New Australian research commissioned by impact.com, has revealed that 84 per cent of consumers make purchase decisions based on referrals and recommendations from someone they know. As a result, impact.com has announced the launch of impact.com/advocate, a customisable customer referral marketing solution that empowers brands to engage their customers effectively with tailored offers.
Further, almost three fifths (58 per cent) of consumers trust someone they know personally the most for information when purchasing; this was significantly higher than any other source tested with traditional advertising channels ranking the lowest at 3 per cent. While recommendations are becoming more important, over a quarter (26 per cent) of shoppers say they feel uncomfortable recommending a product only to receive a reward. Instead, 61 per cent of referrers report they prefer it when they and the person they’re referring receive a reward.
With impact.com/advocate, brands can now build authentic, profitable, and scalable partnerships with their customers via flexible, fully automated referral marketing programs that are straightforward to manage and easy for their customers to use. The platform streamlines customer referral marketing, which is known for its ability to drive revenue, foster brand growth, and accelerate new customer acquisition.
“The launch of impact.com/advocate comes when consumer trust in advertising is at an all-time low, but reliance on trusted, personal recommendations is higher than ever,” said Adam Furness, managing director APAC at impact.com. “impact.com/advocate allows brands to authentically engage their best ambassadors, their own customers, through tailored referral programs that can manage a diverse range of rewards for the referral and to the referee. Best of all, brands and their agencies can now manage all their partnerships — traditional affiliates, influencers, media publishers, other businesses and now customer referral marketing — from one, unified platform”.
The new solution builds on impact.com’s 2023 acquisition of SaaSquatch, a best-in-class provider of customer referral software. The native integration of SaaSquatch’s offering with impact.com’s innovative platform allows brands to leverage customer referrals via impact.com’s existing suite of tools and technologies, providing the most robust and comprehensive partnership marketing ecosystem.
Brands can use the flexible technology to build fully customised referral programs that not only support their strategic vision, but also the needs and desires of their customers. With impact.com/advocate, brands will be able to:
- Build programs that fit their unique strategy and business goals with impact.com’s flexible and configurable program builder.
- Offer exciting rewards their audiences care about and incentivise participation by gamifying their programs with leaderboards and reward exchanges.
- Create on-brand and easy-to-use referral experiences and embed them at top conversion points in the customer journey.
- Review and optimise a program’s performance with impact.com’s robust tracking and analytics capabilities.
“Leveraging impact.com’s customer referral solution to enhance our monthly user acquisition has helped our business achieve a significant boost in revenue and ARR,” said Giacomo Bertollo, head of product marketing at Hack the Box, a leading cybersecurity workforce development platform.
“Combining our customer referral and affiliate programs to one platform with impact.com has also helped us ease security reviews, reduce costs, and streamline our workflow. We’re excited about the future of this platform which can evolve and grow with us, and look forward to leveraging its full potential to drive even greater results”.
