How to Set Up a Referral Program for Your Ecommerce Store in 6 Steps
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
There are many generic lists of ‘best Shopify apps' out there, many of which may not help add extra value to your business. We weren't interested in writing one of those.
Instead, we focused on apps that would help you grow your brand, your business, and your revenue.
We identified 50+ best Shopify apps that fell into one of two categories:
Let's explore the Shopify apps we can recommend based on these categories.
To help you navigate around, the Shopify apps are divided into:
Some of the apps are free Shopify apps, and some are paid. Let's dive into the apps now!
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (2,000+ reviews)
Pricing: $59/month plus commissions, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Ecommerce brands wanting to start and scale their referral program
ReferralCandy helps you grow your sales through word-of-mouth marketing, rewarding customers for referring their friends. We also allow brands to run an affiliate program with cash payouts for successful purchases.
ReferralCandy powers referral programs for over 3,000 brands and is one of the best Shopify and Shopify Plus referral apps out there. Brands like Farm Hounds achieved a 22.25% referral rate and over $600k in referral sales through ReferralCandy, resulting in a 35.30 ROI (return on investment).
New: ReferralCandy is now Built for Shopify certified referral & affiliate program app!
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (40+ reviews)
Pricing: From $249/month, a free plan is available for onboarding and checking the platform
Best for: Building and managing influencer marketing campaigns
Influencer Hero helps brands manage influencer marketing campaigns without the need to hire an agency. It helps you to discover and connect with some of the top influencers in your industry and even send outreach messages.
You also get access to a centralized CRM, where you can handle all the influencer messaging. Within the same platform, you can also send gifts, affiliate links, and payments to influencers and affiliates.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (5,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $49/month, free plan available
Best for: Setting up a loyalty and rewards program to get more loyal customers
Smile.io is a loyalty platform best known for customer retention and VIP programs, but it also offers rewards for referral programs. Smile.io allows you to quickly set up and run your rewards program.
Boost new and repeat sales with Smile.io, the trusted loyalty provider for over 50,000 stores. Customers also appreciate the fact that there is a free plan available for up to 200 monthly orders, making it a good free Shopify app.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $29/month, free plan available
Best for: Starting and managing an affiliate marketing program
GOAFFPRO's professional affiliate marketing app aims to turn your customers into marketing partners and affiliates. Customers and influencers are given a landing page to register and become affiliates. After this, they can share their referral link, and they are rewarded for any purchase made with their link.
GOAFFPRO is one of the free Shopify apps on our list since they offer a lifetime free plan.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,000+ reviews)
Pricing: $119/month with performance-based pricing, 14-day free trial
Best for: Managing affiliate, influencer, and ambassador programs
Refersion is a complete marketing platform for influence, affiliates, and brand ambassadors. You can even find new affiliates and influencers in the Refersion marketplace for free. Refersion offers a customizable affiliate registration page, dashboards to track performance, as well as automatic coupon code creation for rewards.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (150+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month with a limit of 1,000 video views/month
Best for: Adding user-generated content (videos) to your store
VideoWise allows you to embed shoppable videos from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube on your store in a page-speed-friendly way. You can also add buy buttons to the video player to boost engagement and conversion rates.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $20/month, 7-day free trial available
Best for: Creating and publishing posts on social media platforms
Outfy makes it easy to create product collages, videos, gifs, and ads and publish them to top social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and more.
The autopilot feature allows you to curate and publish posts automatically to promote and sell more.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (600+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, $6.95/month after 1,000 page visits
Best for: Publishing Instagram Stories and highlights to your website
Instagram Feed + Stories allows you to publish Instagram Stories and highlights to your website.
If you're working with Instagram influencers, this app will be a perfect complement to your campaign.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $6/month, free plan available
Best for: Brands relying heavily on Instagram accounts
Instafeed allows you to embed shoppable Instagram feeds on your Shopify store.
You can use Instagram to drive new traffic and content to your store, expand the reach to your followers, and convert store visitors into customers.
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month, free plan available for up to 50 orders/month
Best for: Brands looking to showcase customer reviews on product pages
Junip makes it easy to request customer reviews and display them on your product pages to help you convert customers. It also features review replies, Google Reviews snippets, and incentives for reviews.
Junip powers thousands of Shopify brands, including top DTC brands like Doe Lashes, Huron, Baboon to the Moon, and more.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (14,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $9.90/month, free plan for up to 5 reviews/product
Best for: Bulk importing and showing AliExpress reviews within your Shopify store
Ali Reviews makes it possible to import and collect reviews from platforms, including Facebook, AliExpress, Klaviyo, Amazon, and more. The platform also has pre-made templates you can use to prompt customers to create reviews and other user-generated content.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (18,000+ reviews)
Pricing: From $9.99/month, 7-day free trial
Best for: Increasing social proof with appealing product reviews
Loox collects photo and video reviews, prompts customers for referrals, and displays the social proof with beautiful-looking widgets. By collecting social proof and driving word-of-mouth, Loox aims to drive customer retention and build brand awareness to increase sales.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (4,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $9.99/month, free plan for up to 20 reviews/product
Best for: Displaying customer reviews on product pages
Trustoo.io helps to increase the social proof of ecommerce stores through customer reviews. You can bulk import customer reviews from AliExpress and add them to your store. On top of that, you can send automatic review request emails to customers after they have received their products.
Trustoo.io's strong point is its generous free plan, making it a good free Shopify app option.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (25,000+ reviews)
Pricing: From $15/month, free plan available
Best for: Publishing reviews on website, social media, and Google search (rich snippets)
Judge.me prompts your customers to create star ratings and reviews about your products and Shopify store, then displays it beautifully on your website with theme templates. The app works well for search engine optimization since it will showcase the product review stars on Google for every product.
Judge.me offers free photo and video reviews and allows you to publish reviews on sales channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, to boost sales.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19.90/month, limited free plan available
Best for: Increasing online store sales without using complicated tools
Notify me! app gives you all the tools to manage out-of-stock products and recover lost sales. You can use a Preorder button on your store to continue selling your products, or you can add a “notify me” widget to get your customers' contact info and send them notifications via. Email/SMS/Push (80%+ open rates) when the products are back in stock.
You can also add preorder discounts, partial payments, notes, delivery fulfillment, and more with this all-in-one tool.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $5/month, free plan available
Best for: Improving conversion rates with product badges, discounts, alerts, and more
The average attention span of a shopper is eight seconds. Product Badges aim to capture customer attention with badges like “20% Off” or “Best Seller!”.
Mode Magic received an award for ease of use from Shopify and also offers 3,000+ product badges and stickers ready to go.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (2,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month, free plan available
Best for: Creating email and web push notifications
PushOwl allows you to send web push notifications to your customers – to remind them of abandoned carts, discounts, or items back in stock.
You can reach out to anonymous shoppers and browsers, get opt-in for email, push or text notifications, and turn them into subscribers.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5.0 stars (350+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $35/month, 30-day free trial
Best for: Brands with complementary products that benefit from upsells
Zipify's One Click Upsell app maximizes the average order value for your customers by offering one-click upsells, both when customers are viewing their cart and during post-purchase checkout.
This Shopify app lets you split test and upsell on the Thank You page to maximize sales.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (4,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $4.99/month, free plan available
Best for: Increasing sales through the order confirmation/thank you page
ReConvert allows you to customize your order confirmation/thank you page, allowing you to create a post-purchase funnel for more upsell opportunities. This can be done with widgets, including discount popups, product recommendations, and post-purchase surveys.
Since customers visit the order status page to review shipping updates, it's a perfect opportunity to retarget customers for an upselling opportunity.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (10+ reviews)
Pricing: Plans starting from $325/month, up to 1500 alerts
Best for: Sending back-in-stock alerts and other notifications through WhatsApp, SMS, and Messenger
Shop-pop helps you reach customers with opt-in alerts on WhatsApp and Messenger. Customers can opt-in to receive alerts for new products, price drops, back-in-stock, and more.
ShopPop boasts 95% open rates for their alerts and easy data sync with Klaviyo. It's one of the most expensive apps on our list, but most customers still report getting a positive return on investment using ShopPop.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $10/month, free plan available for up to 2500 subscribers.
Best for: Creating email marketing & SMS campaigns
Sender is an affordable email and SMS marketing platform trusted by over 180,000 successful businesses globally. Some of its key features include automated emails and SMS for abandoned carts, welcome, win back and more email workflows. You can segment customers and personalize emails so that the right messages are sent to the right people.
Sender helps you execute your email and SMS campaigns to grow leads and boost your Shopify store sales on autopilot.
Rating: 4.1 out of 5.0 stars (1,900+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans for emails start from $30/month (based on the number of contacts); SMS plans start from $15/month (based on the number of contacts)
Best for: Creating advanced email and SMS marketing sequences
Klaviyo, a unified customer platform for email, SMS, and more, gives your online brand direct ownership of your consumer data and interactions—so you can talk to every customer like you know them and grow your business on your own terms.
Klaviyo integrates with other ecommerce platforms, sales channels, and many apps (including ReferralCandy).
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,900+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans from $100/month, 30-day free trial available.
Best for: A turnkey solution for SMS marketing
Thousands of Shopify and Shopify Plus stores use Postscript as a turnkey solution for their SMS marketing.
Postscript also boasts a Safe Send feature to avoid sending too many text messages to a single customer.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (5,600+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available for up to 250 contacts, paid plans from $16/month
Best for: Automating SMS and email marketing flows
Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing platform powering over 85,000 ecommerce merchants.
Omnisend allows you to send stunning newsletters, create automated ecommerce flows, and collect email and SMS opt-ins. You have hundreds of ready-to-use templates to choose from and can segment customers based on their purchase behavior.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (24,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $12/month with a 15-day free trial
Best for: Creating email & SMS automation and adding pop-ups, offers, and prompts to your website
Privy offers a suite of marketing tools for SMS and email marketing and conversion-focused tools like pop-ups and wheels. Privy also offers campaign triggers to show discounts and offers to customers at the right time.
Compared to some other email marketing solutions, Privy is more of an all-in-one solution since it also offers pop-ups and promotions that you can add to your website.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (80+ reviews)
Pricing: Plans starting from $39/month, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating advanced email and SMS marketing automation
Drip helps to create advanced email and SMS marketing automation campaigns for Shopify store owners. To create more personalized campaigns, you can segment customers based on purchase behavior and data.
Similarly to apps like Privy, you can create pop-ups, quizzes, surveys, and other forms that you can show on your website.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Pricing: Free app to install, paid plans start from $187/month
Best for: Creating email and cross-channel automation marketing campaigns
With a customer-first approach, Dotdigital is a platform for data-driven marketers to deliver personalized communications across different customer journeys. The platform harnesses the power of customer data, powering engagement, conversion, and loyalty for brands as they grow and scale.
Rating: 4.4 out of 5.0 stars (380+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $588/year, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating personalized marketing automation campaigns
ActiveCampaign helps to create personalized email and SMS campaigns based on customer shopping behavior and interests. For example, if a customer scrolled a specific category on your website, you can send them SMS and email discounts for that specific category.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (10,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Limited free plan available, paid plans from $24/month
Best for: Creating high-converting Shopify landing pages
PageFly helps create beautiful, high-quality pages for Shopify stores, from landing pages to FAQs and blog pages. They also boast an Element Library with templates, custom animations, and trust badges like reviews, ratings, and seals.
While regular Shopify themes give you sections to start designing from, PageFly is ideally used for doing designs from scratch.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (4,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans starting from $29/month
Best for: Creating responsive landing pages from 80+ pre-made templates
GemPages lets you build a variety of pages for Shopify stores, such as the home, about us, product, and contact us pages. These templates have been created with conversion, mobile-driven design, and SEO optimization in mind.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (11,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans starting from $9.99/per month
Best for: Adding a free shipping offer to your website
This app does exactly what it says on the tin - it allows you to add a free shipping announcement bar to your store. It also auto-detects the customer's local currency and adjusts the free shipping amount instantly (e.g. Free shipping over $50 in the US and C$70 in Canada).
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (3,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $19/month
Best for: Creating any page & section using a drag-and-drop editor
EComposer Page Builder is a codeless app that allows merchants to create their stunning website with any page type: Landing page, Homepage, Product, Collection, About us, etc. EComposer is beginner-friendly, conversion-driving, and mobile-first optimized. Newbies can easily build their store with tons of pre-made layouts and sections, drag & drop everything.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (500+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $249/month
Best for: Increasing the store's conversion rate by setting up no-code conversion playbooks for running sales, % Off, showcase stock updates, bestsellers & more
Run a high-converting, engaging store with ModeMagic by Mason—an all-in-one, no-code store conversion app made for Shopify stores. With ModeMagic's plug-and-play conversion playbooks, you can easily personalize your store for customers without a coder or designer.
Use the app's merchandising tools to promote products & keep your ecommerce shop dynamic 24/7—countdown timers, product highlight cards, sales, discounts, bestsellers & new arrival automation; make it happen with zero manual work!
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0 stars (7,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free Shopify app; the ad spend is billed directly to Google Ads
Best for: Reaching more customers across YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, and Google Display Network.
Shopify's Google Channel makes it easy for you to list products for free on Google and run Smart Shopping campaigns. It can also help you increase sales with Performance Max ads across Search, YouTube, and Display, as well as uncover ecommerce insights through Google Analytics.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $13/month with a 7-day free trial
Best for: Advertising your products on Google properties
CedCommerce's Suite for Google Shopping Fed surfaces your products on various Google properties, like Buy On Google, Shopping Ads, Local Inventory Ads, and more.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0 stars (480+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans from $40/month
Best for: Running marketing campaigns that integrate social media, mobile apps and email advertising
AdRoll powers advertising and remarketing campaigns for thousands of merchants and boasts the ability to run a campaign that integrates different sales channels, like social media, mobile apps, and emails.
AdRoll boasts AI-optimized ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and over 500 networks.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (700+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to use
Best for: Driving new traffic and sales by appearing in other stores within your niche
Automizely Traffic lets you target and retarget customers with the right ads at the right time.
The ad exchange allows you to display your products in other stores in exchange for promoting partner ads on your website - a win-win for both of your stores. The main benefit of the app is that it offers new potential customers at a minimal cost.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (600+ reviews)
Pricing: From $10/month, 50 tickets per month included. A 7-day free trial available
Best for: Combining all customer support channels into one inbox
Gorgias offers a platform for Shopify brands to manage their customer support all in one place. The centralized CRM offers support on every channel, from email and live chat to phone and social media.
Gorgias boasts a strong integration with Shopify, allowing your customer support team to see order details and refund, cancel or duplicate without leaving the app.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans from $29/month, 7-day free trial available
Best for: Live chat support, including email and Messenger integration
Tidio offers a live chat app bolstered by marketing automation and chatbots to address your customers' needs and increase sales instantly. Tidio's chatbot can automatically reply to the most common queries, including questions about tracking and an Abandoned Cart Bot that offers discounts to help convert customers.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (70+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $99/month for up to 2,500 shipments per month
Best for: Brands that get a lot of 'Where Is My Order' tickets
Did you know that consumers check the status of their order at least once before it's delivered? These WISMO (Where Is My Order?) tickets are especially frustrating for customers if packages get lost or are delayed and create a poor impression of your brand.
Wonderment turns order tracking into a growth channel with proactive shipping tracking. You can direct customers to on-brand tracking pages to deliver upsells and a better customer experience.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,700+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $99/month, 30-day free trial available
Best for: Converting your Shopify store into an Android and iOS app
Vajro enables Shopify store owners to convert their online stores into native Android and iOS apps within 60 minutes without writing a single line of code.
With more than 1,700 five-star reviews on Shopify, Vajro has helped 3000+ Shopify merchants to sell more and engage better with their customers.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (900+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $149/month, a 30-day free trial is available
Best for: Turning your Shopify store into a mobile app in minutes with a drag-and-drop editor.
Shopney is known for its unique feature set and famous ease of use in the Shopify mobile app builder market.
Shopney offers 8 different theme options for your Shopify store as a unique Shopify mobile app builder feature to make sure you display your products most impressively in the product listing (PLP) and product display (PDP) and increase your sales!
Besides, to increase your customer retention and engagement, Shopney provides in-app chat with you as another unique mobile app builder feature. So, you can convert your customers with a 1-to-1 dialogue, offering customers a personalized shopping experience.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (300+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $25/month, a 14-day free trial available
Best for: Merchants wanting to start tracking their Shopify store analytics
True Profit helps ecommerce merchants instantly track their real-time profit without relying on lagging and error-prone spreadsheets. The main purpose of the app is to make it easy to gather, calculate, & analyze all the order metrics for your store.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (40+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $129/month, free plan available
Best for: Monitoring important ecommerce metrics from a centralized dashboard
Triple Whale offers a unified dashboard for all your important ecommerce metrics, pulling from your tech stacks like Shopify, Klaviyo, Facebook, Gorgias, and more.
We've included Triple Whale here because of glowing endorsements from DTC brands like Doe Lashes, Muddy Bites, and Obvi, but we haven't tried it out yet. It's one to watch and maybe sign up for, but stay tuned.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (200+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $50/month, a 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating quizzes and pop-ups to grow email subscribers and increase sales
Octane AI offers quizzes and pop-ups to create a better shopping experience for customers. From a simple email-capture pop-up to more complicated quizzes about product preferences, Octane AI helps you generate customer insights while staying GDPR compliant.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (10+ reviews)
Pricing: From $0 per month (but 2.9% commission on gift card value), paid plans starting from $79/month
Best for: Creating customizable gift cards
Govalo aims to reinvent the gift card for Shopify stores with gift card purchases, welcome gifts for new customers, and premium analytics and data.
Customers hesitate to make the first purchase because of high price points - a problem Govalo aims to eliminate with their digital gift cards. With the gift card market growing at 14% annually, this could be an interesting app.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (190+ reviews)
Pricing: $499/month, plus commissions
Best for: Brands that need a tool for managing subscription-based billing
Skio Subscriptions aims to make subscriptions easier - and capture all of Recharge's customers. They offer merchants an easier way to modify subscriptions, a headless subscription portal, and native Shopify Checkout.
Merchants who are struggling with Bold and Recharge subscription apps can consider Skio as an alternative.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5.0 stars (9,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free tier available. Paid plans from $9.95/month for >5 currencies and auto-switch by customer location.
Best for: International stores needing to convert prices to a local currency
BEST Currency Converter allows you to display prices in different international currencies. The Elite plan even updates the currency automatically based on your customer's browsing location.
This makes the shopping experience easier for your international customers.
Rating: n/a
Pricing: Starting from $200/month, 30-day free trial
Best for: Getting repeat purchases by predicting when customers will reorder
Relo is the easiest way for DTC brands to get customers to order again. Relo predicts when customers are going to buy again, syncs that data into Klaviyo & sends personalized email comms to your customers.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (100+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $29 to $299, 14-day trial, and a freemium option
Best for: Embedding videos into your website without code
Vidjet is a video player that turns videos into direct revenue. Using innovative video formats, segmentation options, and shoppable features, merchants can expose their visitors to videos at the appropriate moment of their journey.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $19/month
Best for: Improving your average order value by providing more tailored product recommendations for customers
Boost AI Search & Filter helps to boost conversions and maximize average order value with the help of AI and semantic search. These functionalities help customers find their favorite products through AI recommendations.
Hopefully these 50+ Shopify apps we’re helpful for you! Our aim was to compare different Shopify apps in different categories and provide you with the list of the best options out there.
Looking for more resources? Check out these other resources:
P.S. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to grow your ecommerce store, subscribe to our newsletter to get our latest articles and roundups.
Black Friday is the best time of the year to increase ecommerce sales and take advantage of different marketing strategies. Adobe reports that Black Friday sales are at an all-time high and continue to rise year after year.
To take advantage of this, you can set up your referral and email marketing campaigns, increase your AOV, update product descriptions, and more.
Scroll below to find all of the best marketing strategies for Black Friday 👇
To gather the below strategies, we contacted 30 marketing experts and gathered recent statistics on the topic.
These insights helped us craft the best Black Friday strategies.
Referral campaigns are one of the highest ROI strategies for the next Black Friday. The average referral rate across all industries is 2.35%, which means that most merchants see a positive ROI on their programs.
To set up your referral program, you can use ReferralCandy.
After signing up, you will be guided through the referral setup process, and you can create your Black Friday landing pages, send out invitation emails and track their performance.
Want to learn more? Read our guide on how to set up your referral program.
Adam Watson from Hollywood Mirrors shared his direct experience of running his own Black Friday campaign:
“My number one advice is to go early with your Black Friday offer, your audience only has so much money to spend.”
Consumers start their holiday shopping as early as in October, according to Statista.
This means that you should start preparing your discounts and sales immediately, if you already haven’t.
To get ready for Black Friday, plan out your marketing content calendar.
You can leverage HubSpot’s content template for free. There are also a plenty of free resources online.
Create a content calendar that details what content assets you want to share, and when you want to share them.
Specifically, you want to develop your assets, such as:
Be sure also to include and schedule posts for social media and use catchy Black Friday phrases in your post.
The average Black Friday discount was 31% in 2023, as reported by Demandsage.
Competing in discounts is difficult since brands offer higher and higher discounts year-by-year.
You can flip the switch and offer value, gifts & deals instead.
Here are three ideas to implement:
An ecommerce brand Bambu Earth, ran an experiment to see if they could nudge customers into a higher spending bucket.
They offered two tiers of rewards:
They ran the event for just 24 hours, using email marketing and remarketing ads only. Each “minimum spend” amount would tip customers into a higher spending tier.
The results?
Over $135K in sales on a random Friday in August — which turned out to be the single biggest revenue day in Bambu Earth’s history. Even better, that data can now be used to fuel the brand’s upcoming holiday deals.
In the same way, you can increase your average order value through gifts and offering value.
An easy way to do this is to use an upsell app, which is designed to increase AOV. If you use Shopify, you’ll find plenty of upsell apps.
For Black Friday, you can try to:
Another idea to give the bundled products a “mystery box” effect: keep some of the items in the bundle a secret. And every day during the sale, you’d reveal one “mystery” item to your audience targeting a segment of your market.
If you can’t offer cash discounts, see if you can offer free shipping. Free shipping is one of the most powerful Black Friday promotion ideas you can use.
In one study, 90 percent of participants said free shipping was their number one incentive for buying. Another study mentions that 62% of consumers say they won’t purchase from a brand if there is no free shipping available.
Black Friday campaigns are pretty powerful when you combine free shipping with same-day delivery.
Before creating any new Black Friday campaigns, think of the existing email workflows your brand has, such as:
These can all be optimized to bring higher sales during Black Friday.
Klaviyo’s 2024 email benchmark data showed that abandoned cart automation flows had the highest click rates and revenue per customer.
To take advantage of this statistic for Black Friday, optimize your abandoned cart flow. One simple thing you can do is to send out abandoned cart emails to customers quicker than normally.
For example, if you normally send it 24 hours after someone abandons the cart, switch it to only 4 hours for Black Friday.
You can even send multiple abandoned cart emails.
A well-known statistic about email marketing states that every dollar spent on email marketing yields $44 in return.
The return on investment is even higher on Black Friday.
To take advantage of the high ROI, set up your Black Friday email marketing campaigns.
You can take inspiration from websites like Really Good Emails and Milled to see how other brands have done it.
People decide whether to read your email just by looking at the subject lines, so take them seriously.
Or steal the best subject lines. Campaign Monitor provides a list of Black Friday email subject lines you can explore, grab them here.
Greg Zakowicz shared interesting Black Friday SMS statistics from Omnisend customers:
Impressive, right?
If you haven’t used SMS marketing before, Black Friday can be an excellent time to start.
The results speak for themselves; SMS marketing can bring great results.
SMS marketing can be combined with email marketing for a more omnichannel approach. Tools such as Klaviyo can help.
An inspirational and mission-driven story around your Black Friday offering can significantly improve your Black Friday results.
What do we mean by this?
Patagonia is doing this exact thing and they want to fight against the normal Black Friday deep discounts, limited-time offers, and last-ditch sales.
They explain it well here:
Related to the above campaign, Patagonia donated 100% of their Black Friday profits to environmental nonprofits.
The results?
Patagonia's Black Friday sales were a record-breaking $10 million, five times more than the company expected.
You don't have to go as far as Patagonia by donating 100% of profits, but even offering a small percentage and explaining it to your audience can have a significant impact.
If you haven’t updated your product descriptions in a while, Black Friday is a great time to do that.
This can significantly increase your conversion rates.
Some product description ideas you can implement are:
According to Wyzowl's study of video marketers, 88% said videos helped users understand their products or services better.
If your product/service is more complex or you just want to use video marketing for Black Friday, it's a great idea.
Here are some ideas to implement:
Customers are quick to leave your website if your checkout process isn’t optimized.
Ecommerce brands lose up to $18 billion in sales due to shopping cart abandonment - which happens 18% of the time (according to Bogdan Klopov from Visme).
The simple way to resolve this?
Simplify your checkout process as much as possible. Reduce the number of steps involved, and ensure customers don’t have to sign up to purchase.
This will improve sales and eliminate cart abandonment to ensure smoother sales for your store. But remember - you’ll want to collect emails so you can re-market to these new customers during the slow seasons.
We’ve discussed lots of Black Friday ideas for small businesses that you can take advantage of right away.
Here are three more ideas you can implement:
Using word-of-mouth marketing through referral and affiliate programs is an effective way to increase Black Friday sales and keep customers retained afterward.
ReferralCandy helps to increase word-of-mouth sales by letting users start their customer referral programs.
To automate the process of running the referral program, ReferralCandy has advanced automation tools available.
If this sounds interesting, you can easily sign up for ReferralCandy’s 14-day free trial.
While big companies like Dropbox and Airbnb found big success with their referral programs, replicating their exact same referral strategy might not work for your small business.
For your particular product offering, you will need to:
Thankfully, there are many different ways to offer a referral program. Some of these include offering discounts, product giveaways, exclusive deals, gift cards, QR code menus, and even cash.
If you're not sure how to implement a referral program that fits your small business, here are some examples that can inspire you. 👇
Referral program tip: If you’re looking to start your own small business referral program, you can do that easily with ReferralCandy. You can also take advantage of our referral program templates here.
A non-toxic cleaning product brand, Branch Basics, has an effective give $10, get $10 referral program, in which both the advocate and the friend are rewarded.
Branch Basics launched its referral program with ReferralCandy and has achieved amazing results with it. Since launching, Branch Basics has generated over $1.5 million in referral sales and a referral rate of 9.75%, which is much higher than the industry average.
In just two years, Branch Basics has generated a 41x return on investment in its referral program.
Another good small business referral program example comes from Toki Mats.
Since launching the referral program, Toki Mats has generated over $500,000 in referral revenue, and the referral rate has been 12.04% in the past 12 months. The referral program has generated a 41x return on investment.
To do this, Toki Mats uses a simple give 15% off and get 10% of your friend’s purchase amount. Toki Mats advertises its referral program on Instagram, Facebook, and through referral emails, which have all proven to work well.
Renogy runs a referral program that offers customers a $20 credit for every successful referral. To advertise the program, Renogy has contacted customers via email and social media.
Renogy launched its referral program with ReferralCandy and has generated close to $300,000 in referral sales in just under 18 months. The referral program achieved a 7.5 ROI for the company and opened an entirely new revenue channel.
A dog treats supplier, Farm Hounds, has a rewards program where you can earn points by doing different things, such as referring a friend, making a purchase, or leaving a review. To advertise the rewards program, Farm Hounds sends referral emails to all new customers-
Customers receive 1000 points for referring a friend, which equates to $20 off their next purchase.
Farm Hounds achieved a 35.30x ROI on the referral program, and the referral rate was 22.25%, which is much higher than the industry average. This resulted in over $600,000 in referral sales.
A Box of Stories is a book subscription store that utilizes referral programs to increase word-of-mouth marketing sales.
Launching a referral program for A Box of Stories resulted in over 5,000 customers joining the program, and it generated over 3000% return on investment. Referrals contributed to a total of 3.38% of purchases.
iWader Fishing, a fishing wader producer, offers a 15% commission on every successful referral and referred customers receive 5% off. For every 4th sale per month, you get an extra $100 bonus.
No matter your niche, you can implement a similar referral program for your small business as what iWader Fishing has.
iWader Fishing achieved a 2600% ROI on its referral program, and 13% of all revenue came from referrals during its 30-day ReferralCandy free trial.
Activewear brand, Bandier, encourages repeat business through a referral program.
Upon referring their friends, Bandier customers will earn $25 in points when a friend makes the first purchase. The referred friend also gets $25!
And it doesn’t just stop there. Referring customers will continue to earn points for any succeeding purchases that their referrals make. What’s not to love about unlimited rewards?
A book publishing company called Scribe Media gets straight to the point and offers commissions ranging from $1,000 to $12,000 for every referral made.
Authors who have already published a book with the company can refer other authors. If they sign up, the referrer gets the money in cash or applied as a credit to their Scribe Writing account. There’s also a third option to donate the referral reward to charity.
With this strategy, Scribe Writing leverages its customers’ network to get more authors to publish with them. After all, like attracts like.
The monetary reward is compelling, and new authors are more likely to trust other authors who have experienced the service and recommend it.
Not many small businesses have the cash to spend on a program like this, so you need a solid strategy to make it worthwhile.
The online sneaker shop Greats rewards advocates and referred friends with $30 in credits when a new customer makes a purchase using the referral link.
Greats markets its brand to millennials, who are known for being socially motivated, generous people.
Giving credits to both parties—not just the referrer—is a great move from a company that understands their customers and how to earn their loyalty.
Referral programs don't have to be complicated. Toy company Riff Raff ran a Facebook referral contest, giving away customized sleep toys to lucky winners.
Contest participants were asked to share via email, Facebook, and Instagram. When a person made five successful referrals, he or she would receive a free customized toy valued at $80.
(NOTE: Riff Raff uses ReferralCandy to run its six-figure sales referral program!)
Plus, parents of young children tended to talk to other parents—to share resources, knowledge, and especially product recommendations and referrals.
Kit (previously ConvertKit) is an email marketing service provider that is popular among bloggers and business influencers. They are also well-known in the email marketing space, regularly publishing helpful content.
As part of its referral program, Kit users can earn an additional 100 subscribers for every successful referral. The referred friend also receives 100 free subscribers!
A curated wardrobe delivery service, Threadbeast entices new subscribers with awesome bonus packages for both referring advocates and referrals. There’s no limit to the number of referrals, which means the referring member will get a free package for every successful referral, forever and ever.
The great thing about this program is that both sides get something for free. It’s a generous move but also a great way to motivate existing customers to bring in a surge of new customers.
Honeylove is a stylish garment producer which launched a referral program to increase word-of-mouth sales.
As part of the referral program, Honeylove offers both the advocate and the friend $20 off. They’ve made it easy for referrals to get their referral link by filling out a form.
Nuki sells smart locks and offers an interesting referral program where they reward customers through exclusive surprise products. This is a great example of a referral program if you don’t want to offer customers cash or store discounts.
Nuki explains on their referral page that if you make one successful referral, you get a mystery product, if you make three referrals, you get a €50 voucher, and a €100 voucher from ten successful referrals.
Vena offers one of the highest referral incentives we've ever seen. For every successful referral, they promise to donate $2000 to the charity of your choice.
If you’re a small business owner, you might not be able to donate as much as Vena does. However, even a smaller amount, such as $25 or $50, can entice your customers to recommend your brand to their friends and family.
Birdies have a Give $30, Get $30 referral program, where both the advocate and the referred friend are rewarded. Most of Birdies' products are high-ticket products, which is why they’re able to offer such high referral rewards.
While you might not be able to offer as high rewards as Birdies does, you can take inspiration from their reward structure and their simple yet effective referral landing page.
Last but not least, we have an example from Wing Assistant.
This example isn’t necessarily a referral program, as Wing Assistant runs an affiliate program. However, referral plugins, such as ReferralCandy, can also be used to run affiliate programs, which is why we wanted to show this example.
Plus, Wing Assistant has achieved amazing results, generating over $78,000 in referral sales and having a 27.9x ROI on the affiliate program.
Wing Assistant has a simple affiliate program where they reward customers with $200 for every client who activates a plan with Wing Assistant.
If you still haven’t launched your own referral program for your small business, we have outlined the key steps to doing that here:
1. Get clear about your goals. Define specific outcomes you want from your program, like increasing driving sales or increasing brand awareness. This will determine the approach you should take in creating your referral program.
2. Select your referral program software. ReferralCandy is the best referral program software option for small businesses. It is available in the Shopify App store and as a WordPress referral plugin.
3. Make an outreach plan. Decide how you’ll inform your customers about the referral program - via email, social media, or on-site prompts. With tools such as ReferralCandy, you can set up automatic referral emails to inform customers.
4. Create your referral landing page. Design a simple and engaging landing page that explains the program and motivates existing customers to join.
5. Select your referral incentives. Choose between different referral incentives, such as cash rewards, store discounts, and percentages. Make sure to display the referral incentive clearly on your landing page.
6. Track the referral program performance. Use your referral program software to monitor the performance of your referral program.
7. Manage referral frauds. To prevent hackers from abusing your referral program, manage referral frauds. The best referral program tools, such as ReferralCandy, offer built-in fraud protection.
8. A/B test. Experiment with different messages, incentives, and visuals to see what drives the most referrals.
To summarize the previous examples of small business referral programs, here are the key points that made them successful:
These elements ensure your referral program is accessible, enticing, and widely visible to your audience.
If you want to create a successful referral program, be sure to follow these tips. And, take advantage of ReferralCandy’s 14-day free trial to launch your referral program today!
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
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