We’re excited to unveil a brand-new feature in our WooCommerce Loyalty Program plugin: referral points! 🎉 Now, you can easily reward loyal customers when they successfully refer friends to your store. By offering referral points, you encourage happy customers to share your brand with others, helping expand your reach, grow your customer base, and create a more connected shopping experience.
In this guide, we’ll explore everything you need to know, including what referral points are, why they matter, and how you can start using them to grow your business!
Exciting, right? Let’s dive right in!
What Are Loyalty Referral Points?
Loyalty referral points are a brand-new and exciting way to encourage customers to spread the word about your brand. Simply put: they’re points granted when a customer refers a friend who either signs up as a customer or completes a purchase in your WooCommerce store.
With this new feature added to WooCommerce Loyalty Program, it’s seamlessly integrated into your existing rewards system! That means customers don’t just gain points for shopping, they also earn them by helping your brand grow. It’s an extra layer of engagement that gives your most loyal customers more reasons to stick around and interact with your store.
Why Grant Referral Points To Customers? (Key Benefits)
Rewarding customers with referral points can have a powerful impact on your marketing strategy, brand growth, and overall customer experience. Below are just some of the top reasons to add referral points to your loyalty program:
1. Motivates existing customers to share your store
Happy, satisfied customers are often your brand’s biggest advocates. In fact, according to industry estimates, 72% of shoppers are willing to share a positive brand experience with 6 or more people. In most cases, they just need a little nudge to take action. This is where referral points can help!
By offering referral incentives like points, you give happy customers a clear reason to share your brand with others. Integrating it into your loyalty program gives them a structured and fun way to participate, making the experience more rewarding.
2. Reduces customer acquisition cost
Customer acquisition costs are one of the most expensive aspects of running a business. Most store owners rely on paid advertising, influencer campaigns, or exclusive promotions to grow their customer base. Referral points can help support these efforts and offer a more cost-effective alternative.
By rewarding existing customers for bringing new shoppers, you leverage organic, trust-based recommendations from your most loyal shoppers to reach new customers.
3. Boost order values from referred customers
Referred shoppers often have a higher customer lifetime value. Because they were introduced to your business through someone they trust, they arrive with built-in trust and positive expectations. This often translates to larger first-time orders, especially if they’re welcomed with attractive offers or exclusive loyalty perks right from the start.
Numbers back this up: According to Harvard Business Review, referred customers make more purchases than other shoppers who joined your brand through other ways. Even better, they also bring in 30-57% more customers throughout their journey with your brand! In the long run, this creates a positive ripple effect: higher order values, stronger retention, and a stream of high-quality leads.
🎯 POWER TIP: Make a positive first impression by granting referred customers bonus points as soon as they join your loyalty program. With WooCommerce Loyalty Program, you can set this up in just a few clicks!
4. Rewards loyal customers and makes them feel valued
Loyal customers play a huge role in the growth of your business. Offering referral incentives gives you a tangible way to celebrate their support and loyalty to your brand. Instead of just rewarding purchases, referral points recognize the impact they make in helping your brand grow. Over time, this appreciation leads to stronger loyalty and a deeper community around your business.
5. Integrates seamlessly with your loyalty program
Referral points are built right into the WooCommerce Loyalty Program plugin, so there’s no need for extra tools to launch your referral system. You can easily configure how many points to give and who qualifies.
Even better, customers have a way to view all their earned points in the My Account Page, whether they earned them through purchases, reviews, or referrals. This creates a more exciting rewards experience that keeps them engaged and coming back for more.
Let’s explore exactly how to do that next!
New Feature Overview: How To Enable Loyalty Referral Points In WooCommerce
Are you ready to reward your most valued shoppers with referral points? In this section, we’ll walk you through how you can set up this new feature in our WooCommerce Loyalty Program plugin, and how the experience will look for your valued customers.
💡 IMPORTANT NOTE: Before following along, make sure you have installed, activated, and updated your plugin. If you haven’t done so already, you can get WooCommerce Loyalty Program here.
With that out of the way, let’s begin!
Enabling referral points in the plugin settings
To enable WooCommerce referral points, head to your WordPress Dashboard > Coupons > Loyalty Program > Settings.
Immediately after getting to your settings plugin settings area, you’ll notice a new “Referral” tab on the left-hand side. Click this tab to open the referral points settings. This is where you can configure how referral rewards work in your WooCommerce store:
Let’s break down what each option means:
- Points awarded to referrer on signup: Set how many points a customer should receive when someone signs up using their referral link. In the screenshot above, the referrer will earn 50 points when their referred customer creates an account in your store.
- Points awarded to referrer on purchase: This defines how many points to give when the referred customer makes their first purchase. In the example settings above, we set this to 100, which means the referrer will get rewarded once the referred customer completes their first purchase.
- Referral redirect URL: This is the page your customers’ referral link will send people to. Depending on your preferences, this can be your homepage, shop page, or a special landing page for new visitors.
- Disallowed User Roles: Here, you can disallow certain user roles (like wholesale customers or admins) from earning referral points.
- Disallowed Users: Likewise, you can exclude specific users from earning referral points.
💡 GOOD TO KNOW: Want to reward the referred customer too? Simply head to the Points Earning tab and set a signup reward for “Registering as a user/customer.” This option allows you to automatically award loyalty points to all new customers, including referred shoppers! It’s a great way to give a warm welcome to your loyalty program. Check out the setting below:
How customers can view their referral link and points
After setting up referral points in your WooCommerce store, shoppers can easily access their referral link in their My Account area.
Here’s how it works:
Customers can navigate to My Account > My Points. Here, they can see their available points balance, as well as the option to redeem them for store credits. This page also displays their unique referral link, which they can copy and share with friends and family to start earning referral rewards!
Under Points History, they can also view a detailed log of how they’ve earned points, including the rewards gained through referral activities. This gives them an overview of their points-earning journey with your store, encouraging them to stay engaged.
WooCommerce Loyalty Program gives your valued shoppers complete visibility and control over their points, redemptions, and referral tools. As a result, they’re empowered to actively participate in your loyalty program.
Best Practices When Setting Up WooCommerce Referral Points
After enabling referral points in your WooCommerce store, you’ll want to make sure you’re using the system to its fullest potential. Here are some simple tips to help you set up and manage your referral system effectively:
- Spread the word: Let customers know about your referral rewards! Highlight them in your customer emails, website banners, and relevant landing pages.
- Consider rewarding both the referrer and referred customer: With WooCommerce Loyalty Program, you can do both by setting points for the referrer (in the Referral tab) and using the general signup reward setting (under Points Earning) to automatically give points to new customers. This creates a win-win experience that motivates participation!
- Exclude internal or irrelevant users: You can use the “Disallowed User Roles” and “Disallowed Users” settings to prevent staff, test accounts, or ineligible roles from earning referral rewards.
- Combine with other loyalty rewards: You can encourage more engagement by combining referral points with other point-earning actions like leaving reviews, making purchases, or spending over a certain amount.
- Track and optimize: WooCommerce Loyalty Program helps you track the effectiveness of your system with a comprehensive report dashboard. From here, you can see the points redemption status, top sources of points, and top earning customers. Use this data to analyze how well your referral program is performing and tweak your strategy from there!
Related Read: How To Structure An Effective Reward Points System
Conclusion
Granting referral points is a powerful addition to your loyalty-building strategy. With WooCommerce Loyalty Program’s newest update, you can now offer referral points to shoppers who bring new customers to your store! In this comprehensive guide, we covered everything you needed to know about this new feature.
Here’s a quick recap of what we discussed:
- What are referral points?
- Why offer referral points?
- How to enable referral points in WooCommerce
- Best practices and tips
WooCommerce Loyalty Program allows you to launch a points-based rewards system in a few minutes. With this plugin, you can grant points for different customer actions such as purchases, reviews, signing up, and now, referrals! This update opens up a whole new way to connect with your customers and inspire long-term brand loyalty.
We hope this guide helped you out! Do you have any questions about this new feature? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you and help you get started. 😊
