Data Geek: How to get more out of your organization’s referral program data

Here’s how it works:

A person who was referred through your referral program comes to your website or brick and mortar store and proceeds to make their first purchase.  They happen to meet all of the conditions of the referral program, and just like that, loop closed, everyone gets rewarded.

End of story, right? Not so much.

Here at RewardStream, as an analyst, I can only see the transactional piece of the relationship. I see the referral going out and the referred person coming back, and depending on the program, I sometimes get to see the price or value of the purchase. The data analytics team here at RewardStream can do some pretty butt-kicking analysis with just that information alone.

Now, that’s all well and good, and if your program is generating new business why bother digging further?

You see, by making a referral, a customer is self-selecting. They’re putting their hand up, jumping up and down, and saying, ‘Hey! Look at me. I want to help you generate more customers! ’. They just answered THE question: ‘Would you refer our product or service to your friends and family?’ Not every one of your customers becomes a referring customer and by virtue of that fact, your referrers are extremely SPECIAL. In a good way. When things are special, data geeks like me want to know why. More to the point though, we want to know how to use this information to our advantage.

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