How DapperTime Uses Referrals To Grow Its Stylish Business

DapperTime is an Australia-based company that sells watches, bags and accessories catered mainly to men.

Check out their site:

Some interesting things to note about DapperTime:

• Their products are extremely affordable – all of their watches are below $100, and some even cost less than $50. They also offer free shipping worldwide.
• Social media, especially Instagram, is a huge driver of sales for them– which makes a lot of sense given that they're a lifestyle brand.
• They're in hot demand! When we last dropped by the DapperTime site, we found that a lot of their products are currently out-of-stock – A happy problem to have for any growing ecommerce business.

Here are just some of the many happy #DapperTime customers on Instagram:

If you have a strong, engaged social following like DapperTime's, an automated customer referral program will take it to the next level.

Let’s take a look at their referral program:

1. DapperTime's referral program is highly visible and accessible from their homepage

Their referral program call-to-action is placed right below the hero images, sitting in between ‘free delivery worldwide’ and ‘competitions’.

On the off chance that customers do miss it, they will probably see it when they mouse over the ‘Info’ button for more information.

(Making your referral program highly visible is one of the most effective things you can do to get more referrals!)

Read next: 10 Examples Of Prominent Referral Calls-to-Action

2. The referral process is clear and simple.

Join, share the link, and earn $10 when your friends buy something!

$10 is also a pretty substantial, lucrative incentive– it's around 20% of the price of some of DapperTime's watches.

Read next: How To Setup Your Referral Program's Incentives (With 12+ Examples)

3. Their referral program's terms and conditions are clearly listed out.

The conditions for referral programs can vary substantially from retailer to retailer.

DapperTime skilfully avoids any confusion by stating their referral program’s terms and conditions clearly, providing customers with important information, such as:

• What counts as a successful referral?
• Does a referred friend’s repeated purchases count as additional referral purchases?
• What’s the minimum purchase amount required?
• Is there a maximum amount of referral rewards I can earn?

By pre-empting their customers' concerns, DapperTime reduces any friction that might stop their customers from making referrals.

We chatted with DapperTime about how they thought about their referral program.

What has DapperTime learnt during the course of running its referral program that might be useful to other retailers?

1: DapperTime chooses to reward successful referrals with cash instead of discount coupons.

A common question that retailers have when first setting up their referral programs is: "What rewards should I give?"

The short answer is that it depends on your business and your customers.

A great referral reward takes the customers' interests and motivations into account:

“We knew our customers would respond to cash payouts. It’s a very human thing - everyone wants money! Shoppers are burned out looking for stuff and getting marketing emails that want them to buy more; so we give cash instead.”

How do other retailers do it?

• Sneaker brand GREATS finds that discount coupons work great for them, because sneakerheads are often eager to get more pairs of shoes.
• Mattress company Leesa, on the other hand, knew that most of their customers wouldn't immediately need a second bed, and gives out cash rewards too. You can read more about the results of their referral program here.

To choose the right reward, pay attention to how and why your customers already make referrals– and pick a reward that incentivizes that.

2: It's incredibly important for lifestyle brands like DapperTime to have well-designed referral programs:

Ensuring that the visual feel of the referral program matched the rest of the DapperTime site allowed their customers to feel comfortable participating and making referrals.

“Early this year we were doing a revamp, so being able to revamp the referral program design easily was a big deal for us.”

DapperTime's in-house marketing lead wrote all the copy on their referral landing pages so that the messaging was consistent throughout.

ReferralCandy's Landing Page Editor makes it easy for them to simply tweak the copy and visuals whenever needed, without any web development hassle.

3: "How often do you update your campaigns/use ReferralCandy?"

ReferralCandy is designed with busy ecommerce retailers in mind. Automated customer referrals should just work. You should be able to set it and forget it:

“Monthly – unless I have something to tweak. I don’t really go in the app unless I really need to, or I need to check on a suspicious referral. For example, one of our customers referred tons of friends and earned $1,000 with us. ReferralCandy flagged it for us as potentially suspicious, so we looked into it– all good!”

As a safety precaution, ReferralCandy's automatic referral detections notify our retailers whenever any referrals look like they might be fraudulent.

This gives our retailers peace of miend and saves them the hassle of going through all the data with a fine-toothed comb.

4: "What do you like about ReferralCandy?"

Automated cash payments: ReferralCandy allow DapperTime to reward their customers as they like:

"Automated cash payments are really important."

Easy to integrate: ReferralCandy's ease of installation made it a clear choice for DapperTime:

Very clear, easy to install/integrate, and easy to use. Tried some other referral programs, had a lot of problems installing with Shopify. Painful."

Easy to use: ReferralCandy allows DapperTime to completely edit and modify its referral program without any hassle:

"I’m not a web developer, so I’m glad it takes care of a lot of stuff for me, and I don’t have to bother my tech team or product manager about it.”

What's next for DapperTime?

As a growing ecommerce brand, DapperTime has to deal with all sorts of challenges. Logistics, scaling, expanding into new product lines. It's a phenomenal amount of work.

Tools like ReferralCandy allow DapperTime to grow their business in a hassle-free, automated way, freeing them up to focus on making and shipping great products that their customers love.

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Check out more referral program examples.