Did you know that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other form of advertising? As any good marketer will tell you, an excellent way to get more of your customers to recommend you to their friends is to start an official referral program. But exactly how effective are referral programs? And how do they work for real businesses in the real world? Get the answers to these questions and more from this referral program case study!
As you’ve probably already guessed, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to referral programs… We knew that one meager case study of a refer-a-friend program wouldn’t cut it. So, that’s why we’ve included FOUR referral program case studies across our top-performing industries being run by businesses of different sizes to ensure you get all the details you need.
Each of the case studies to follow is based on an actual referral program built by a real business using our referral software. The strategic insights, referral program rules, rewards, and calls to action are real. So are all the performance metrics we’ve shared. We’ve just removed identifying information to protect our customers’ IP.
Referral Program Case Study #1: How This Financial Services Business Converted 2 Of Every 3 Referrals
🏛️ Niche: Multinational payment solutions
💵 Business type: B2B
🌎 Location: UK & Europe
🧑💼 Size of the company: 1,000+ employees
This multinational payment solutions company based out of the United Kingdom leverages B2B referrals to attract new businesses to their range of fuel card products. By segmenting their referral programs by region, they cater to specific market needs and maximize engagement.
Their key strategy involves incentivizing existing business clients to refer their peers in exchange for a reward. Plus, the program is double-sided, so not only is the existing client rewarded for the referral, but their friend is also incentivized. While their primary target audience for asking for referrals is their existing client base, the referral program is also open to the public, which means that anyone can sign up for a unique referral link and share that link with their network.
With a 66% conversion rate and over 5,000 referrals generated in a single year, this case study is an excellent example of B2B referrals done right!
Their Challenges (What Led Them To Referrals?)
This B2B financial services company turned to referrals for three big reasons. First, and most simply, they wanted more customers, and they knew that referrals tap into the power of happy clients spreading the word.
Second, they were struggling with low conversion rates from traditional ads like PPC. Referrals convert at double the rate of leads generated elsewhere.
Third, they wanted to make their brand known to the right crowd. Referrals fit the bill by letting them reach a spot-on audience through the trusted networks of their happy customers, giving their brand a solid boost where it matters most.
👉 Challenges:
- Increase customer acquisition (quite simply, find more customers)
- Boost brand awareness with the RIGHT audience
- Struggling to find new marketing channels to attract more leads
- Historically low conversion rate from leads acquired through PPC channels
How They Overcame These Challenges Using Referral Factory
Quite bluntly, this business had a tough time imagining how they could scale a customer referral program to their needs. Tracking leads and keeping things organized across multiple regions seemed like it would be too much of a headache.
So, they turned to Referral Factory for help. Since our simple referral tracking software integrates with Salesforce CRM, it made launching and managing their referral program at scale a breeze. When someone makes a new referral, that lead gets sent straight into Salesforce where it can be picked up by a sales agent to follow up. All the details of who referred them, their region, and other critical data are passed along in a matter of seconds.
The Solution They Implemented
👉 How Their Referral Program Works
Their referral program offers loyal customers the following reward for referring: for every business that successfully signs up for a fuel card, the referrer gets a £25 Amazon voucher. Referring ten businesses to their extensive selection of fuel card products can result in getting up to £250 worth of Amazon vouchers.
Additionally, each new business invited that qualifies for a fuel card enjoys a £25 discount off their invoice. This double-sided referral program style, where both the person referring and the person invited receive a reward is one of the top strategies for success in customer referrals.
To maximize results, they pitch the reward as ‘Give £250, Get £250’. In other words, refer 10 businesses, give £250 in discounts, and get £250 in Amazon Gift Cards.
👉How They Promote Their Referral Program
The company’s primary strategy to promote its referral program was email marketing. More simply: talk to their current clients and ask them to spread the word about their positive experiences.
Importantly, this company chose not to generate referral links on their referrers’ behalf but rather encourage them to sign up for a referral link themselves. This aligned with their GDPR requirements and meant that they could open up their referral program to anyone who wanted to join — not only their existing clients.
Referral Factory’s team of referral marketing experts suggested using the following strategies for further promotion:
- Including a link to join the referral program in the footer of their website;
- Prompting people to refer after a successful fuel card application;
- Adding a referral widget to their website;
- Adding a link to join the referral program in all transactional emails;
- Reminding people to refer via text message;
- Prompting newly converted referred leads to refer their network (thereby maximizing on the viral nature of referral programs)
The Final Results & Metrics
The results of this referral program case study speak for themselves! Out of a total pool of 7,567 referrers, a little under half have made at least one referral. This has resulted in 5,691 leads and 3,758 converted leads.
That’s 3,758 brand-spanking new customers acquired in a year!
With a whopping 66% conversion rate, it’s clear that referrers are targeting exactly the right audience when they recommend this company to their network. Two out of every three referrals end up converting!
Given that recent stats put average conversion rates for B2B sales in the financial services sector at around 5%, it’s pretty clear that referrals are an excellent marketing channel in an industry where trust is paramount.
Of the 5,691 people who were referred to this business, 21% have gone on to refer at least one person themselves. In other words, the phenomenon of social proof is working to this company’s advantage with a clear viral loop effect taking place.
Client Testimonial
“We knew that a referral program would work given our NPS scores but tracking referred leads was a headache we didn’t have capacity for. That’s when we decided to reach out to Referral Factory for assistance. Their simple yet powerful software transformed the way we handled our referral program. Suddenly, we could easily see how well our campaigns performed across different regions and adjust as needed. But it wasn’t just about the software; Referral Factory went above and beyond to support every step of the way.”
— Regional Marketing Manager
Referral Program Case Study #2: How This Educational Services Business Generated Almost 2,000 Leads In Only 10 Months
🏛️ Niche: Educational Services
💵 Business type: B2C
🌎 Location: USA
🧑💼 Size of the company: 100+ employees
This educational company is based in the USA and operates across the country. They specialize in providing online tutoring services to school-level students of all ages. Their mission is to make learning accessible and engaging through innovative teaching methods and personalized support.
Their double-sided referral program rewards both the person referring and the new lead with free tutorials, which means that new customers get to try the service for free and existing customers are encouraged to re-enroll in the program. It’s a referral marketing strategy that addresses two of their key challenges: acquiring new customers and improving customer retention.
Very soon after implementing the referral program, this business had a good sense of their ROI — in 10 short months, they generated 1,715 referred leads and over half of those leads converted into paying customers.
Their Challenges (What Led Them To Referrals?)
The tutoring business explored referrals as a growth strategy mostly because traditional marketing channels were proving ineffective, generating poor-quality leads. At the same time, they seemed to already be getting referrals from their happy customers organically but had no way to manage those referrals due to limited human resources. Despite this constraint, they recognized the potential of referrals as a powerful acquisition channel and sought more strategic and scalable ways to tap into this organic growth.
👉 Challenges:
- Traditional marketing channels were generating poor quality leads
- Limited human resources for managing a referral program even though referrals were already happening organically
How They Overcame These Challenges Using Referral Factory
Referral Factory offered a straightforward solution for setting up and managing a customer referral program. Since Referral Factory could connect to their HubSpot CRM, no additional pressure was placed on the marketing team to funnel referred leads through to the sales team.
With user-friendly tools and resources to segment data according to their specific needs, the business could quickly launch a referral program without the need for extensive technical expertise or resources.
The Solution They Implemented
👉 How Their Referral Program Works
Using Referral Factory, this educational services business created the following double-sided referral program. For every new, referred student, the person referring receives one free tutorial. At the same time, the new student enjoys their first tutorial free. It’s a classic, “give-and-get” style program where both parties win!
Given that their cost per converted lead via other marketing channels came in at around $375, it was still incredibly cost-effective to offer free tutorials to both the referrer and the new lead as incentives.
👉 How They Promote Their Referral Program
Unlike the financial services business featured in the previous referral program case study, this business opted to enroll its entire contact database in the referral program, automatically generating a unique referral link for each contact, which was then stored in the contact record in HubSpot. That way, each referrer’s unique link could be distributed directly to them via HubSpot. All they needed to do was share their link with their friends!
The following promotional strategies helped this business reach impressive results.
- Email marketing. Sending targeted emails to different customer segments (1. Students aged 16 and above and 2. Parents) with personalized referral links and a clear, concise description of the referral program incentives.
- Using HubSpot Snippets. With the capacity to insert personalized contact data into HubSpot snippets, this company could easily prompt people to refer after a good interaction.
- Referral link visibility. Including participants’ unique referral links in all transactional communication including invoices, schedule announcements, and monthly newsletters.
The Final Results & Metrics
Within a mere 10 months, referrals became the top-performing lead acquisition channel for this educational services business. In such a short time, they were able to generate 1,715 new leads.
Their conversion rate for paid ads hovered at around 8% but via their referral program, they were able to convert just over half (53%) of their referred leads. That’s 908 brand-new customers via referrals.
In addition to promoting new leads, the business reported increased customer retention with the referral incentive of a free session for the referrer often leading to repeat business.
While only 22% of the contacts in their total database have participated in their referral program to date, their top 10 referrers generated almost 100 leads together. On average, active referrers generated at least 2 new leads each.
Client Testimonial
Using Referral Factory made everything so much simpler and helped us get more people enrolled who spread the word about what we do. Their team gave us great ideas that made a big difference, especially because they were so familiar with HubSpot CRM and Marketing Hub. With their easy-to-use system, we could quickly generate referral links for our customers and store these in HubSpot where we can easily distribute them via our other marketing channels. Our existing clients found it easy to refer others, which helped us grow even more. Thanks to Referral Factory, we got more enrollments.
— Marketing Coordinator
Referral Program Case Study #3: How This Solar Business Generated Over $8 Million In Revenue
🏛️ Niche: Solar Energy
💵 Business type: B2C
🌎 Location: Australia
🧑💼 Size of the company: 100+ employees
This forward-thinking solar energy company is committed to providing sustainable energy solutions to residential, commercial, and industrial clients. They first encountered referrals as a marketing channel because a competitor had implemented a seemingly successful referral program!
This referral program case study is focused on the campaign they ran for their residential solar target audience, which rewards referrers with a substantial cash prize of $500 (AUD) and gives a discount to new referrals.
The success of their referral program has been phenomenal, with a huge bump in their 2023 revenue tracing right back to their top-performing lead generation channel: referrals!
Their Challenges (What Led Them To Referrals?)
The solar energy business delved into referrals as a growth strategy prompted by specific goals and challenges. Facing fierce competition from companies with enticing referral programs, their aim was to stay competitive and increase market penetration, expanding their customer base.
Their challenges also included a scarcity of effective customer acquisition channels, intensifying industry competition, and the inherent lengthy sales cycle.
To overcome these hurdles, the company saw referrals as a potential game-changer, offering a way to leverage satisfied customers to counter competition, penetrate the market more deeply, and address the limitations of traditional acquisition channels in the solar energy industry.
👉 Challenges:
- Remain competitive with similar companies running attractive referral programs
- Increase market penetration and expand their customer base
- Limited customer acquisition channels
- Competition in the industry
- Long sales cycle
How They Overcame These Challenges Using Referral Factory
This solar energy company’s primary concern was their longer sales cycle. After all, a solar energy system is a big investment and a lead isn’t considered converted until after the installation is complete. From start to finish, the process can take at least 3 months.
That’s why this business was happy to learn that Referral Factory’s referral tracking system caters to longer sales cycles — referral rewards are only triggered at a conversion moment of the business’s choice.
To ensure that referral program participants could stay on top of their progress and stay engaged, Referral Factory experts suggested implementing a tracking dashboard, where referrers could log in and see the status of their referrals.
The Solution They Implemented
👉 How Their Referral Program Works
As with the previous two referral program case studies, this one features a double-sided reward structure — for good reason! Double-sided referral programs (where both the referrer and the “friend” are rewarded) tend to vastly outperform single-sided referral programs (where only the referrer is rewarded) in customer-to-customer referrals.
Here is how this solar business structured its referral program: To drive referrals for new solar panel system installations, the person referring receives a $500 cash reward for each successful referral. At the same time, the person invited enjoys a 10% discount on their solar panel installation.
To participate, existing customers sign up for a unique referral link via these pages:
When they share that link with their friends, the potential new leads are instantly directed to these personalized invitation pages with a lead generation form and all the details of the special offer:
👉 How They Promote Their Referral Program
While participation in this referral program wasn’t restricted to existing clients, these clients were the most well-placed to refer their friends. So, the goal for promoting this referral program was not only to make it extremely easy to participate but also to ask existing clients to refer friends at the exact right time!
- Introducing the referral program post-installation. The best time to ask existing clients for referrals is immediately after they have a good experience. For this solar business, the winning tactic was to send a postcard thanking clients for their recent business about a week after their solar panel system was installed, with all the details of the referral program included.
Using referral tracking dashboards to keep referrers engaged. $500 is a substantial referral reward and this high-value incentive is one of the key drivers behind the success of this referral program. However, the longer sales cycle means that referrers have to wait an average of 4 months for their reward. To keep them engaged and promote transparency, they implemented tracking dashboards where referrers could log in and see their progress.
The Final Results & Metrics
Within 6 months, referrals became this solar company’s top-performing lead channel. After a little over a year, they generated 3,710 warm leads and converted 1,410 of them. That’s a 38% conversion rate, substantially higher than any of their other lead channels. And, since they operate on a longer sales cycle, many of the referred leads generated are still in the deal pipeline.
With an average purchase value of around $6,000, the revenue generated via their referral program is estimated at over $8,460,000! And, while their referral program incentives are on the higher end of the spectrum, they still pay less for a converted lead via referrals than via paid ads.
Client Testimonial
Working with the Referral Factory team was a game-changer for our business. They helped us set up a referral program that really worked. Their support and guidance were top-notch, and our referral program brought in more customers and boosted demand for our solar panel installations. We’re grateful for their expertise and the positive impact they’ve had on our business.
— Director of Marketing
Referral Program Case Study #4: How This SMB in the Healthcare Industry Achieved a 47% Conversion Rate
🏛️ Niche: Healthcare
💵 Business type: B2C
🌎 Location: US
🧑💼 Size of the company: 15+ employees
This mobile physiotherapy clinic discovered a high demand for at-home treatment in the months following the pandemic, which led them to scale down their on-premises programs. They aim to deliver high-quality physiotherapy services directly to their clients’ doorsteps, ensuring convenience and accessibility without compromising on excellence.
Very early on in this shift to mobile-first services, they realized the value of referrals — after all, they were already being recommended by loyal clients organically. To make the most out of this lead acquisition channel, they implemented a formal referral program, giving $25 as a referral bonus for any new clients sent their way. They also offer a 25% discount on the first treatment for the referred friend.
The performance of this referral program proves that referrals aren’t just for multinational companies and online shops! Small business referral programs can have phenomenal results with careful strategizing.
Their Challenges (What Led Them To Referrals?)
This SMB has a small administrative team who manages all their marketing so while they felt excited about all the referrals they were getting from existing clients, they didn’t know exactly where to start with a referral marketing strategy.
They were also worried that tracking referrals would be a huge administrative nightmare and people would complain if they lost track of who referred who. This was especially concerning given the limited technical expertise in the company — their IT needs were all outsourced.
However, they knew that recommendations and word of mouth were the best way to target the right audience for their mobile physiotherapy services, especially as it was a new concept for many of their older clients.
👉 Challenges:
- Limited in-house marketing expertise
- Unfamiliarity with digital marketing tools
- Difficulty attracting the right target market
How They Overcame These Challenges Using Referral Factory
They came across Referral Factory while searching for referral program templates and booked a demo to see if the software was as easy to use as it seemed. Not only did they find they could easily build and manage a referral program themselves using Referral Factory’s plug-and-play solution, but they were also grateful for the multitude of resources like templates built into the system.
Within a matter of weeks, they had a professional-looking referral program up and running and were able to introduce it to their clients via email and in face-to-face sessions. This meant that they could target an older generation of their clientele in person but still track referrals via the referral links generated on Referral Factory.
The Solution They Implemented
👉 How Their Referral Program Works
Their double-sided referral program encourages their existing clients and their network at large to spread the word with a $25 gift card for the referrer and a 25% discount for the referred friend.
Referrers can join the program by signing up for their unique referral link which they can then easily share with their friends and family.
When someone clicks on a link, they are taken to a personalized invitation page where they enter their details to claim their discount and schedule their first appointment.
👉 How They Promote Their Referral Program
- Email, Text & Social Media Marketing. The referral program was announced via text and email and posted to all their social media channels. Automated reminder emails were also set up to fire once every 6 weeks to people who registered for a referral link.
- Asking people to join the referral program in person via a QR code. To make sure they asked for referrals at exactly the right time, this SMB printed out their referral program join link as a QR code on a beautifully designed flyer. When people scanned the code they could sign up for a unique referral link.
The Final Results & Metrics
For an SMB with no dedicated marketing team, 834 new leads via a referral program is pretty impressive! More impressive is that almost half of those leads converted (47%), claiming their discount and booking a treatment.
A total of 1,402 people have participated in their referral program with many referrers referring as many as 5 friends! This high engagement rate is likely because of the social proof that comes from getting your first referral — the moment you start planning what to spend that referral reward on, you start wondering who else you could refer!
Client Testimonial
We were very nervous to try referral software as we don’t have any in-house IT services but Referral Factory was so intuitive and we were really impressed with how easy it was to build our referral program.
— Senior Administrator
I like that Referral Factory helps us reward our own clients with marketing budget we would have probably spent on Google Ads or something. It feels great to know that our very own community is behind the growth of our business. And, the fact that we can manage our referral program ourselves has saved us a lot of money.
— Founder
Conclusion
The main problems for businesses across industries remain creating customer referral programs that work, boosting user engagement, and working properly with brand ambassadors to spread word of mouth. This is understandable. That’s why we offer powerful software that helps motivate existing users and brings exceptional value in creating the best referral programs for various industries. Nonetheless, if these referral program case studies are anything to go by — and they should be — referrals are some of the best quality leads you can get!
