This article is the next in our series covering the emails that power referral programs. Here, we cover an often overlooked but important need: keeping advocates engaged. Imagine, an advocate shares and is thanked (see the first and second articles in this series for more there)… then, what happens? Well, until a referred friend converts, often there’s no communication to the advocate.
We see this all the time with refer-a-friend built in-house. Instead of creating delight and engagement with your advocates, the silence creates a void. It’s the equivalent of not sending an order shipped email. You wouldn’t do that to your customers, and we don’t do that to your advocates. Instead, Extole creates a useful – in terms of content, timing, and functionality – communication that your advocates really appreciate and engage with. We call this email the advocate stats email.
Instead of creating delight and engagement with your advocates, the silence creates a void.
From: Your Brand
To: Your Advocate
When: After sharing
Purpose: Increase engagement and sharing, answer common questions
As its name suggests, the advocate stats email provides advocates with an update on their shares, the impact of their shares, and the status of rewards. The data in this email answers the critical questions that advocates have after they send recommendations: did my friend respond and where is my reward?
The more an advocate shares, the more often they’ll want their stats. Our version of the advocate stats email goes out more frequently to more active advocates and less frequently to those who share occasionally.
Finally, this email lets advocates do two important things:
- It makes it easy for them to share again, either with their link or with a click back to the on-site share experience.
- It prompts them to remind friends they’ve already shared with to check out your brand or products.
That simple follow-up is a powerful conversion driver.
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