how users behave. Another good thing is that there is no requirement for setup assistance from developers.

The Mention Me referral software platform delivers two instruments: Acquire and Optimize. 

Acquire is aimed at brands who are looking to build a sustainable and cost-effective acquisition channel together with their fans. It leverages referral data and best-in-class experimentation to truly understand each consumer. The corresponding package includes:

• A/B Testing. The platform lets you experiment with every aspect of your referral customer journey, whether it be an incentive, a design, a copy, or an image, to find out what appeals to your target market. 
• Name Share. With this feature, simply informing friends to “insert my name at checkout” becomes a powerful instrument that allows customers to refer others. Increase referrals in a very genuine and personal approach that enables you to monitor and take advantage of offline discussions.
• Referral Intelligence. Add insights to your current data to better understand your best customers’ behavior and to improve the effectiveness of your referral program and other channels.

Optimise, in its turn, combines all functions of Acquire with advanced Referral Engineering features. This instrument is aimed at brands looking to transform customer advocacy into a multi-channel acquisition strategy by harnessing powerful machine learning. Optimise lets you move beyond referral and switch to true advocacy-first sustainable growth. The additional features of the Optimise package:

• Smart Experiment. This referral instrument lets you leverage everything you know about high- and low-propensity customers to modify your targeting strategy. As a result, you can decrease CPA costs while advancing other company objectives, like customer retention and marketing database expansion.
• Marketing Automation Integrations. With Mention Me, you can provide real-time first-party referral data feeds to other platforms in order to offer data-driven user experiences that attract, engage, and keep your most ardent supporters.
• Smart Audiences. To contact potential customers quickly and increase conversion rates, target high-converting referrer lookalike audiences on sponsored social media channels.

Sometimes, there are so many alternatives that it might be a little overwhelming to use Mention Me. The terminology used by the referrer and referee might become somewhat complicated. UX can occasionally feel a little bit constrictive.

Prices are tailored based on company requirements. You must get in touch with the business to learn the pricing.

Viral Loops – reasonably priced referral marketing program

A referral tracking tool called Viral Loops is developed for pre-launch, newsletter growth, and other purposes in addition to one of its core features – referral marketing. The software’s outstanding functionality allows you to select from a variety of pre-made campaign templates based on your goals and objectives. By doing this, you can focus more on flawless campaign execution and spend less time creating the campaign from scratch.

The ability to simply design widgets for your campaign to appear on your web pages makes launching campaigns simpler. Using its drag-and-drop builder, you can also develop landing pages that are likely to entice your clients to sign up and participate in your referral programs. The platform’s core features include:

• Campaign Wizard. With Campaign Wizard, every template from Viral Loops is at your service. From your campaign’s initial preparation through its launch, all you need to do is to follow the Wizard’s instructions.
• Templates. Since there is no “One size fits all,” Viral Loops provides a wide range of templates to meet your individual demands.
• Landing Pages. You can use the platform’s free Landing Page Builder if you don’t have a website to host your Viral Loops campaign. You have the choice to create the custom page for your campaign with Viral Loops Pages without writing a single line of code.
• Integrations. You can leverage robust integrations in place of manually exporting and importing the contacts. The Viral Loops platform allows Webhook-based integrations in addition to providing formal interfaces with a number of well-known products.
• Dashboard. Real-time monitoring of your campaign can help you cut costs and get knowledge for improvements. You receive access to your campaign’s real-time dashboard as soon as it goes live, which displays the overall performance of your campaign by channel, participant referral, incentive, status, etc.

If you are looking for reasonably priced referral marketing programs, give Viral Loop a try. Its price starts at $49 per month for 1,000 registrants.

Genius Referrals – referral software that brings flexibility of manual configurations

With the help of Genius Referrals, marketers can select and alter the ideal template for their referral program in under 10 minutes. The software provides easy integration techniques and quickly sets up referral programs.

Additionally, there are a variety of choices available, allowing firms to build different program varieties, such as flexible campaigns with several currencies and tier constraints.

The Genius Referrals marketing solution is easy to navigate, offers exceptional customer services, delivers exceptional flexibility, and provides several options for campaigns from the perspective of integrations into existing programs. At the same time, you may not like that this referral marketing system requires a little bit of understanding of scripts to be implemented. Another drawback is that its fulfillment is manual. Despite these minor difficulties, you can freely harness these features: 

• Instantaneous Notifications. Your supporters will always be informed. Any new bonuses or referrals will be promptly communicated to them.
• Simple Sharing.  Merely click a button to share via email, your preferred social media network (such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, or Pinterest), or create a unique link for yourself.
• Optional payouts. Everyone enjoys choice, and your advocates are allowed to make their own decisions. A variety of choices are available, including gift cards, PayPal, products, vouchers, and more. You can delegate the work to Genius Referrals at the same time to create auto-payouts to save money and valuable time.
• Insights. The platform keeps track of all the specific analytics, such as shares, clicks, referrals, and bonuses, so your customers can see what is and is not working.
• Rewards. Both the advocate and the referrer receive bonuses with two-sided rewards.
• 24/7 Monitoring. This referral marketing program doesn’t take vacations. For many years to come, your advocates will be in charge with unmatched dependability.
• Integrations. The services you now use can be readily integrated with this referral marketing software.

The Starter subscription for the Genius Referrals platform is $49 per month. The business advertises that clients may buy extra services, swap plans at any time, and only pay for what they actually use. There is also a free trial period of 30 days.

ReferralMagic – platform to build referral links with ease

One of the easiest to use and most straightforward referral marketing tools available online for SaaS companies is ReferralMagic. It provides all the capabilities required to manage productive referral marketing programs.

The program gives you the resources you need to quickly and easily create several referral marketing campaigns. Due to its wide APIs, ReferralMagic may also be readily integrated with a variety of third-party applications. The platform, however, does not have all the benefits of competing services, but the following features can still be enough:

• Multiple Referral Campaigns. You can set up a number of simultaneous referral campaigns with ReferralMagic. Your creations will result in unique conversion funnels, incentives, and referral links for every referral campaign.
• Referral Widgets. A completely integrated API is prepared to give you the most adaptable and individualized referral tracking system. Expect a quick and simple installation that includes widgets that are ready to use to enhance your experience.
• Fully-Integrated API. This referral marketing platform offers numerous opportunities to pull and push data, including referral code generation, referral identification, pending reward management and referral statistics. Make your own API keys for various uses, and you can revoke them at any moment. 
• Campaigning Options. Select one of the three referral campaign kinds that are offered: The Selfie, The Sign-Up Booster, and The Conversion Machine. A referral funnel created using ReferralMagic depends on your requirements and offers pertinent and visible metrics.
• Widgets to Invite Friends. Three fully customizable and ready-to-use invitation widgets are available from ReferralMagic. You can use the platform’s API to create your own implementation or quickly add these widgets to your website.

ReferralMagic offers all of the necessary features for referral marketing software at $245 per month, as well as a one-time usage fee of $9700.

How To Compare Referral Marketing Platforms?

Now, when you are familiar with top-notch referral marketing tools and services, let’s focus on a few key elements to be on the lookout for when selecting a marketing software solution that perfectly suits your needs:

• Functionality. Consider what referral capabilities are important for your business. As you can see, different tools have different features, so you need to figure out what particular functions your unique business case requires. Then, choose platforms that deliver the necessary functionality. 
• Consistency. When you know what exact functionalities your business demands, try to understand how they are implemented in the selection of referral marketing solutions you are currently analyzing. Keep in mind that complex platforms may be overcomplicated while simple solutions may not deliver the desired result.
• Integration. Simple integration with your native platform. Ideally, it should not require coding experience to implement a referral program on your website. Unless you want to spend more money and effort on the integration. However, if you need a more complex referral marketing system that requires additional help in terms of integration, it may be a reasonable price for extra features or more in-depth insights.
• Customer insights. The more insights into your referral program you get, the better it can become. Additional information will help you improve your daily routine dramatically, achieving better results. Thus, reliable reporting functionality is a must when you look for a good referral marketing solution.
• Testing. Another important aspect is the ability to test your referral campaign. As you can see, most services from our list provide the ability to run A/B tests to improve your campaigns.
• Templates. You may also benefit from pre-made templates, especially if they are customizable. In this case, it won’t take much time to create content that follows your branding. 
• Automation. Different referral marketing tools provide a different degree of automation. While, in some cases, it is worth controlling every step in your campaign, there are lots of processes that should be automated. You will save time, releasing more effort to think about how to make your program viral and engage more people in your word-of-mouth marketing efforts.  
• Scalability. Pay attention to solutions that let you switch to a more powerful tier as your enterprise grows. Furthermore, some referral marketing platforms on our list provide the ability to utilize only particular functionalities and pay for what you use.
• Ease-of-use. Of course, the referral marketing service of your choice should be easy to use and understand. If your own employees get confused by the platform’s interface, they won’t succeed in creating a robust referral campaign. Furthermore, your clients won’t spread word-of-mouth, attracting more and more new clients to your brand. 
• Price. Last but not least, the financial aspect is also worth considering when selecting a referral marketing solution. A robust instrument can drastically drain your budget, while a free solution may lack some vital features. As you can see, our article includes tools from different price ranges.

What are the benefits of referral marketing?

While marketers might be a little partial to referral marketing, it is associated with a few amazing advantages. Building relationships and trust with your current client base may take some time, but the effort is well worth it.

Word-of-mouth

Referral marketing makes it possible for word-of-mouth to spread widely. A referral marketing strategy exposes you to a sizable audience that you might not otherwise have access to since it encourages your biggest brand champions to suggest you to others.

You may do word-of-mouth marketing into a channel and increase brand awareness by putting in place an automated referral and reward system. However, it is worth mentioning once again that referral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing are not the same. See the beginning of this article.

Authentic channel

Since a referral marketing campaign is controlled media, it introduces a genuine medium for communicating with your clients.  Your referral program not only enables you to scale swiftly due to the fact that every new customer can result in many sales, but it also gives you total control over the new marketing channel.

Wider targeted audience

Often, a company comes up in discussion while someone is talking about a new brand or item they discovered. It accomplishes the objective of most marketers by putting the company in front of qualified and focused leads.

This is essentially how referral marketing works. After selecting the people they believe might benefit from your goods and services, your present customers spread the word about your company to their friends and family members. These potential new clients are more likely to try your brand because they learned about it from a reliable source. 

A new form of engagement

Customer service, social media, and emails can all be integrated with your referral marketing program. You might already distribute emails or post content to social media. In addition to inviting clients to sign up for your program, referral marketing gives you justification for communicating with your customers by sharing on these platforms.

You can interact with current referral program participants by thanking them on social media and praising their contributions. A consumer may require just the right amount of participation to keep referring to your business.

More loyal customers

Referrals that result in new clients end their transformation among your most devoted supporters. You already seemed favorably from the moment they learned about you. Additionally, the chances of a delighted customer are increased if you offer dual-sided benefits, which means the new customer also receives a reward.

Since referred clients are more loyal, they have higher total customer retention rates and lifetime values that are 16 percent higher than those of other consumers. Thus, your existing customers become more loyal to your brand. At the same time, you get new potential clients.

Cost-effective marketing

Traditional marketing can be very time-consuming and expensive. On the other hand, referral marketing is a cheap strategy for promoting your business and distributing information swiftly. You are maximizing relationships you have previously established by asking current clients to help you promote yourself.

Additionally, once your referral program is operational, it serves as a route for performance marketing. You only have to make rewards (deal with expenditures) after the initial setup charges when a new customer comes in.

Active sharing

The potential to start a sharing loop is one of referral marketing’s most significant characteristics. Customers who have been referred are four times more likely to recommend their own friends, partially out of a desire to reciprocate. These friends will then probably recommend their own peers, potentially starting a never-ending cycle of sharing.

Referral Marketing FAQ

Below, you can find answers to popular questions regarding referral marketing and referral program software.