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Customer Referral: How to convert customers to affiliates?

One of the biggest challenges many merchants face is finding potential affiliates promoting their products. There’s no need to look elsewhere; they’re right in front of you: your existing customers, one of the most quality affiliates. ...

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Customer referral how to convert customers to brand ambassadors

One of the biggest challenges many merchants face is finding potential affiliates promoting their products. There’s no need to look elsewhere; they’re right in front of you: your existing customers, one of the most quality affiliates.

This marketing type is customer referral, which lets previous customers recommend your products to their family and friends. You create a referral program as a way to reach further people. It is a marketing approach in which past satisfied, and loyal customers are asked to become brand supporters.

But how possible to approach your customers and get them to join your affiliate program?

In this newest article of the affiliate recruitment series, we’ll discuss tactics for customer referral and how to make them productive in your affiliate programs.

Why should you use customer referrals to your store?

They are trustworthy

When converting customers into brand ambassadors, you work with a group of people already familiar with and enthusiastic about your product.

92% of worldwide customers trust word-of-mouth more than other kinds of promotion.

So that a satisfied client may serve as a powerful recommendation for your brand, their opinion will carry more weight with their friends and family than that of a random influencer.

They understand your brand more than any affiliates

Customers can promote your brand by sharing their experiences with it, such as how they used your product/service, what they loved about it, and how they felt overall.

This might work better since people tend to believe what others have said about a brand and utilize that information to help them make decisions.

Converting customers into affiliates known-how

Turning your current customers to brand ambassadors is a straightforward process. Anyone who has made (significant) purchases or provided you with a pleasant review is an excellent prospect to contact.

So it would help if you built a trusted business to convert customers to affiliates.

Here’re a few tactics to keep in mind when turning customers into your brand ambassadors.

Excellent customer experience is the first point

How could you expect them to become your affiliates without offering a great purchase experience for them?

What you should do is to keep them happy. Customer service is critical to satisfying them, and 54% of consumers believe it influences their purchase decisions.

It’s much better not to push anything while establishing a customer-brand relationship. Be courteous, efficient, and willing to assist them with any problems. Take the advice you’ve received and put it into action.

Customer-experience-is-the-first-point
Customer-experience-is-the-first-point

When they feel satisfied with customer service and your products, it’s much easier to ask them to join your affiliate program, or they are more inclined to recommend them, which means they are more likely to become actual affiliates.

So that quality items and excellent customer service all contribute to a great experience that can result in great affiliates.

Customers selection

  • Segment your customers

First, you need to segment your customers based on their lifetime value, and average order value since not all of them can become affiliates. Segmenting them can help you decide who could become your potential affiliates.

Customers with a higher lifetime value or average order value and a robust online presence might be prospective affiliates for promoting your best-sellers. In contrast, customers with a low lifetime value can also advertise your other popular goods.

Segment-your-customers-customer-referral
Segment-your-customers-customer-referral
  • Connect with the loyal customers first
Create an easy-to-find affiliate landing page customer referral
Create an easy-to-find affiliate landing page for customer referral
  • Blog posts

You can write blog entries to promote your affiliate program. Not everyone understands this model type so you can describe what affiliate marketing is and how it works, don’t forget to highlight the benefits if they join the program.

Protip: To persuade customers to participate, use CTAs at the end of your post.

  • Send emails

You probably got your customers’ email list, it’s time to make use of them. Send emails to your clients informing them of the affiliate program and the benefits they will receive if they join.

  • Promote on social media

Don’t forget your social platform. Use your social media platforms to inform your clients and other devoted followers that they may join your online business as affiliate partners.

  • Automatically convert customers to affiliates (Post-purchase Popup)

Automatically convert your customers into affiliates with UpPromote Post-purchase popups. After your customers finish their orders at the checkout, a popup will invite them to join your affiliate program.

Convert customers to affiliates: things to avoid

Not offer enough affiliate program details

It’s impossible to ask customers to join your program without giving them details. The more vague the program is, the fewer customers you can convert. 

To encourage clients to join your affiliate program, you need to be transparent and provide as much information as possible to assist them in making their decision.

Include details such as the commission rate, the goal of your program, the sorts of content affiliates would be required to utilize, and the program’s requirements.

Have a difficult process of joining the program

No matter how much money you give your affiliates, complicating things is usually a wrong indication.

So your program should be accessible to every customer, whether they’re tech-savvy or not.

Consider quick sign-ups, complete onboarding, and user-friendly affiliate tools like UpPromote, which helps merchants manage and track affiliates. At the same time, customer-affiliate has their dashboard with all needed affiliate materials.

Bonus tip: Create easy-to-share marketing assets for your affiliates. This saves them a step, and you have more control over the branding and quality of the products distributed. You can easily share your marketing assets for your affiliates in UpPromote Creatives:

Affiliate creative gadgets
Affiliate creative gadgets

Not open to communicate

You can’t read your customers’ minds, so make sure you have a system for getting input from them.

Keeping contact open also helps strengthen relationships. For many people, affiliate marketing is new (and somehow tricky), and there may be a lot of questions or a need for assistance.

Being reachable is critical for an affiliate program. These clients are contacting you with inquiries about how they may better assist your business in growing, so help them in doing so.

Personalized emails, weekly updates, and even taking the time to call and speak about any issues or ideas they may have are tangible methods to assist them in becoming affiliates. As a general guideline, try to customize your communications with affiliates as much as possible.

Limit incentives

Limiting how much a client may earn back is a poor idea. Their earnings will rise as the business expands. This will not harm your overall ROI. To function on a larger scale, you must have long-term, reliable, and stable affiliates.

Wrapping it all up

Don’t spend too much time persuading customers to become your brand ambassadors; not every customer can become your affiliate. Be efficient and truthful, make them feel like they’re a part of the team, and you’ll see an increase in income and output with referral marketing.

So, which ones do you think are the most useful? Were there any that we missed? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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