Articles on: Referral

Set up Referral Campaigns to Boost Reviews Sharing

Plans: Pro, Enterprise Platforms: Shopify

Overview



AfterShip Reviews enables you to run a referral program to encourage happy customers to share positive reviews on social media platforms and in return incentivize them with rewards in the form of discounts coupons and codes.

How do the referral discount campaigns work?



Referral discount campaigns allow you to incentivize review collection and sharing by encouraging your existing customers to share positive reviews about your brand on social media, leveraging their network.

By rewarding both the advocate for sharing and the referred friend for placing an order through the referral, you are strengthening relationships with your existing customers, encouraging repeat business, and welcoming new referrals with one of the most cost-effective acquisition methods.

What you’ll learn



In this tutorial, we will show you:

Set up referral campaign
Customer experience

Set up a referral campaign



Referral campaigns will allow brand advocates to share reviews on Facebook and Twitter to amplify your brand’s reach.




Go to Referrals in the AfterShip Reviews admin.
Move to Discounts and set the status of Referral discounts to Enabled to automatically generate a discount code for your customers after they share a review on social media.
Select which star rating reviews will get the discount code post-sharing on social media from the dropdown list.

Star ratings reviews selection

a. This comes in handy to dissuade dissatisfied or unhappy customers from sharing their negative reviews on social media and only encourage customers with specific ratings to share their feedback on their respective social media accounts.
b. Customers who leave a negative review or a star rating below the defined rating rule will not get to see the share button and subsequently will not be entitled to a discount code.

Select review submitted and shared via which method—email, review widget, or share button on review widget will qualify for a discount coupon.

Tips:

a. Disable the Reviews submitted on your store and shared and Reviews shared via the sharing buttons on your review widget options if you want verified reviews to be shared by customers on social media.

b. Disable the Reviews shared via the sharing buttons on your review widget option if you want only the advocates (loyal customers) to share reviews and get discount coupons and not any visitor sharing existing published reviews just for the sake of a referral coupon.

c. Disabling the options here will only unqualify visitors from getting the advocate discount codes yet they’ll still be able to see the share buttons based on your Review form and Review widget settings and share the review on the enabled social media channels.

a. The Review form Share Buttons settings will directly impact the review sharing capabilities for Reviews submitted via email and shared and Reviews submitted on your store and shared sharing methods since the customers using either of these methods are the ones who submit the reviews via a review form. So, make sure you have enabled/disabled the sharing buttons for the respective methods in the review form settings based on your referral campaign settings.

Review form settings

b. The Review Widget content settings will impact the review sharing capability for Reviews shared via the sharing buttons on your review widget sharing methods since these are the customers who intend to directly share the existing reviews on social media for referral coupons.

Therefore, you must disable the Sharing buttons option under the Review content section within the Review widget editor in your AfterShip Reviews account.

Review widget content settings

Complete the two-step setup to activate auto-discounts for.

Advocates: Customers who are leaving reviews and sharing them on social media with friends.
Referred friends: People who are motivated to place an order from your store after visiting your store via the review shared by an advocate on social media.

Choose the Discount type for your referrers (advocates) and referees (referred friends) from the given options:

Fixed amount: Offers customers a specific amount off their purchase.
Percentage off: Reduces the value of their purchase by a specified percentage.
Free shipping: Writes off the shipping cost for customers.

Scenario 1: You've selected either ‘Fixed amount’ or ‘Percentage off’


Percentage off

If you have chosen any of these discount types for both advocates and referred friends

Define the discount value

Offer discount based on the cart value by selecting the checkbox for This discount requires a minimum order subtotal and adding your preferred value.
Input the expiration date for the discount by selecting the checkbox for Discount will expire after and adding your preferred value.

Fixed amount discount

Switch between Incentivize to share and Get discount tabs to preview what will be displayed to the customers

Scenario 2: You've selected ‘Free shipping’


If you have selected the ‘Free shipping’ discount type for both referrer and referee, the delivery charges will be waived for both upon successful purchase.

Free shipping

You get one extra condition to choose from in this discount type as compared to the aforementioned ones.
Here's what each condition means:

Exclude shipping fee over a certain amount: After choosing this option, you will have to define a shipping amount. Now, if the shopper has order delivery charges lower than your defined value, the shipping amount will be exempted upon applying the coupon or vice versa.
This discount requires a minimum order subtotal: The coupon holder has to ensure that his/her cart value matches the minimum order subtotal to be eligible for the free shipping.
Discount will expire after: The coupon won’t work if the referrer or referee tries to place an order after the number of days that you’ve specified as the stipulated time.

Hit the Save button to make your referral campaign active

Discount codes



Discount codes for advocates and their referred friends will be automatically generated. You will find a list of these discount codes in your Shopify admin portal under the Discounts page. Please refrain from deleting or editing them.

AfterShip Reviews generated discount codes in Shopify

Customer experience



1. For Brand Advocates:

They will get a coupon as soon as they share a review on any supported social media platform. In addition, we will drop them an email as well so that they can use the discount coupon later on if they want to. Here's what our email notification will look like:

Advocate discount coupon via email

2. For Prospects:

As soon as the social media friend of a brand advocate clicks on the shared review, he/she will be redirected to the product page, where a popup will appear and reveal the discount coupon to drive a quick purchase decision.

Referred friend discount code

In case you’ve any questions, shoot them in our chatbox right now.

Updated on: 03/07/2024

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