Sharing big ideas in the Big Apple

Earlier this month we gathered together with some great retail brands in the beautiful Langham Hotel in New York. The reason? To host our first US referral marketing breakfast.

We’ve successfully run these events in the UK for several years. With more international brands using our unique referral platform we decided to share our learnings across the pond.

We were joined by top marketing professionals talking about the referral programmes for fashion and furnishing brands Scotch & Soda and Swoon Editions. In addition the ex VP of Marketing from the Moret Group spoke about her experience of driving customer acquisition via referral.

Key takeaways from the morning

Isabelle Schweich: referral insights from Swoon Editions

We were joined by Isabelle who had previously worked at Swoon Editions and shared her insights at our last referral breakfast in London in October 2017.

• Before working with Mention Me, they had a referral programme, but they found it incredibly static and processing incentives was a laborious process
• The Mention Me solution stood out because of the AB testing capability supported by a great team. This is not to be underestimated if you work in a lean team.
• Integration took just 4 weeks (including a week off for skiing!)

The programme delivers great results:

• Initially sceptical about “name sharing” functionality it has now proven to be one of their leading channels for referrals
• This mechanism is also great for working with other channels such as the Influencer programme.
• It also enabled the inclusion of referral as a call to action in direct mail, so bridging the gap between offline and online
• AOV on first time orders from new referred customers is 40% higher than the AOV from new customers acquired via other channels

Nicole Romito: talking about the referral experience at Scotch & Soda

The brand has grown through word of mouth, so launching referral marketing was a natural move to capture that advocacy

• Typically Scotch & Soda is a full price brand with no discounting outside of main sales. Referral offered the opportunity to incentivise customers for an action - spreading the brand.
• Nicole loves the fact that she can upload campaign imagery for social sharing. Whereas normally you pay for social placements, this is something you get for free and customers sharing it on social feels really organic.
• It is easy to get a new customer who makes a one-off purchase at sale time, but do you really want those customers? Referral customers are “customers from our best customers” and really valuable. This is demonstrated by the higher AOV they deliver.

Register your interest if you missed out but would be interested in future referral marketing breakfasts.