How to Use Referral Rewards to Drive Revenue for Your Shopify Brand

Jump to section:

• How does ReferralCandy Work?
• About ReferralCandy’s founding team
• Do you have any examples of successful merchants?
• How can brands work with ReferralCandy?
• What are the main ways brands can reward their customers for referrals?
• How can brands work with influencers and ReferralCandy at the same time?
• About doing things that don’t scale as an upcoming brand
• Closing comments: Referrals are something that has worked overtime

Speaker (Narrator)  0:00

You're listening to eCommerce Fastlane, Episode 73.

Speaker (Introduction)  0:04

Welcome to eCommerce FastLane, the podcast show to help you build, launch, grow and scale a wildly successful eCommerce company. Listen to real conversations with proven practical strategies and success stories. Learn how to generate more traffic, more sales, more profit and customer lifetime value for your Shopify store. And now your host and eCommerce entrepreneur Steve Hutt.

Speaker (Steve Hutt)  0:36

This episode is brought to you by Carro the number one Shopify app for influencer marketing. Carro is a Shopify app that discovers all the influencers who are your brand's customers, email subscribers, and fans.

Now imagine an influencer with a million followers was to make a purchase from your Shopify store. Would you know about it? Carro makes sure that you do and unlike other influencer platforms, Carro is built for trust and transparency, and they help you find influencers that are genuinely interested in your brand so that you're not scrolling through countless social accounts just to find the right partners.

Let Carro do the heavy lifting and find influencers that are best for your brand. And Carro also helps you execute your influencer marketing every step of the way. They make communication and product distribution easy, so you can pick the right influencers and create meaningful partnerships.

And right now Carro is free for all Shopify stores. So why not try it out and see who you find. Now after you install the app, Carro will alert you whenever a new influencer engages with your brand. So that you can communicate and continue to build your list of influencers over time.

To get started, you can visit getcarro.com, or you can search for Carro in the Shopify App Store. That's C-A-R-R-O and discover which influencers already love your brand.

Speaker (Steve Hutt)  2:15

Hey there, it’s Steve and welcome back to the eCommerce Fastlane podcast. Now, if this is your first time listening, this is an eCommerce show where we have honest and transparent conversations about building and thriving online with your store powered by Shopify or Shopify Plus.

Now, new episodes are available each week with your favorite podcast player through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify or you can also sign up online at eCommerceFastlane.com and be notified when new shows are being released.

My guest on today's episode is Raul Galera from ReferralCandy and they're a platform that helps Shopify brands and their customer referral programs. Referral programs are very powerful, you know, word of mouth influences 80% of the buying decision and customers trust referrals over every other channel. So, your customers will definitely know at least one other new customer, so why not reward them and make that referral.

So let's jump into this episode today and learn more about what ReferralCandy can do for you, and this powerful sales channel. So hi, Raul, welcome to eCommerce Fastlane.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 3:09

Hello, thanks for the invitation.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 3:11

It's a very busy time of the year being in Q4, and I think this is a perfect time with the amount of traffic that is starting to happen now in this holiday season.

Referral marketing seems to be a great tactic that if people are not executing on, it's just like lost revenue, it's like money being left on the table. And that's why I want to have you here today to share why I think upwards of 30,000 customers made the decision to be with ReferralCandy. And so if you've not heard of ReferralCandy, this episode is here today to teach you what they do, why they do it, and the problems they're solving. So once again, thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 3:48

Absolutely.

<span id="how-it-works">How does ReferralCandy Work?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 3:49

So let's talk on a high level first. So what does ReferralCandy do and what problems are you aiming to solve for Shopify brands.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 3:57

The default way for me to describe ReferralCandy, which is pretty much my favorite way of describing it, is that we help brands turn their customers into their marketing team.

So we help Shopify stores get more sales through word-of-mouth, we allow them to set up, and run their own referral program in a matter of minutes. That means that even if you are a small store, or you're an eCommerce entrepreneur that’s just getting started with Shopify, and you don't have a designer or developer in-house that can help you set it up, ReferralCandy is pretty much made for you.

You just have to upload a couple of things to your ReferralCandy dashboard, and you will have your referral program up and running. And we automate the whole reward system. So we make sure that all your customers are getting rewarded for spreading the word about your store.

<span id="founding-team">What do you believe uniquely positions, the founding team to have the expertise and a desire to even want to build a platform like this?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 4:46

I know there are quite a few different options available as to what the reward actually is. And I think we'll dig a little deeper into some of the tactics that are available depending on your brand and what sort of offers you want to have in exchange for the person offering the reward, and the person that's being exposed to the brand; if it's percentage off, the amount of money off, there are quite a few different options. So we'll dig a little deeper into that in a few minutes.

But tell me a little bit about the founders' journey leading up to the launch of ReferralCandy. What do you believe uniquely positions, the founding team to have the expertise and a desire to even want to build a platform like this?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 5:24

It all started with a conversation over lunch about 10 years ago now. So our founders were having lunch with a friend who owned an online store, and they were selling beads. And so this friend was trying to figure out a way that he could get new customers from his existing customers, to get them to go to his store. I mean, he knew that his customers love them. So there had to be a way that they could build, on top of that. This was 10 years ago, back in 2009.

And, you know, there wasn't really an easy way for small merchants to do this. Most of the solutions that were available, were aimed at bigger merchants that were at enterprise level. Also, that was the time when social networks were on the rise. I know that sounds a little bit weird to think about it now.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 6:09

(laughter) Yeah.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 6:10

You know, it's been a long time since then in terms of technology, but social networks like Facebook were on the rise and so the conversation going around was a way of using social networks to reach not your customers, but your customer's friends. And that's how it started.

Our founders, Dinesh and Zach founded the company in Singapore, back in 2009. And then they launched the first Shopify app in 2010. Back then, it was actually called Anafore. It later rebranded to ReferralCandy. And so yeah, that was 10 years ago, well almost 10 years ago from our launch as we will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary next year. So it's pretty exciting.

<span id="merchant-examples">Do you have any merchants that you can talk about specifically, maybe some examples of success and what it looks like?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 6:50

Yeah, that's pretty epic actually, for a SaaS company to be around for that long. And you know, you made a slight pivot with the name change, but you stay to your roots as far as what specific problem you're solving. Because I think that's a challenge that a lot of SAS companies have; over time as they mature they tend to turn into a Swiss Army Knife of all things marketing.

And as I can see other prominent Shopify apps and marketing platforms, whether they're 10,  that’s their way of generating more revenue, by going upmarket a bit, which you've chosen not to go upmarket. And you've chosen to just be experts at what you do specifically, and it's just in the referral space, instead of getting involved in lots of other things. So very commendable.

And I understand that your upwards of 30,000 customers are monthly using your solution. So they obviously have seen the ROI that comes out of word-of-mouth referral marketing. It's obviously not a new concept, but it's great that they have a piece of software that connects to Shopify and actually helps orchestrate all of that. I think that's pretty cool.

You have any merchants that you can talk about specifically, maybe some examples of success and what it looks like.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 8:05

Yeah. And actually going back to what you just mentioned about building something around referral marketing. I mean, maybe it's because we breathe referral marketing every day and so for us, this is super obvious what I'm about to say. But I understand that for a lot of people, this might not be something that comes off as very obvious but I mean, at the end of the day referrals, recommendations just work and you can see the practice pretty much every day.

You know, if I asked you when was the last time somebody recommended something to you, I'm sure you got some recommendations coming your way in the past week, whether it's an online store or a restaurant.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 8:42

Yeah, absolutely, it is. I mean, recently, my daughter celebrated her fourth birthday and my wife was trying to get some themed cookies created and here she is on Instagram seeing some photos, following a couple of different people, and then all of a sudden a friend of hers said I had some cookies done from her and they're great. And here's my actual photos of the cookies that she actually did. Oh, and then boom, there you go.

Now this woman obviously didn't get credit for it by referring my wife to this cookie company. But at the end of the day, she still got the business and all because of word-of-mouth.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 9:15

Right? I mean, it's just natural. We're humans, it's part of human nature. We like to share things because at the end of the day, we want to do something nice for other people. And,  we like sharing what we know. So that's why recommendations work.

Going back to your question about merchants that have used this to grow their business. You know, as I said, we think about referral marketing as a strategy to have, but sometimes we overlook the fact that a lot of companies have grown from referral marketing from day one.

These are examples that we've all heard about Dropbox, Uber, all the referral programs, PayPal, they had it. But we saw one particular case at ReferralCandy, which is called Riff Raff and Co, they actually were able to use referral marketing as a way to overcome a big blocker in the early days of the business because they had a pretty big competitor in the space.

And so well Riff Raff and Co... just a little bit of context to help you understand the story. They sell toys that help toddlers sleep better at night. They’re toys they can take to bed with them.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 10:26

I’m on the website right now and they're washable, and I can see all the reviews and these success stories of parents actually using the product.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 10:35

And it actually came up because of a need that the founder had. She was trying to figure out a way of getting some sort of toy that their kids could use and they'll be able to wash it. If you can wash it, then you can take it anywhere and you don't have to worry about the toy getting dirty.

So she knew what she was building. She knew that it was solving her problems. So they had this big competitor in the space that was actually selling a similar product and they were actually selling it in limited editions. So limited units. And customers were going so crazy about it that they were reselling them on eBay for like 10 times its price. It was pretty wild. So, you know, that was kind of scary, I guess at the very beginning for any founder to find that a competitor like this exists.

But the Riff Raff and Co founder was able to basically understand their customers from day one. And she knew that the best person to sell something to a mom was other moms. She was part of a lot of different online communities for moms. And she understood from day one, that was the marketing channel that she had to use.

She had to get moms to use the product, talk about it online in these communities and that was the best marketing that she could possibly have. And the rest is history. I mean, she was able to grow a business that makes several million a year on Shopify, and it's one of the success stories that we always like to tell.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 11:57

Yea, it's excellent. I'm actually on the site now. I love the link in the upper right-hand corner about refer your friends and get a free Riff Raff and Co sleep toy. Give your friends free shipping worldwide, when your friends buy from your invite link, you get a free Riff Raff and Co sleep toy. And there's an email address, potentially a name is optional, and then you get the invite link, looks like you share this through social or directly through email. And then with your custom link, I suppose through ReferralCandy.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 12:27

Yep.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 12:28

And that tributes back to the person referring it and if they pull the trigger and make a purchase, looks like the bounty or the offer that comes back to the referring person, in this case, it’s the free toy. It's quite interesting. It obviously has worked quite well for them and it's all on the brand which I love. So it has the same look, feel and photography, logo and everything. So it looks all very custom.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 12:49

Yeah and one thing that I want to point out is the fact that she used a reward that in my opinion is pretty smart, in the sense that, she didn't give a discount for future purchases because a future purchase might not happen if the kid already has a sleeping toy they might not want a different one.

She didn't get cash because that's not something that might motivate moms to refer their friends but instead since they have different units and different models it's an easy way for moms to collect different ones.

It's an overall pretty good strategy because I mean she was able to use ReferralCandy from the early stages of the business. She basically used this simple refer a friend structure to grow through word-of-mouth.

<span id="working-with-referralcandy">What are the different ways brands can work with ReferralCandy?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 13:30

Yeah and it's nice, the solution is out of the box, ready to go with your own custom landing page, logo, and branding. There are some best practices out there for what the offer can be and, you know, that might be a decent pivot now to talk about the sorts of offers that you see that are successful. Because in this particular case, it's getting a free gift. But I also believe there are other ways of offering or incentivizing sharing abilities of a brand depending on the margin and the offer.

So can we dig into maybe the different types of behavior that you believe a brand could potentially do with ReferralCandy?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 14:04

Yeah, so usually when we think about referrals, we tend to think about just affiliates, you know, giving some sort of bounty, or some sort of reward for somebody that gets you new business. And that works. I mean, we see it pretty much every day. But referrals are a little bit different and also special because you're not only thinking about rewarding the person who's getting your business, but you're also incentivizing that first customer that you're going to acquire by giving them some sort of incentive to buy from you for the first time.

It's kind of redundant, but you're giving something to your customer for the effort of recommending you. it's kind of like a way of saying thank you for thinking of us. But you're also given a discount to incentivize that first purchase and kind of makes it feel a little bit special.

So at the end of the day, we've seen that a lot of people recommend just because the product is going to be good for the person that you're talking to. So if we're talking about getting recommendations from friends and family, if the product is not good, nobody's going to recommend a bad product to their friends or their family. Nobody is going to do that.

And that's actually one of the best parts of referral programs. It's coming from one of the most trusted sources that you can possibly have, which is family or friends. And actually, a lot of merchants have been really smart about rewards. And we've seen cases of successful referral programs that have given bigger rewards to the friend than the advocate. By the advocate, I mean, the existing customer that's making that recommendation.

So they were giving a bigger reward to the friend, just because they knew that... kind of like the feeling of giving something to a friend or giving them a discount on a product that you know, they're going to love. It's already an incentive enough.

We actually had one particular case of a subscription box in which they were given. I think it was about 70% discount on the first box to their referred friends and then a small reward to the existing customer, I think it was like five or ten dollars. And it worked very well because you know, these are the customers that are already using the box.

I don't remember exactly what the product was. But it's probably something that you can show your friends while you're pitching it. And you can say, well,  on top of this, I can give you a 70% discount on your first subscription box, and you can try it out.

So that's usually a better feeling than just getting a small reward, which is nice, too, obviously.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 16:25

Yeah, and I have quite a few subscription box companies that I manage and one area they're always thinking about is how do I drive some net new visitors to the website? How do I build that awareness and consideration for the brand? And it sounds like there's nothing better than using your existing customers to help you spread the word about what it is that you're all about.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 16:48

Right. And especially for subscription businesses. It's a very easy way of retaining customers, to run referral programs. So when we think about referrals or affiliates, we think about a way of acquiring new clients, which is it's true. It's one of the big results that come from it. But it's also a very easy way of keeping your customers around.

So another thing that we've seen successful merchants do is linking rewards to their customers' purchasing behavior. So you know, if it's a subscription box, and you're getting recurring purchases, let's say protein powder, for example, that’s something you buy pretty much every month, you can offer discounts on future purchases, and that way, you're making sure that your customers are probably not going to churn.

If they're happy with your product, they're probably not going to churn anyway. But it's a way of incentivizing them to stay with you a little longer. And if you're selling something that’s a one-time purchase or something that you buy every once in a while, like a mattress... we've seen a lot of mattress companies using ReferralCandy giving a discount on a future mattress purchase. God knows when that's going to happen.

So it's better to give cash instead and they've run very successful referral programs giving cash for this. You know, it's all about thinking about why we even share. And a lot of these recommendations come because people want to provide good information or provide good recommendations for things that are going to be valuable to their friends and family.

<span id="rewarding-referrals">What are the main ways brands can reward their customers for referrals?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 18:13

Yeah and so it sounds like there are a couple of different options here, then. So one example would be giving a gift for a successful new transaction, one could be a certain percentage off of that purchase, a potential new purchase, or there could be a certain amount of money off instead of a percentage off.

Sometimes it could be free shipping, you click this link, this referral link, if you buy it, you get free shipping, and then whatever the incentive of the bounty is back to the referring person. So would those be the three main ones that you see being popular?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 18:41

Yeah, exactly. So we automate the whole process for cash rewards and discounts. So that means that merchants don't have to worry about delivering these rewards to their customers or their referred friends. We do this for them. And then we also allow them to run what we call custom rewards. So If you have a better idea in mind, you can still implement it with ReferralCandy and you'll be able to track and automate pretty much everything on our platform.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 19:07

I'm sure this is a question you make it up quite a bit with people that are trying to get on board with you. But from my perspective, which I don't have the answer for. So I'm going to ask you now, is if I was to refer someone, and then how is the let's say, in this particular example, it is a cash reward. And so where does that cash reside? So ReferralCandy identifies the fact that my custom link... is this a logged-in experience inside Shopify? And then is it loaded into my account, that I have to have credit available on my account?  How does it all flush out that I can then use that credit?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 19:41

So there are two types of rewards here. For the cash one, whenever you make a referral, and it's a successful referral, and by successful I mean that it meets all the conditions; which obviously we allow merchants to set different conditions on how they run their referral program, so maybe they only want to reward purchases over a certain amount of dollars, or they are they want to have what we call a purchase review period — so they want to make sure that the product doesn't get returned.

We obviously have a pretty strong anti-fraud system. But there are always things that merchants can do on top of that and these are the options that we have for them. So if it goes through all the filters, and it's a verified purchase, and you get cash, we send out the rewards via PayPal to the advocates.

So in this case, you will receive an email from ReferralCandy saying “hey, you have a reward coming your way.” And we actually ask you in your ReferralCandy advocate portal...when you sign up for the referral program we ask you for your PayPal email address, so we can send you your rewards there.

You get an email from ReferralCandy saying that you have a reward coming your way and then you receive an actual one from PayPal with the rewards.

And then for the discounts, we basically give you discounts individually for every purchase and you can use them on future purchases. You can stack them out but you can use them obviously on different ones. The idea is that you earn discounts quite often and if you're making recurring purchases, you'll be also incentivized to make these purchases instead of waiting until you have a big stack of discounts and then use it for a big one.  We understand that for merchants, it can help them to incentivize customers to make purchases more often.

<span id="influencers">How can brands work with influencers and ReferralCandy at the same time?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 21:21

You know, a topic of influencers come up quite a bit with the brands and merchants that I handle. And so, you know, imagine if a brand gets access, maybe through Carro or Woolie.com, there are quite a few solutions that can help you identify your current customers and maybe the size of their social profile, and then figuring out if you want to work with them.

So imagine using ReferralCandy to get these micro-influencers and almost force them as a brand ambassador to create an account with ReferralCandy and then instead of paying them outright for a shoutout on Instagram, why not change the bio link or why not do something in the comments sections. Are you finding that’s a novel trend happening now? Or is it something that people are just doing more regularly now?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 22:07

Oh, yeah, we actually have some cases of merchants that have been able to find influencers within their customer base that they didn't know they had them. So in the ReferralCandy dashboard, you know, when you sign up and you have your active account, you can see who are your most active advocates.

These are the customers that are sending you more customers every month on a monthly basis and so you can identify these people and what we recommend in this case is that you reach out to them directly and build a personal relationship with these influencers, especially if they are like you said, micro-influencers, people that have a decent social media following base. You can create a friendly type of collaboration with them.

But yeah, we've had a lot of merchants that run the ReferralCandy program and then they were like, Oh my God, we have these two customers that are sending us three times more customers than any other vendor in the referral program. And it's because they probably didn't know that these guys were influencers in their own area.

Also, something else that we typically recommend merchants to do, kinda like an overall strategy to promote the referral program, is that they make the referral program available to anybody that visits the website.

Obviously, you have two options, you can either keep it private and only invite your existing customers to participate in the referral program, which is perfectly fine. And there's another option, which is to make it visible on your homepage that there's a way for you to get rewarded.

In my opinion, that's a very smart strategy because let's say I land on a website because, I don't know, maybe I got on the wrong Instagram ad, and I landed on an online store that’s not for me, but I might know somebody that might be interested in those products. If I can grab a referral link, I can share it with my friends and they can get something out of the first purchase and I get something when they buy. Or if I'm an influencer, let's change the persona now. Now, in that role and I'm an influencer, better, I can find a new opportunity for me to generate some revenue.

<span id="growing-brand">Doing things that don’t scale: What sort of advice would you give those people that are looking to grow their brand?</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 24:04

So I'll make sure I update this stuff in the show notes and stuff, any links to any blog posts you may have about brands that have successfully executed on that sort of influencer strategy and Carro and Woolie to help you as a brand to uncover your current customers looks like ReferralCandy also can have that in the admin to see people that are consistently referring, getting paid and getting their bounties. So it's kind of a one-two punch.

Let's make a slight pivot. More advice. Since you have so many customers that are using this solution, you obviously have the opportunity to talk to a lot of them and help them execute their campaigns and stuff. Do you think you could give us some advice today and I know you can appreciate that I have quite a diverse range of listeners. We have some that are more early-stage, maybe they're still working nine to five, getting a little bit of product-market fit but they still have a day job and typical side hustles with Shopify. What sort of advice would you give those people that are looking to grow their brand?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 25:00

I mean, I would say something that we've probably heard before on many other occasions and it might sound like a cliche, but I particularly like the idea of doing things that don't scale. Especially when you're just getting started and you have more time to do these types of things.

Because those first customers that you're going to acquire are extremely important for your business and not only from the business financial point of view but as a brand in terms of how your brand's going to grow and how people are going to talk about your brand from the very beginning. I think it's crucial.

We also have another product that’s targeting brick and mortar stores and so a big part of that customer base is restaurants. I always like the analogy when you talk to a small restaurant owner, you've probably noticed and probably everybody that's listening to this podcast has had an experience like this one. When you're eating at a local restaurant or at a family-owned restaurant and you have the owner come to your table and ask, “Hey, how was my food? How was dinner? Did you like the food that I prepared for you? “

And you know, that's like a pretty personal conversation, it's pretty honest. I mean, they truly care about your opinion and they generally want to make your dining experience as good as possible. So that's something that you can do for your store. You can do that for every business, but obviously, for eCommerce, there's a lot of things that you can do to make it personal and just basically let your customers know that you're caring about them at every step of the way.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 26:29

Yeah, I love the don't scale part of it. I guess to add to that would be almost like you're creating this high touch as the business owner because you massively appreciate any new business because you know, over time, there's this referral opportunity.

You want to nurture and take care of these ones. And I love the... I mean, I've been to restaurants before, like, with a chef coming to the table and really talking and just literally like that's the chef that cooked my meal tonight. He obviously knows the power of creating a personal relationship.

It could even be as simple as from an online perspective like a handwritten note put in the box of how much you appreciate their business. It's pretty powerful stuff. So yeah. So thanks for sharing that.

Now, what about those that are listening today that would be considered in the mid-market. So they likely have a small team, they might outsource some of their work, but they're definitely eager to grow and scale. And a lot of those people are listening today. What do you believe those marketers or that executive team...what sort of things should they be working on?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 27:25

There are a few areas... there's one in particular that I feel like it's sometimes overlooked when trying to grow your business. You know, if you read a lot of these guides about the first things that you've got to do when you start your online store, sometimes they don't really mention organic traffic, which is crucial.

I mean, it's a long term strategy, it's super painful, it's difficult and it's costly in terms of time and effort you have to put into it also probably in terms of money, but not much as other channels. Particularly now in 2019 advertising costs have skyrocketed in the past few years, especially if you look at Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

I was actually looking at that a couple of days ago, the trend of advertising costs and it's crazy. It's getting more and more and more expensive to acquire customers through their traditional ad channels. You know you can actually turn that into a budget issue. So of course, this is important. I mean, having ads, it's important, it's crucial, you have to be there.

But it's also important that you show your products to people who are specifically looking for your product, which is something that sometimes gets overlooked. With organic traffic, you're actually putting yourself in front of people that are not only interested because they like a similar product or because they like some sort of other brand and therefore you're building an audience based on mutual interest.

No, these are people that are searching for your product and you can sell it to them directly based on that. It's a long term strategy, but it pays off and diversifies your acquisition channels. As I mentioned earlier, I believe obviously, referrals are a marketing channel that compounds over time. Especially if you're mid-market already, and you've been in business for a few years, you have a pretty solid customer base and you can always rely on that.

It doesn't really affect in terms of budgeting since it’s pretty much 100% based on performance. So you can also use it as a way to incentivize recurring purchases and build customer loyalty on top of acquiring new customers. Just keep those customers coming.

<span id="closing-comments">Closing comments: Referrals are something that just works and has worked overtime.</span>

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 29:34

I know and to add to that, we have to talk about the human capital that goes along with adding on different sorts of solutions and I think that's where ReferralCandy shines because there is an automated workflow of…you know, once you set it up, it runs on its own by paying the referring partner and pinging you for the free gift however your program is being set up.

Versus those that would want to have a full-blown loyalty program with points and point redemptions and those sorts of things and connections with Shopify or even with affiliate programs. I mean, these require a lot more human capital and people to manage it physically to build your affiliate program network, or build your loyalty program.

It's a significant overhaul versus some of the widgets and some of the best practices that ReferralCandy already created in 10 years doing this. I implore those that are listening today if you've not dug into the affiliate program, or loyalty program field, which I think is a necessary part of the long term growth strategy of a brand.

You're not doing any of those yet then ReferralCandy is definitely dipping your feet into the water right and getting your toes in there and helping you see what's available because your customers are your advocates.

That's the best way to build more awareness as I said in consideration for the brand and to get people to want to get incentives and to want to share why this product is so great. So we are nearing the end of the show for today. But do you have any closing comments or any takeaways that you would like to leave with our listeners today?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 31:11

Referrals are something that just works and has worked overtime. As I said earlier, we're talking about people making recommendations to the closest people to them. You're my family member, you're my friend, you're my partner, I trust you. And so if you tell me that I will like this, I trust you and I'm going to make that purchase because you recommended it to me.

So word-of-mouth is trustworthy. At the end of the day, we've tried a lot of things. I'm going to go back to the example of a restaurant. You know, if you've tried a dish and you like it and the first thing you do is tell your friends that they have to try it too. That’s the kind of thing that's we're trying to put and automate in eCommerce.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 31:49

How can people learn more about ReferralCandy?

Speaker (Raul Galera) 31:52

They can find us on the Shopify App Store as ReferralCandy. They can look at our website, referralcandy.com and there we have a bunch of resources to learn more about ReferralCandy. We have also a demo webinar where they can sign up and listen to me again if they want to talk about ReferralCandy and how it can work for them and we even take questions from them directly after the call through email.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 32:14

referralcandy.com is the landing page in the Shopify App Store you can also add CandyBar for those that are in traditional retail. That's an interesting little solution and probably sounds like a separate podcast episode on its own.

We did talk offline though before we recorded and you have been so kind as to offer our listeners a special promotion. So if you can give us the details of that.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 32:37

So we're offering listeners $50 off after the 30 days free trial on ReferralCandy. Our pricing starts at $49 a month so this pretty much effectively extends the free trial to 60 days.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 32:51

So it'll be eCommerceFastlane.com/referralcandy and that will redirect you to the landing page with that offer. So there's a 30 free trial, but you're getting a $49 credit. So that turns into essentially a 60-day trial. It seems like a no brainer from an ROI perspective to at least try it, 30,000 other people see value in the solution and this way you can prove it for your own self over the next couple months.

Once again thanks for the offer and thanks to Raul for coming on the show today. Much appreciated.

Speaker (Raul Galera) 33:18

Absolutely, it was my pleasure.

Speaker (Steve Hutt) 33:20

This episode is supported by Carro an incredible Shopify app that discovers all the influencers, press and media that already love your brand.

They can be customers, email subscribers or fans and Carro will reveal the social footprint and influence of those that have already shown you some love. And from there Carro makes it easy to work with influencers, communicate and distribute products to them, so you can pick the right influencers and create meaningful partnerships.

To get started, you can visit getcarro.com or search for Carro in the Shopify app store. That’s C-A-R-R-O and discover which influencers already love your brand. Well, that's it for today's episode, I'd like to thank you, a loyal listener of eCommerce Fastlane. It's my hope that this podcast is offering you a ton of value through growth strategies, tactics, and exclusive insider tips on the best Shopify apps and marketing platforms, all with my personal goal to help you build, launch, grow and scale with Shopify.

Thanks for investing your time today and listening to the show. I'm so proud and excited that you have a growth mindset and our constant learner. I truly appreciate you and your entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy the rest of the week and keep thriving with Shopify.

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