How to Set Up a Referral Program for Your Ecommerce Store in 6 Steps
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
There are many generic lists of ‘best Shopify apps' out there, many of which may not help add extra value to your business. We weren't interested in writing one of those.
Instead, we focused on apps that would help you grow your brand, your business, and your revenue.
We identified 50+ best Shopify apps that fell into one of two categories:
Let's explore the Shopify apps we can recommend based on these categories.
To help you navigate around, the Shopify apps are divided into:
Some of the apps are free Shopify apps, and some are paid. Let's dive into the apps now!
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (2,000+ reviews)
Pricing: $59/month plus commissions, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Ecommerce brands wanting to start and scale their referral program
ReferralCandy helps you grow your sales through word-of-mouth marketing, rewarding customers for referring their friends. We also allow brands to run an affiliate program with cash payouts for successful purchases.
ReferralCandy powers referral programs for over 3,000 brands and is one of the best Shopify and Shopify Plus referral apps out there. Brands like Farm Hounds achieved a 22.25% referral rate and over $600k in referral sales through ReferralCandy, resulting in a 35.30 ROI (return on investment).
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (40+ reviews)
Pricing: From $249/month, a free plan is available for onboarding and checking the platform
Best for: Building and managing influencer marketing campaigns
Influencer Hero helps brands manage influencer marketing campaigns without the need to hire an agency. It helps you to discover and connect with some of the top influencers in your industry and even send outreach messages.
You also get access to a centralized CRM, where you can handle all the influencer messaging. Within the same platform, you can also send gifts, affiliate links, and payments to influencers and affiliates.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (5,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $49/month, free plan available
Best for: Setting up a loyalty and rewards program to get more loyal customers
Smile.io is a loyalty platform best known for customer retention and VIP programs, but it also offers rewards for referral programs. Smile.io allows you to quickly set up and run your rewards program.
Boost new and repeat sales with Smile.io, the trusted loyalty provider for over 50,000 stores. Customers also appreciate the fact that there is a free plan available for up to 200 monthly orders, making it a good free Shopify app.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $29/month, free plan available
Best for: Starting and managing an affiliate marketing program
GOAFFPRO's professional affiliate marketing app aims to turn your customers into marketing partners and affiliates. Customers and influencers are given a landing page to register and become affiliates. After this, they can share their referral link, and they are rewarded for any purchase made with their link.
GOAFFPRO is one of the free Shopify apps on our list since they offer a lifetime free plan.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,000+ reviews)
Pricing: $119/month with performance-based pricing, 14-day free trial
Best for: Managing affiliate, influencer, and ambassador programs
Refersion is a complete marketing platform for influence, affiliates, and brand ambassadors. You can even find new affiliates and influencers in the Refersion marketplace for free. Refersion offers a customizable affiliate registration page, dashboards to track performance, as well as automatic coupon code creation for rewards.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (150+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month with a limit of 1,000 video views/month
Best for: Adding user-generated content (videos) to your store
VideoWise allows you to embed shoppable videos from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube on your store in a page-speed-friendly way. You can also add buy buttons to the video player to boost engagement and conversion rates.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $20/month, 7-day free trial available
Best for: Creating and publishing posts on social media platforms
Outfy makes it easy to create product collages, videos, gifs, and ads and publish them to top social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and more.
The autopilot feature allows you to curate and publish posts automatically to promote and sell more.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (600+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, $6.95/month after 1,000 page visits
Best for: Publishing Instagram Stories and highlights to your website
Instagram Feed + Stories allows you to publish Instagram Stories and highlights to your website.
If you're working with Instagram influencers, this app will be a perfect complement to your campaign.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $6/month, free plan available
Best for: Brands relying heavily on Instagram accounts
Instafeed allows you to embed shoppable Instagram feeds on your Shopify store.
You can use Instagram to drive new traffic and content to your store, expand the reach to your followers, and convert store visitors into customers.
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month, free plan available for up to 50 orders/month
Best for: Brands looking to showcase customer reviews on product pages
Junip makes it easy to request customer reviews and display them on your product pages to help you convert customers. It also features review replies, Google Reviews snippets, and incentives for reviews.
Junip powers thousands of Shopify brands, including top DTC brands like Doe Lashes, Huron, Baboon to the Moon, and more.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (14,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $9.90/month, free plan for up to 5 reviews/product
Best for: Bulk importing and showing AliExpress reviews within your Shopify store
Ali Reviews makes it possible to import and collect reviews from platforms, including Facebook, AliExpress, Klaviyo, Amazon, and more. The platform also has pre-made templates you can use to prompt customers to create reviews and other user-generated content.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (18,000+ reviews)
Pricing: From $9.99/month, 7-day free trial
Best for: Increasing social proof with appealing product reviews
Loox collects photo and video reviews, prompts customers for referrals, and displays the social proof with beautiful-looking widgets. By collecting social proof and driving word-of-mouth, Loox aims to drive customer retention and build brand awareness to increase sales.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (4,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $9.99/month, free plan for up to 20 reviews/product
Best for: Displaying customer reviews on product pages
Trustoo.io helps to increase the social proof of ecommerce stores through customer reviews. You can bulk import customer reviews from AliExpress and add them to your store. On top of that, you can send automatic review request emails to customers after they have received their products.
Trustoo.io's strong point is its generous free plan, making it a good free Shopify app option.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (25,000+ reviews)
Pricing: From $15/month, free plan available
Best for: Publishing reviews on website, social media, and Google search (rich snippets)
Judge.me prompts your customers to create star ratings and reviews about your products and Shopify store, then displays it beautifully on your website with theme templates. The app works well for search engine optimization since it will showcase the product review stars on Google for every product.
Judge.me offers free photo and video reviews and allows you to publish reviews on sales channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, to boost sales.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19.90/month, limited free plan available
Best for: Increasing online store sales without using complicated tools
Notify me! app gives you all the tools to manage out-of-stock products and recover lost sales. You can use a Preorder button on your store to continue selling your products, or you can add a “notify me” widget to get your customers' contact info and send them notifications via. Email/SMS/Push (80%+ open rates) when the products are back in stock.
You can also add preorder discounts, partial payments, notes, delivery fulfillment, and more with this all-in-one tool.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $5/month, free plan available
Best for: Improving conversion rates with product badges, discounts, alerts, and more
The average attention span of a shopper is eight seconds. Product Badges aim to capture customer attention with badges like “20% Off” or “Best Seller!”.
Mode Magic received an award for ease of use from Shopify and also offers 3,000+ product badges and stickers ready to go.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (2,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $19/month, free plan available
Best for: Creating email and web push notifications
PushOwl allows you to send web push notifications to your customers – to remind them of abandoned carts, discounts, or items back in stock.
You can reach out to anonymous shoppers and browsers, get opt-in for email, push or text notifications, and turn them into subscribers.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5.0 stars (350+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $35/month, 30-day free trial
Best for: Brands with complementary products that benefit from upsells
Zipify's One Click Upsell app maximizes the average order value for your customers by offering one-click upsells, both when customers are viewing their cart and during post-purchase checkout.
This Shopify app lets you split test and upsell on the Thank You page to maximize sales.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (4,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $4.99/month, free plan available
Best for: Increasing sales through the order confirmation/thank you page
ReConvert allows you to customize your order confirmation/thank you page, allowing you to create a post-purchase funnel for more upsell opportunities. This can be done with widgets, including discount popups, product recommendations, and post-purchase surveys.
Since customers visit the order status page to review shipping updates, it's a perfect opportunity to retarget customers for an upselling opportunity.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (10+ reviews)
Pricing: Plans starting from $325/month, up to 1500 alerts
Best for: Sending back-in-stock alerts and other notifications through WhatsApp, SMS, and Messenger
Shop-pop helps you reach customers with opt-in alerts on WhatsApp and Messenger. Customers can opt-in to receive alerts for new products, price drops, back-in-stock, and more.
ShopPop boasts 95% open rates for their alerts and easy data sync with Klaviyo. It's one of the most expensive apps on our list, but most customers still report getting a positive return on investment using ShopPop.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $10/month, free plan available for up to 2500 subscribers.
Best for: Creating email marketing & SMS campaigns
Sender is an affordable email and SMS marketing platform trusted by over 180,000 successful businesses globally. Some of its key features include automated emails and SMS for abandoned carts, welcome, win back and more email workflows. You can segment customers and personalize emails so that the right messages are sent to the right people.
Sender helps you execute your email and SMS campaigns to grow leads and boost your Shopify store sales on autopilot.
Rating: 4.1 out of 5.0 stars (1,900+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans for emails start from $30/month (based on the number of contacts); SMS plans start from $15/month (based on the number of contacts)
Best for: Creating advanced email and SMS marketing sequences
Klaviyo, a unified customer platform for email, SMS, and more, gives your online brand direct ownership of your consumer data and interactions—so you can talk to every customer like you know them and grow your business on your own terms.
Klaviyo integrates with other ecommerce platforms, sales channels, and many apps (including ReferralCandy).
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,900+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans from $100/month, 30-day free trial available.
Best for: A turnkey solution for SMS marketing
Thousands of Shopify and Shopify Plus stores use Postscript as a turnkey solution for their SMS marketing.
Postscript also boasts a Safe Send feature to avoid sending too many text messages to a single customer.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (5,600+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available for up to 250 contacts, paid plans from $16/month
Best for: Automating SMS and email marketing flows
Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing platform powering over 85,000 ecommerce merchants.
Omnisend allows you to send stunning newsletters, create automated ecommerce flows, and collect email and SMS opt-ins. You have hundreds of ready-to-use templates to choose from and can segment customers based on their purchase behavior.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (24,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans from $12/month with a 15-day free trial
Best for: Creating email & SMS automation and adding pop-ups, offers, and prompts to your website
Privy offers a suite of marketing tools for SMS and email marketing and conversion-focused tools like pop-ups and wheels. Privy also offers campaign triggers to show discounts and offers to customers at the right time.
Compared to some other email marketing solutions, Privy is more of an all-in-one solution since it also offers pop-ups and promotions that you can add to your website.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (80+ reviews)
Pricing: Plans starting from $39/month, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating advanced email and SMS marketing automation
Drip helps to create advanced email and SMS marketing automation campaigns for Shopify store owners. To create more personalized campaigns, you can segment customers based on purchase behavior and data.
Similarly to apps like Privy, you can create pop-ups, quizzes, surveys, and other forms that you can show on your website.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Pricing: Free app to install, paid plans start from $187/month
Best for: Creating email and cross-channel automation marketing campaigns
With a customer-first approach, Dotdigital is a platform for data-driven marketers to deliver personalized communications across different customer journeys. The platform harnesses the power of customer data, powering engagement, conversion, and loyalty for brands as they grow and scale.
Rating: 4.4 out of 5.0 stars (380+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $588/year, 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating personalized marketing automation campaigns
ActiveCampaign helps to create personalized email and SMS campaigns based on customer shopping behavior and interests. For example, if a customer scrolled a specific category on your website, you can send them SMS and email discounts for that specific category.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (10,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Limited free plan available, paid plans from $24/month
Best for: Creating high-converting Shopify landing pages
PageFly helps create beautiful, high-quality pages for Shopify stores, from landing pages to FAQs and blog pages. They also boast an Element Library with templates, custom animations, and trust badges like reviews, ratings, and seals.
While regular Shopify themes give you sections to start designing from, PageFly is ideally used for doing designs from scratch.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (4,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans starting from $29/month
Best for: Creating responsive landing pages from 80+ pre-made templates
GemPages lets you build a variety of pages for Shopify stores, such as the home, about us, product, and contact us pages. These templates have been created with conversion, mobile-driven design, and SEO optimization in mind.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (11,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans starting from $9.99/per month
Best for: Adding a free shipping offer to your website
This app does exactly what it says on the tin - it allows you to add a free shipping announcement bar to your store. It also auto-detects the customer's local currency and adjusts the free shipping amount instantly (e.g. Free shipping over $50 in the US and C$70 in Canada).
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (3,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $19/month
Best for: Creating any page & section using a drag-and-drop editor
EComposer Page Builder is a codeless app that allows merchants to create their stunning website with any page type: Landing page, Homepage, Product, Collection, About us, etc. EComposer is beginner-friendly, conversion-driving, and mobile-first optimized. Newbies can easily build their store with tons of pre-made layouts and sections, drag & drop everything.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (500+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $249/month
Best for: Increasing the store's conversion rate by setting up no-code conversion playbooks for running sales, % Off, showcase stock updates, bestsellers & more
Run a high-converting, engaging store with ModeMagic by Mason—an all-in-one, no-code store conversion app made for Shopify stores. With ModeMagic's plug-and-play conversion playbooks, you can easily personalize your store for customers without a coder or designer.
Use the app's merchandising tools to promote products & keep your ecommerce shop dynamic 24/7—countdown timers, product highlight cards, sales, discounts, bestsellers & new arrival automation; make it happen with zero manual work!
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0 stars (7,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free Shopify app; the ad spend is billed directly to Google Ads
Best for: Reaching more customers across YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, and Google Display Network.
Shopify's Google Channel makes it easy for you to list products for free on Google and run Smart Shopping campaigns. It can also help you increase sales with Performance Max ads across Search, YouTube, and Display, as well as uncover ecommerce insights through Google Analytics.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,500+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $13/month with a 7-day free trial
Best for: Advertising your products on Google properties
CedCommerce's Suite for Google Shopping Fed surfaces your products on various Google properties, like Buy On Google, Shopping Ads, Local Inventory Ads, and more.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0 stars (480+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to install, paid plans from $40/month
Best for: Running marketing campaigns that integrate social media, mobile apps and email advertising
AdRoll powers advertising and remarketing campaigns for thousands of merchants and boasts the ability to run a campaign that integrates different sales channels, like social media, mobile apps, and emails.
AdRoll boasts AI-optimized ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and over 500 networks.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (700+ reviews)
Pricing: Free to use
Best for: Driving new traffic and sales by appearing in other stores within your niche
Automizely Traffic lets you target and retarget customers with the right ads at the right time.
The ad exchange allows you to display your products in other stores in exchange for promoting partner ads on your website - a win-win for both of your stores. The main benefit of the app is that it offers new potential customers at a minimal cost.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (600+ reviews)
Pricing: From $10/month, 50 tickets per month included. A 7-day free trial available
Best for: Combining all customer support channels into one inbox
Gorgias offers a platform for Shopify brands to manage their customer support all in one place. The centralized CRM offers support on every channel, from email and live chat to phone and social media.
Gorgias boasts a strong integration with Shopify, allowing your customer support team to see order details and refund, cancel or duplicate without leaving the app.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans from $29/month, 7-day free trial available
Best for: Live chat support, including email and Messenger integration
Tidio offers a live chat app bolstered by marketing automation and chatbots to address your customers' needs and increase sales instantly. Tidio's chatbot can automatically reply to the most common queries, including questions about tracking and an Abandoned Cart Bot that offers discounts to help convert customers.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (70+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $99/month for up to 2,500 shipments per month
Best for: Brands that get a lot of 'Where Is My Order' tickets
Did you know that consumers check the status of their order at least once before it's delivered? These WISMO (Where Is My Order?) tickets are especially frustrating for customers if packages get lost or are delayed and create a poor impression of your brand.
Wonderment turns order tracking into a growth channel with proactive shipping tracking. You can direct customers to on-brand tracking pages to deliver upsells and a better customer experience.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (1,700+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $99/month, 30-day free trial available
Best for: Converting your Shopify store into an Android and iOS app
Vajro enables Shopify store owners to convert their online stores into native Android and iOS apps within 60 minutes without writing a single line of code.
With more than 1,700 five-star reviews on Shopify, Vajro has helped 3000+ Shopify merchants to sell more and engage better with their customers.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (900+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $149/month, a 30-day free trial is available
Best for: Turning your Shopify store into a mobile app in minutes with a drag-and-drop editor.
Shopney is known for its unique feature set and famous ease of use in the Shopify mobile app builder market.
Shopney offers 8 different theme options for your Shopify store as a unique Shopify mobile app builder feature to make sure you display your products most impressively in the product listing (PLP) and product display (PDP) and increase your sales!
Besides, to increase your customer retention and engagement, Shopney provides in-app chat with you as another unique mobile app builder feature. So, you can convert your customers with a 1-to-1 dialogue, offering customers a personalized shopping experience.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (300+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $25/month, a 14-day free trial available
Best for: Merchants wanting to start tracking their Shopify store analytics
True Profit helps ecommerce merchants instantly track their real-time profit without relying on lagging and error-prone spreadsheets. The main purpose of the app is to make it easy to gather, calculate, & analyze all the order metrics for your store.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 stars (40+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $129/month, free plan available
Best for: Monitoring important ecommerce metrics from a centralized dashboard
Triple Whale offers a unified dashboard for all your important ecommerce metrics, pulling from your tech stacks like Shopify, Klaviyo, Facebook, Gorgias, and more.
We've included Triple Whale here because of glowing endorsements from DTC brands like Doe Lashes, Muddy Bites, and Obvi, but we haven't tried it out yet. It's one to watch and maybe sign up for, but stay tuned.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (200+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $50/month, a 14-day free trial available
Best for: Creating quizzes and pop-ups to grow email subscribers and increase sales
Octane AI offers quizzes and pop-ups to create a better shopping experience for customers. From a simple email-capture pop-up to more complicated quizzes about product preferences, Octane AI helps you generate customer insights while staying GDPR compliant.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (10+ reviews)
Pricing: From $0 per month (but 2.9% commission on gift card value), paid plans starting from $79/month
Best for: Creating customizable gift cards
Govalo aims to reinvent the gift card for Shopify stores with gift card purchases, welcome gifts for new customers, and premium analytics and data.
Customers hesitate to make the first purchase because of high price points - a problem Govalo aims to eliminate with their digital gift cards. With the gift card market growing at 14% annually, this could be an interesting app.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars (190+ reviews)
Pricing: $499/month, plus commissions
Best for: Brands that need a tool for managing subscription-based billing
Skio Subscriptions aims to make subscriptions easier - and capture all of Recharge's customers. They offer merchants an easier way to modify subscriptions, a headless subscription portal, and native Shopify Checkout.
Merchants who are struggling with Bold and Recharge subscription apps can consider Skio as an alternative.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5.0 stars (9,000+ reviews)
Pricing: Free tier available. Paid plans from $9.95/month for >5 currencies and auto-switch by customer location.
Best for: International stores needing to convert prices to a local currency
BEST Currency Converter allows you to display prices in different international currencies. The Elite plan even updates the currency automatically based on your customer's browsing location.
This makes the shopping experience easier for your international customers.
Rating: n/a
Pricing: Starting from $200/month, 30-day free trial
Best for: Getting repeat purchases by predicting when customers will reorder
Relo is the easiest way for DTC brands to get customers to order again. Relo predicts when customers are going to buy again, syncs that data into Klaviyo & sends personalized email comms to your customers.
Rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (100+ reviews)
Pricing: Starting from $29 to $299, 14-day trial, and a freemium option
Best for: Embedding videos into your website without code
Vidjet is a video player that turns videos into direct revenue. Using innovative video formats, segmentation options, and shoppable features, merchants can expose their visitors to videos at the appropriate moment of their journey.
Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,800+ reviews)
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $19/month
Best for: Improving your average order value by providing more tailored product recommendations for customers
Boost AI Search & Filter helps to boost conversions and maximize average order value with the help of AI and semantic search. These functionalities help customers find their favorite products through AI recommendations.
Hopefully these 50+ Shopify apps we’re helpful for you! Our aim was to compare different Shopify apps in different categories and provide you with the list of the best options out there.
Looking for more resources? Check out these other resources:
P.S. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to grow your ecommerce store, subscribe to our newsletter to get our latest articles and roundups.
Here at ReferralCandy, we're excited to introduce something we've been working on: the Ecommerce Agency Industry Report!
Each month, we’re gathering information from ecommerce agencies: their results, thoughts, and predictions, and then sharing these insights in an aggregated and anonymous industry report.
Whether you're an agency owner or just looking for more information, this report can help you get a better understanding of the state of ecommerce agencies.
According to our April 2024 survey, despite a slight decrease in agencies' confidence, most agencies expect their revenue to continue growing and that merchants will continue using their services. To stand out, agencies can use marketing methods that bring high ROI, such as referral programs using software like ReferralCandy.
We will now discuss our findings about ecommerce agencies in more detail.
As part of our survey, we asked ecommerce agencies to rate their confidence level from 0 to 500, which we turned into the below Ecommerce Agency Confidence Index. This index is based on aspects like how confident they’re about customer acquisition, market saturation, and changing consumer behavior.
Based on our survey, here are the overall confidence levels reported by ecommerce agencies over the past months:
As you can see from the above graph, ecommerce agencies' confidence in the state of ecommerce has slightly decreased in the recent months.
We started the survey right after record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers at the end of 2023, and there’s an overall sense that things have gone slightly downhill from there.
We asked ecommerce agency owners: Has there been any increase in your customer’s marketing budgets?
To conclude the responses, marketing budgets haven't changed much, but advertising costs have increased, so customers want to allocate their budgets more wisely.
The increase in advertising costs over the past few months has had an effect on agencies that provide marketing services that can compensate for it.
As Stefan Chiriacescu, eCommerce Today Agency puts it:
Other agency owners like Daniil Andreev from ECORN Agency mentioned that although they “haven’t really seen a reduction”, their clients have allocated funds “differently, even if the total dollar amount hasn’t really changed.”
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale from 0 to 10, how have your customers’ budgets for investments in ecommerce apps changed?
This is one of the most consistent responses we’ve had over the months. It is evident that ecommerce agency clients are willing to spend money on ecommerce apps, provided the app provides a positive return on investment.
Paul Rosenwald from SeaMonsterStudios has a great explanation for it:
As we mentioned, the real question is, is the app gonna show ROI? Can we track that we will make more money or become more efficient if we implement it?
Merchants are almost always budget conscious, but they are usually performance driven.”
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate the current price sensitivity of your customers towards spending on agency services?
This is probably one of the most important pieces of information for agency owners. How sensitive are merchants to agency prices? Are merchants trying to renegotiate contracts or retainers?
Although in February it looked like merchants were becoming more sensitive, in March we’ve seen this trend stabilizing.
Paul Rosenwald believes that the “real challenge for the merchant is to find the right agency to work with.“ Someone who can speak their language and work cohesively with their team.”
And although budget is usually part of the process, they have noticed that “the choice is based on finding the partner and being confident in that partnership.”
We asked ecommerce agency owners: How likely is it that your customers will bring their marketing teams in-house rather than outsourcing work to agencies in the upcoming months?
In February, there was an increase in uncertainty or diversity in predictions about clients' strategies. If we could summarize in one sentence, it would be “I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look great”.
This pessimism seems to have tamed down in March, with almost half of our agencies reporting no change in their customers’ outsourcing behavior.
This is one of the key aspects that determine the health of an ecommerce agency. Are their clients likely to continue outsourcing work to them? Or are merchants looking to bring their marketing in-house?
Ultan O’Callaghan from Thooja has learned to think of his team as a “department” within customers’ companies:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how optimistic are you about your revenue increasing in the next six months?
The answer is that most agency owners believe their revenue will continue to increase.
If we could use one adjective to describe ecommerce agencies, it would be optimistic. Agencies continue to believe that it will be a positive year for them in terms of revenue.
As Paul Rosenwald from SeaMonster Studios mentions:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how optimistic are you about the opportunities in ecommerce for the next 6 months?
To conclude the results for this question: Most ecommerce agencies see the next 6 months as an optimistic time period with new opportunities.
We believe that ecommerce agencies are the unsung heroes in the world of ecommerce. They’re the ones working closely with brands, crafting their online shopping experiences and, in many cases, doing the hard work so brands can focus on improving their products and services.
That's why their insights are pure gold. They have courtside seats to the world of ecommerce, and they see everything – the trends, the hits, and the misses.
This is what Jess Grossman, the founder & CEO of In Social, mentions about the importance of ecommerce agencies:
We also believe that agencies are sometimes forgotten when it comes to analyzing the evolution of the ecommerce industry. We focus on metrics like merchandise volume and customer acquisition costs, but we never gather data about ecommerce agencies' revenue or their customers' price sensitivity to their services.
We're setting our sights high with this industry report. We're not just content with understanding today's trends; we want to get a sneak peek into tomorrow’s. The idea is to track these insights over time and start predicting where ecommerce is headed.
This isn’t just number crunching; it’s about getting a sense of the human element behind the data.
This index gets better with more voices joining in. It’s a community thing – the more agencies chip in, the richer and more insightful this index becomes. It acts as a growing, evolving knowledge base for all of us in the ecommerce sphere.
Some of our agency participants include: SeaMonster Studios, Swanky Agency, Thooja, Audacious Commerce, Ecommerce Today, For My People, RPF Agency, Pluro, Webcetera, SmartBug Media, Gloross, VT Labs, Motif, TatJones, Growth Heist, MageMontreal, GetVisible, StubGroup, Thooja, Gudu, TenThousandFootView and SEOWorks.
If you're an agency and would like to participate and receive the full report, you can email ReferralCandy's Partnerships Lead Raul Galera at raul [at] referralcandy.com
One of the most common questions we get is, “How do I get more referrals?”
I went to ask the people who have all the secrets to generating referrals — our Customer Success Managers!
They oversee hundreds of merchant accounts each to help them get better results from their referral programs. To understand the state of merchants' referral programs and to find ways to optimize them, our Customer Success Managers go through a detailed checklist that they have refined over the years.
Ready to learn more? Let's get started on the checklist!
As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask us!
Note: If you haven't yet launched your own ecommerce referral program, you can do that easily with ReferralCandy! If you use Shopify, ReferralCandy is also available on the Shopify App Store.
Here is the 11-step client referral checklist you can follow:
We will next go through the 11-step process in more detail.
As a first step, check the fundamental status of your referral program.
This might sound a little silly, but to get more referrals, you have to ensure your customer referral program is actually up and running.
You can see the status on your ReferralCandy dashboard.
Have you set your rewards and checked that they are valid? If you are using Shopify or BigCommerce, ReferralCandy will automatically create coupon codes for your referral program. For other platforms, you will need to create the coupon codes in your store platform and upload them to ReferralCandy.
If you are using integrations, are they working fine? For example, if you are using ReCharge for subscriptions, you would want to check that ReCharge is connected to your ReferralCandy account and you have the right settings in both ReCharge and ReferralCandy. You can refer to our help articles on integrations if you need any help.
Once you know your referral program is up and running smoothly, let's assess your referral results.
Note: When analyzing your referral program's performance, remember that all referral marketing revenue is new revenue as it comes from referred customers. This is different from other marketing methods, such as email marketing, which takes revenue from existing clients.
Therefore, calculating the return on investment is also different. We recommend you follow the next steps to calculate the return on investment on your customer referrals program!
To start, compare your referral rate with the industry referral rate, which you can see on your ReferralCandy dashboard. (Do remember to set your store industry under “Store Settings” to get the specific referral rate for your industry.)
ReferralCandy calculates your referral rate by dividing the number of referral transactions by the total number of transactions in your store over the past 30 days. In other words, the percentage of your sales that are from business referrals.
On your dashboard, you can see the number of referral sales, the value of referral sales, and the trend over the last 30 days.
There are several ways to make use of this data. You could compare your referral sales to your targets. Or you could compare your referral sales with the previous month. Or you could check that your referral sales are growing steadily or not declining.
A simple method is to divide your referral sales by your ReferralCandy subscription fee. For example, $2,000 of referrals divided by a $134 subscription fee is a 15-times return on investment.
For every $1 spent on ReferralCandy, you get about $15 back. (How does this compare to the costs and returns of your ads and other marketing channels?)
That said, this simplified calculation does not consider intangible benefits, such as more engaged customers and greater reach, and costs, such as cost of setup and maintenance.
At this point, how are you feeling about the performance of your referral program? If you want to get more referrals, read on for some ideas!
A key success factor of your referral program is the number of advocates who are recommending their friends. So you want as many people to know about your referral program as possible to get more client referrals.
We recommend merchants highlight their referral program on their homepage.
For example, Bees & Trees link to their customer referral program from their home page:
Other merchants choose to highlight their customer referral programs on their carousel images or in their footer, as Vinyl, Me Please does.
This will remind already loyal customers of your referral program and encourage new visitors to sign up for your it.
Your advocate reward and friend offer has to be attractive enough for your customers to refer their friends. The key is to align them to your customers' motivation—what do they want from buying from you?
Here are a few rules of thumb that our Customer Success Managers use:
For your advocate reward:
For your friend offer:
If you do not want to offer discounts or cash rewards, you can also be creative about your rewards. For example, ThreadBeast, a men's streetwear brand, gives its advocates a free package of streetwear for referring their friends.
Your post-purchase referral email is the primary way that customers learn about your referral program. Also, people most likely cannot remember their referral link. Having this email in their inbox gives them something to refer to.
If you are worried about sending your customers too many emails, you can grab the link to your referral program from your dashboard and include it in your usual emails to your customers.
Also, if you need help with designing your post-purchase emails, you can take inspiration from our email design examples article.
Our Customer Success Managers recommend sending the post-purchase referral email immediately after a customer's purchase.
We see higher engagement with referral emails if it was sent immediately after purchase rather than a couple of days later. This is likely because customers are already looking out for the confirmation email so they are more likely to interact with the referral email.
In ReferralCandy, you can customize when the post-purchase referral email is sent.
You should also experiment with other timings. For example, Riff Raff and Co sends their post-purchase emails when their customers receive the products and follows up again eight weeks later.
Reminding your customers about your referral program is a good way to keep it top of mind. ReferralCandy can automatically send regular reminder emails for you. You can set how often to send reminder emails and when to stop sending them.
We personally do not like spammy or aggressive emails. Thankfully, reminder emails are programmed to space out if the customer is not opening them. And we will eventually stop sending the customer your reminder email altogether. (But if the customer is opening the reminder emails, they likely would not mind receiving them.)
All emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom so that your customers can opt-out at any point in time.
You can edit your reminder emails by going to Referral Program > Emails & Pages > Edit (your theme) > Content > Reminder Email > Edit.
Once you set up ReferralCandy, new customers will be invited to your referral program, such as via your post-purchase email. But you might also want to let your current customers know about your referral program.
Satisfied customers who have supported you in your early days or who have bought a few times from you are very likely to be strong advocates for your brand.
In ReferralCandy, you can upload a list of your customers and email them an invitation to your referral program. (You can also import your list from Mailchimp if you are using either for your email marketing.)
If you have just launched your referral program, your current customers are a great source of initial business referrals.
You can see your email open rate right on your dashboard.
According to Omnisend, the average open rate for all industries is about 21%.
If your email open rate is lower than your industry's average, we would recommend you experiment with different subject lines. Our Customer Success Managers usually recommend you highlight the benefit to both advocates and friends.
Here are some subject line variations you could try:
You can calculate your email click rate by dividing the number of referral link clicks by the number of referral email views.
We generally see much higher click rates than Mailchimp's benchmarks. This might be because the referral reward makes people more likely to click. Our Customer Success Managers usually aim to get click rates to more than 50%.
Here are some things to consider when improving your email content:
We also have a guide on how to write referral emails, which includes referral email design examples.
Marketing is all about being where your customers are and adding value to their lives.
If you have an active presence on social media and your audience is engaging with your posts, it might be great to let them know about your referral program there. On ReferralCandy, there's an option to customize your social media messages so that it fits each social media platform you intend to share on.
Or if you also have a retail store, you could tell your customers about your referral program verbally or with a small leaflet, asking them to sign up on your website.
No worries! Our Customer Success Managers are eager to help.
P.S. If you found this article helpful, you might like our newsletter. :)
If you're looking for more detailed articles on improving your existing business referral program, here are some insightful resources:
The initial version of this article was written by Visakan Veerasamy, ReferralCandy's former blog editor (2013–2018).
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