Referral programs are often among the highest-ROI marketing initiatives and most businesses have a tell-a-friend page of some sorts. But some companies do it better than others.

After looking at dozens of referral pages and talking to half a dozen fellow marketers here are our recommendations for creating a perfect tell-a-friend page. 

1. It's a helpful act rather than a transaction, so show some emotion

Research suggests that most people refer services they like for selfless reasons. Your tell-a-friend page thus better be more friendly than an order form. It's an act of sharing, not a simple transaction. And even if people really want the incentive you offer, they'll feel better helping a friend rather than just earning something. Think friendly photos and illustrations, not just salesy copy. 

2. Communicate a clear benefit for sharing 

Showing emotion is not to say you need to build a fluffy landing page. If you offer a benefit for sharing, make sure you articulate it clearly and show the incentive from its best angle. For example instead of "For each team that you refer you will get 1 free user"  iDoneThis could quantify how much the referrer would save annually. 

As a side note, the best referral programs contain a double loop reward. This is where both the person making the referral and the person receiving the referral gain. Transferwise is a good example:

3. Offer both email and social sharing

Our experience suggests that if you allow both sharing via email and social networks, you'll get an comparable amount of shares for both channels, but usually 90 or more per cent of clicks and conversions from email. It makes perfect sense in a world where managing an email inbox is tricky, but reading every social media update is impossible. 

The best tell-a-friend pages offer email sharing in addition to the obvious social sharing buttons. 

4. Make it effortless to share

Most people are busy, and most people can’t express your value proposition in two sentences. So the best practice is to pre-write the text people use to talk about you, both for social networks and email.  Also, anecdotal evidence suggests people prefer to see what's in the email before they hit "Send".

5. Show stats: success of previous invites and shares

The social creatures that we are, we love making good recommendations that hit a spot. And we crave for feedback. If previous invites have made any impact at all, the best tell-a-friend pages show it. Even if a user hasn't earned any real benefits yet, smart marketers show some progress indicators like number of invites sent, number of clicks or names of people that have responded to the invite, but haven't converted yet.

Pro tip: trigger an email when someone has responded to an invite or made a purchase (because very few people check your beautiful tell-a-friend page on a regular basis). 

6. Measure, learn and optimize

It's relatively easy to set up basic tracking for referral activity, so it's a criminal offence not to do it. Startups and small businesses can:

• Use Google Analytics to track visitors to tell-a-friend page and add Event tracking code to any sharing buttons
  
• Add tracking tags (source, medium, campaing) to each referral message
  
• Use a URL shortening service such as bit.ly to help count clicks on each link (and make the links pretty)

Conclusion aka live example how a tell-a-friend page can easily be improved

Because each business is different, these recommendations might not apply to you. To be sure, you can set up an AB test for changing the key elements. If you've learned something that proves or contradicts these conclusions, please get in touch or comment below. Similarly, if you need a hand in deciding what to test and setting up the experiment, we'd love to help.

PS. Most links in this post are referral links. We like dog food, our own and that of others.

Comments: 4

• Aaron Rothschild — Great post! One thing I'd add is targeting these requests can also be very effective - finding your target accounts list and seeing which of your customers know your targets...and then asking them to make a referral to one of them can be very effective too!
  
  PS Check your "PS" I think you mean "We like dog food, our own and that of others"
• Andrus Purde — Glad you liked the post, and thank you for pointing out the typo!
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