Article · Article, about 10 minute read

Best Time to Ask for a Referral: Mapping It to the Customer Journey

Raul Galera · ReferralCandy Free Beginner

The whole game with referrals is timing: ask at the moment someone has just felt the value, not at signup or on a random login. This is a tactical guide that maps specific trigger points (right after a positive experience, a delivered order, a high NPS score, a milestone) to where they sit in the customer journey. Use it to place your share prompt at the exact point of realized value instead of blasting everyone the same ask.

  • Ask right after the user experiences value (order delivered, milestone hit, a 9 or 10 NPS), not during awareness or checkout when they have nothing to vouch for yet.
  • Contextual, in the moment prompts feel like part of the product and pull far higher quality referrals than a generic email campaign.
  • Segment by satisfaction first: send the ask to your happiest, most engaged users before widening it.
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It answers 2 questions

  1. My product spreads a bit by word of mouth. How do I make that intentional instead of luck?
  2. Why do so many referral programs flop even when the product is good, and how do I avoid that?

Read with it

  1. If you want word of mouth to be intentional, start with why people share at all. Berger's research pins it down to six... Jonah Berger (Wharton) Book · Book, about 256 pages Contagious: Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger
  2. This is the piece that separates organic word of mouth from an engineered viral loop, and shows you how to actually design one.... andrewchen.com Essay · Long essay, about 15 minute read What's Your Viral Loop? Understanding the Engine of Adoption Andrew Chen
  3. This is the most direct answer to the question: it names the seven failure modes (weak visibility, misaligned rewards, too much... ReferralCandy Article · ~15 min read 7 Common Reasons Referral Programs Fail (and How to Fix Them) Raul Galera
  4. The Dropbox case is the cleanest example of a referral program that worked because of design, not luck, so it is the right... GrowSurf Essay · ~12 min read The Dropbox Referral Program: 3900% Growth in 15 Months Sandra Petrova
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