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Partner Spotlight: How to Encourage Referral Automation with Iterable

Written by Friendbuy | Mar 7, 2023 3:10:00 PM

Ideally, all of the tools in your marketing tech stack work together so you can run your campaigns like a well-oiled machine. Every platform you use, including Friendbuy, collects valuable data that you can use in other platforms to enhance the customer experience and improve your metrics. Friendbuy helps you seamlessly weave your referral program into your tech stack through third-party integrations with other providers such as Delighted, Segment, Shopify, Iterable, and more. 

Our latest integration with Iterable, a cross-channel marketing platform, allows you to increase email and SMS subscriber list growth and add more automation to your referral program by sending targeted emails to advocates and friends.

What is Iterable?

Iterable is a cross-channel marketing platform that allows you to create a unified customer experience. It connects communications through email, mobile push, SMS, in-app notifications, web push, and social media so that customers can engage with your brand through multiple channels. Iterable does more than just send the emails you schedule. The platform uses intelligent personalization solutions to create a unique experience for each customer through email and mobile automation. 

Email Automation

With Iterable, you can create targeted campaigns across the entire customer lifecycle, including for your referral program. The platform allows you to:

  • Dynamically segment audiences based on customer behavior and attributes.
  • Automatically populate message templates with specific content of interest and related items.
  • Use snippets to maintain consistent content across campaigns.
  • Send interactive emails that allow customers to fill out forms, browse products, and take other actions, such as referring friends or making a purchase using a coupon code.
  • Conduct experiments through A/B testing to optimize workflows.

Mobile Automation

In an increasingly mobile-first world, it’s essential to meet customers where they are. With Iterable, you can communicate seamlessly with customers on their phones by:

  • Using push, in-app, SMS, and mobile inbox to communicate with customers.
  • Sending push notifications to reengage customers after they have taken certain actions.
  • Sending in-app notifications—including referral reminders—while users are already interacting with your brand’s app.
  • Sending SMS messages and creating text campaigns around various points in the customer journey.
  • Building dynamic segmentation to target the right people with the right message.

Customers are faced with a lot of noise, and the more brands can do to personalize email and mobile communications, the more likely they are to engage.

Seamlessly connect your platforms.

The fewer manual steps you have to take to manage your referral program and all other elements of your marketing strategy, the better. Although it’s possible to manually export data from one platform to another, this leaves plenty of room for error. Somebody has to do it on a regular basis, the data must be normalized between platforms, duplicates could get transferred, and so on. The problem increases exponentially as your business—and your data—grows.

When connected, Friendbuy automatically sends email addresses, phone numbers, coupon codes, and PURLs captured in the referral program to Iterable. You don’t have to worry about whether the data has been transferred, and because it happens automatically, there is no delay between the trigger event and the communication flow.

Once the integration has been successfully installed, two additional user lists—one for Friendbuy advocates and another for Friendbuy referred friends—will be generated in your Iterable account. Data will start flowing from Friendbuy to Iterable automatically and any emails or phone numbers that are captured will be added to user profiles along with the PURLs and coupon codes that are generated. Once in Iterable, you can use this data to customize customer communications, send targeted messages, and promote your referral program.

Use Iterable for automated communication.

In Iterable, you can set up automated flows to both advocates and friends.

Automated Flows to Advocates

Remind advocates to refer friends and set up a flow for key times after certain trigger events, such as after a purchase has been made, once per quarter to all email subscribers, after a customer achieves a certain milestone, after a positive product review or NPS survey response, or when you run time-bound campaigns.

Remember that data is power, especially when communicating with customers. You can leverage Friendbuy data by:

  • Creating automated email campaigns to encourage advocates to share.
  • Sending automated reminder messages to incentivize referral via SMS.
  • Putting people's PURLs in transactional emails, newsletters, or a post-purchase welcome series instead of a refer-a-friend CTA for easy sharing.
  • Sending push notifications inside a mobile app or with IOS and Android notifications and including the PURL or a CTA to direct advocates to a landing page to share.

Automated Flows to Friends

Set up flows for key times after certain trigger events, such as adding referred friends to a welcome series and including the coupon code that they received from Friendbuy to encourage their first purchase, sending post-conversion emails to encourage converted friends to become advocates, or counting down time-bound offers with a series of reminders via email or text.

Leverage Friendbuy data in Iterable by creating automated email campaigns to remind friends to take advantage of the offer, sending automated SMS reminder messages with coupon codes to encourage conversions, and including coupon codes in all email or SMS communications to make it easier for friends to convert.

Take your referral program to the next level with Friendbuy integrations.

The true power of modern referral marketing is automation. By integrating with other platforms such as Iterable, Friendbuy allows you to truly automate and elevate your referral program to create a seamless experience for both customers and program administrators. When customers see your referral program in every channel and every type of communication, it truly becomes part of your brand. 

Learn more about why it’s so important to make your referral program a key component of your marketing tech stack in Referral Marketing: The Essential Guide.