Your Valentine’s Day offers that are likely to resonate with your target audience can bring in more customers, if you point the cupid’s arrow at your audiences with referral programs, that are going to win their love for your brand.

Here are Five Ways Brands can get Cupid to work for them this Valentine:

Target The Right Audience Segment

Loyalty and Referral programs that target younger audiences require a social and mobile first approach. Rewards and referral marketing program that segments the younger audience and rewards them in unique ways, requires a referral program marketing approach that targets the audience on the right channels.

Promoting your Refer-A-Friend program on the right channel can get your offer discovered by the target audience.

Rewards and Offer Design 

Design your Refer-A-Friend program to engage your audiences so that your program delivers the right impact. The Referral program sign up offer and experience requires to be designed so that it makes your product seem relevant in your customers’ lives.

Amazon Student Sign-up Offer

Segmenting your audience can help you create a unique customer value proposition that is likely to resonate with the target audience. With a six-month free trial for college students, Amazon has created a Customized Value proposition, that resonates with the target group. Amazon Student offers a six month free trial for the Amazon Prime service as opposed to a one month free trial window offered for the other Amazon Prime subscribers.

Amazon Student Referral Program

In another example of rewards design, Taco Bell offers rewards to customers for LiveMasing, implying that audiences are rewarded for anything that connects them to the brand. “We’re not rewarding people for talking about Taco Bell, tweeting Taco Bell (or) using #livemas. We are actually just rewarding people for living their lives,” said Tressie Lieberman, Taco Bell’s VP-Digital Innovation and On Demand. She calls Explore a game, “not a loyalty program.” Taco Bell has seen an increase of 20 percent in order value from the Taco Bell app game users. In contrast to other loyalty programs Live Mas rewards customers for sharing experiences and for additional social media actions the fans are rewarded with bonuses that help them unlock the puzzle with a reward of a free freeze drink adding to a free USD 100 gift card and other rewards that could lead to a free trip to Taco Bell’s California headquarters.

 

 

 

 

Marriott Rewards

Marriott Rewards recently ran a contest for fans to recruit a team of fifty friends to win a draw for an all expenses paid trip. This is an interesting refer-a-friend program design that encourages sign-ups while engaging a larger audience.

 

Content and Engagement

As important as it is to create awareness with targeting and segmentation, it is equally important to get your target audience enthused with your content to generate organic viral traffic for your offers.

 

Promoting the Program

Email marketing has proven to be an effective marketing channel during the holiday season and promoting your offers with email can bring in the best conversions.

Promote your refer-a-friend with an omnipresent campaign that is likely to generate maximum conversions. Product pages are inescable in the digital buyer journey and placing your refer-a-friend as an overlay display for every customer who is converting can bring in higher referrals. Include social networks and links wherever possible.

 

Redesign Your Existing Rewards Program

If you want to make Refer A Friend a Loyalty or Rewards program feature you can look at changing your rewards program, for a limited time by rewarding customers with reward points for each successful friend sign up. Valentine’s Day is the right time for members to Refer-A-Friend by giving them an opportunity for something that they may be looking forward to.

 

For a list of Do’s and Don’ts on Referral Marketing, Click here.