How to Launch a Referral Program Like Facebook Ads
Updated: Jul 9
“So you’re saying I can run a referral program within my product using Flyy’s dashboard?”
I’d met an old friend after months and we were catching up on all the things we’d missed. One of them was talking about our work life.
As we sat at the dining table, drinking our evening tea, I began to explain how Flyy works but before I could go any further, he said something that I’d heard before.
“But I feel most companies would have a team to build something like this”, he said.
Honestly, I built many roads in my mind that I could take in response but instead, I said something that’d dawned upon me after I’d run my own referral program.
“Yes but if creating a referral program was simple as running a Facebook ad, which company wouldn’t want to avoid the waiting, training, and maintenance cost along with code debt?”
Since he’d himself worked as a Performance Marketer, he knew I was getting to something and decided to hear me out.
In the next few minutes, he heard me use words like banner, text, target audience, and reporting and could get where I was coming from.
Are you curious to learn why I compared a referral program set up similar to setting up a Facebook campaign?
Then read the below step-by-step guide on how to create a referral program using our gamified referral reward solution, Flyy.
How to Setup a Referral Program
I’m going to keep creating a referral program within Flyy, simple. All you have to do is follow the 3Ps - Pick, Prompt and Publish.
Let’s go further.
1. Pick What to Reward
What makes users refer in the first place? Rewards! So let’s first understand how you can set up rewards under the Flyy dashboard.
Step 1: Log in to your Flyy account and select the ‘Acquisition’ module on top. After this, go to the ‘Currency’ option under ‘Settings’.
There are two ways you can set up rewards.
Cash rewards: In this case, you can select the minimum amount you’d want a user to redeem.
Virtual currency: For this, you can either pick a predefined virtual currency or choose your own, followed by defining a value.
Step 2: How would your user redeem rewards? This is where ‘Vouchers’ and ‘Gift Cards’ come into play. Your users can redeem rewards via Vouchers/Gift Cards of various partner brands.
To enable this, simply pick the gift card you’d like to be displayed for your users along with face value.
Great! Your rewards are now in place. But wait, which users will you be rewarding and based on what action? Let’s set that up, shall we?
2. Prompt Users
Step 1: Which users do you want to run your referral program for? For this, go to ‘Segments’ under ‘Settings’ and click on ‘Create Segment’.
Choose a segment label and upload a segment list based on the sample file. This will contain External User IDs which be alphanumeric, phone numbers, email IDs, or anything identifiable.
Step 2: In order to prompt users to take an action, you need to create an event. For this, go to ‘Events’ under ‘Settings’.
Next, you can either select a predefined event or create your own custom event by clicking on the ‘Plus’ button at the bottom.
This will ask you to input ‘Event Name’ and ‘Event Key’ which can be as per the action you want a user to take.
Post creation, you’ll see your newly created event in the ‘Event List’ which will show as connected once SDK is integrated and API triggers have been set up.
Now comes the most interesting part, setting up a campaign that trust me, is as easy as setting up a Facebook Ads campaign.
See how.
3. Publish a Campaign
Once your reward, user segment and event(s) are in place, you can create a gamified challenge for your users.
Step 1: Under the ‘Refer and Earn’ section, go to ‘Create Campaign’. Herein, you’ve to select the offer type as ‘Invite & Earn’.
Post this, you can choose the reward type as either ‘Cash’ or ‘Virtual Currency’. Let’s consider virtual currency for the sake of your understanding.
Next, select the event(s) to reward and if you want to reward the referee as well which we highly recommend given the social risk factor.
Step 2: Once the offer, event and reward type is defined, set a budget for your campaign. Then you can define the ‘Reward Range’ for both referrer and referee as well as set the ‘Average Reward’
This will set a reward distribution probability in such a way that the average value is maintained.
Step 3: You can let your creative juices flow during this step. All you’ve to do is pick a title, description and details as per your refer and earn use case, reward and event.
The same will reflect on your refer and earn offer page.
Step 4: After this, it’s all easy peasy! Upload a banner for your referral program, pick a start and end date and add the user segment you created at the start.
In case you’d like to exclude any users, you can do that too.
Step 5: Next, don’t forget to set rules for the maximum number of scratch cards you want to generate for a user in a day and lifetime.
Alongside, you can also set up refer and earn reminder notifications and then click on ‘Save’.
We’re almost ready to launch but there’s one thing. Did I tell you that you can add conditions to your referral program?
Say you want to reward a user only when the first transaction value is above ₹500. Then you can do the same using ‘Referral Variants’.
Creating Variants
To set up variants, go to “Create Variants’ under the ‘Refer and Earn’ section.
Enter a variant name, and select the campaign and event. After this, add a condition you want to put on the event value.
Based on this value, you can customize the reward range for both the referrer and the referee.
Any transaction value outside the ₹100 - ₹500 range will reward the referrer and referee based on the range mentioned during campaigning creation.
That’s it, there you it! Your finely crafted referral program. But how would it look though in your product post-launch? Take a look.
Note: You can customise your referral message under the ‘App Links and Share Text’ section of ‘Connect SDK’.
Put Your Referral Program in Action
Step 1: Log in to the demo APK provided by Flyy using your name and phone number. Once your referral campaign is LIVE, you will be automatically directed to an offers page.
Step 2: Upon clicking on the ‘Refer and Earn’ banner, you will be redirected to the ‘Invite and Earn’ page with all your offer details and shareable links.
Step 3: Rewards earned can be checked by clicking on ‘Rewards’. The ‘Wallets’ section under this will reflect total earnings and the same can be redeemed under the ‘Gift Cards’ section by clicking on ‘Redeem’.
Campaign Reporting
Lastly, all your efforts flow into one tunnel - results. You can check the number of referrers, referrals, reward value earned, type, cards scratched, redemptions made, events performed etc, all under one umbrella, ‘Reports’.
There you have it, your comprehensive guide on how to set up a referral program and boost customer acquisition. Want to learn more from one of our Flyyers? Book a demo today.
