23 Best eCommerce Referral Program Strategies, Ideas & Optimisations (2025)

💬 I'm a big fan of doing referral/refer-a-friend programs for eCommerce brands for many reasons - some of the key ones being:

• It can help bring down overall CAC for new first-time customers (compared to other paid channels)
• Helps bring in more 'higher quality' audiences/customers - which in turn can lead to higher retention and overall LTV (seen these segments do tend to perform well over time)
• Gratification and one-to-many potential with two-sided for existing customers - meaning, top customers will naturally  to share/be motivated
• When it's firing, it can serve as a competitive adv. in acquisition - as it becomes a 'harder' channel to challenge (and helps with natural WOM - a key objective for any brand)

And the good news is, whether you've got one setup or not, there are many 'quick wins' and cost-effective tests that you can trial - just even small tweaks can lead to an uptick in positive result.

Many low-cost initiatives and 'easy to implement' eCommerce referral experiments to improve program performance

💬 With the below, I highlight many tests/experiments you can try (whether you're starting out or have a mature program in place) - I also make sure to share references and software vendors to consider to help with implementation.

When it comes to focus on who's best to promote your referral offering too - you should be focusing on your top segments of customers (i.e. those who have purchased multiple times).

You should see a greater % uptake against most other segments due to the fact they've bought multiples times, so they know your brand, your product, the experience overall, etc - so naturally, the sentiment of this segment is high.

I've mentioned this before across a few checklist categories I've written - there are numerous options for referral software to help create a slick UX from end-to-end across a few capabilities - and it's not just great UX for the customers/referrer, but also for the manager of the program (i.e. marketing managers, etc).

‍Note: the bare minimum capabilities you need to have to make an eCommerce referral program run smoothly are analytics, link tracking, email automation, rewards/perks, design and integration(s).

Here are three very good referral software products for eComm you gotta check out:

#1 - Superfiliate

• In terms of referral software recommendations, you've got to check out Superfiliate - only came across these guys not long ago and have to say I am super impressed with the UX and features. Really clean and they've got some epic brands on board who are getting very good results.
• Here's an example below that you checkout for Glamnetic

#2 - Friendbuy

• Another very good option to assess is Friendbuy, who are you can see have some massive brands that use the platform.
• They've got some great features, and the widget UX is quite nice.

#3 - Gather Customers

• The Gather platform I've had great experiences with, and is one of the best when it comes to multi-tiered referral campaigns - it's pretty robust and has great analytics/tracking features.
• Great widget as well with pop-ups and sharing capabilities across email, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.

If you're wanting to do some further research into referral tools, I put together a guide on some of the top recommendations I suggest. :)

One of the biggest missed opportunities I've seen with many brands is when they have a referral program, but they do a subpar job when it comes to their referral landing page.

And honestly, there are many small wins that are worth testing to see if you can drive more opt-ins.

These are some of the key design/copy elements that you should have which I've seen work well to help drive greater % of opt-ins:

• Clear how it works process (images/icons and succinct copy)
• Social proof - reviews, number of referral done, etc
• Rewards and incentives laid out properly
• FAQs - to the point

So what do some 'slick' eComm referral landing pages look like? Here are some I gathered that I quite like.

#1 - Fatty15

‍

• Really beautiful landing page overall from Fatty15 - well structured, clear instructions/steps on how it works, nice FAQ accordions, and most importantly, clear offer section. I also quite like the above fold video embed with the "recommendations" - nice social proof element.

#2 - Koh

• This is a fantastic 'refer a friend' landing page example from Aussie brand Koh. Great UX structure in place that's easy to follow, succinct messaging/copy and imagery choice/quality is great. Good to have the USPs placed at the bottom as well as a reminder.

#3 - The Body Shop

• Nice page design/structure here from The Body Shop - in this case, they use a product called 'Mention Me', and have placed their dynamic embed at the top, before they share the rest of the info about their program.

#4 - Institchu

• One of my favourite tailors (and brands) here in Aus is called Institchu, and they've done a great job with their page UI/UX. Kept it simple with three main sections, with clear offer at the top, how it works (with nice illustrations to showcase), and then rounding out with a CTA.

#5 - Koala

• Like the simplicity here from Koala - love the headline and looks good on mobile.

If you're going to do a referral program, biggest recommendation is to have a two-sided incentive system in place - i.e. both the referrer and the referred both get rewarded, when the referred makes their first purchase - it helps motivate both parties to take the desired action.

And there are other numerous reasons why this works well having this two-sided system in place:

• Quality of customers being referred I've found over the years to be good quality (where they keep coming back - great for LTV)
• Better conv. rates in terms of other segments (as they trust the person they are referring in most cases)
• It's scalable and is "one to many" - which means the referrer who loves your brand, can invite others and they can get rewarded further
• It's cost-effective, as the unit economics can be good in regards to CAC - even if rewarding both sides, it can be a lower CAC compared to other channels, such as paid

Now two-sided is typically what I recommend for earlier-stage brands kicking off with a program initiative like this for the first time, but there's a big opportunity there as you scale, which are multi-tiered rewards.

Basically, it's in many ways like a loyalty program (where you get points/perks for different actions), but in the sense for referrals.

A classic one is where you get rewarded with new products/swag when you refer X amount (get a reward for referring 3, get a new reward for 10, etc).

However, they can be hard/complex to setup, so you gotta invest time/resources in the right software (and there are a few decent options) for this.

I recommend checking out Gather customers (as mentioned above).

There are a couple of software solutions for this worth checking out incl. Gather Customers (see above in point #2) and Superfiliate (see also in point #2).

I actually came across a site called Hiya having the Superfiliate widget and I was quite impressed - felt smooth and it looked good.

This is a good tactic worth testing, but hadn't come across many tools that natively do this with a good UX (unless you setup a Klaviyo/Zapier sort of automation workflow) - however, I came across that Okendo (a customer marketing platform that does reviews management, etc) does this which is cool.

• This is also another platform of choice for doing referrals for your brand with great features (learn more here).

Two things here:

• First, a somewhat no brainer to mention here, but you have to make your program clear in the first place on your site if you want to increase uptake.
• Second, make it clear within your email automations (not all, but key promotional/nurture or cross-sell emails) with a CTA.

Here's an example from Tradsey incl. a CTA for their referral program in their shipping email (so easy to add).

This is more of a strategic consideration checklist point I wanted to raise for those who have a loyalty program in place.

‍When it comes to loyalty program members/customers, how can you spur referrals?

Well, the likes of have Frank Body (who do amazing marketing) have done this with their "Hotel Pink" loyalty program, where one of the incentives for members is getting "+50" points for referring a friend.

Also, this loyalty landing page is one of the best I've seen (kudos to their team!).

If you're looking for software that can help incorporate rewards for referring friends as part of a loyalty program, then the likes of Friendbuy can do this.

A big component of making this initiative perform well and be more effective as an acquisition source for new customers are through frequent promotions - it certainly doesn't have to be the core CTA, but it should be another secondary/subtle CTA option - plus, it serves as a good reminder for all customer types.

So, sharing the message and CTA about your referral program through the likes of email and SMS campaigns can help with more uptake.

There are various tests/optimisations (with many being small in nature) that you can do to optimise email flows (on both sides) that can drive improvements.

In fact, I wrote a dedicated checklist on this that you can check out with other inspo for emails with optimisation/best practices. :)

Also related to emails as part of the system, you need to optimise emails when people share, and measure the engagement - such as open rates of the emails being shared, clicks, and ultimately conversions.

Check out the checklist I mentioned in the above point. :)

Giving options is a good thing if possible, as ultimately many people use social platforms for messaging friends - for instance, the likes of WhatsApp sharing and FB/Meta sharing is recommend.

Here's a good example from Friendbuy with their templates (as you can see in the image from their product page).

As mentioned earlier, it's one thing to have an initiative like this in place, but it only really performs when you do distribution - and influencers, plus ambassadors for your brand, can be an effective way to get the message out.

I created a promotions checklist when working with influencers and ambassadors (for all types of campaigns), which is helpful to think of potential angles to test.

Luckily enough for anyone who runs a physical store (or even do the likes of a pop-up store), there's software available to help facilitate this.

And one of those software options is Reelo, where it has the capabilities to do QR codes for the likes of restaurants, and setup a 'refer a friend' campaigns - a solid option for any physical store (i.e. retail, pop-ups, etc) owners reading this.

This is more an experiment consideration to test a different offer for driving uptake - this is dependent though on the pop-up software solution you're using.

Recommendation: A/B split-test with a referral offer and some other offer - and then layer the segmenting based on website/customer behaviour - for example, existing customers vs first-time visitors.

A small UX experiment to try on the website is a 'hover' button - like this example below.

It's worth testing between different placements across the site and measuring CTR.

(just like the example I shared above with Hiya and the Superfiliate product).

An experiment worth testing for those who run quiz funnels for acquisition, is creating a custom offer for those who don't convert from the custom cart offer (based on the quiz results).

Make sure to check out via the growth checklists my resources on quiz optimisations. :)

Having a referral system in place doesn't need to be just focused on two-sided and the typical offers you normally see.

You can use a system like this as part of a larger acquisition campaign - one being viral competitions.

It's been an initiative where some eCommerce brands have had big success with - just like this brand Waiakea that got over 62,000+ emails (wow!).

It's worth doing some further research into other tools/brands who have executed these strategies.

Helpful resource: I created this tools resource for the best viral competition tools (worth checking each out and learn more about what's possible).

Something to bare in mind for those who sell globally into different markets, is that it's recommended to plan out referral offers based on the geo-location.

Note: this is more for brands who are doing serious volume of transactions/sales - hard to test with smaller stores/sample sizes of customer transactions.

Now this isn't something I have seen in practice really before, but it's an idea worth thinking about.

Related to the likes of the multi-tiered reward systems, it's worth thinking about doing some sort of "challenge" to encourage existing customers to share their referral links during a period of time.

For instance, like a 30-day period where people can receive normal referral incentives, but there are bonus perks in place for the amount of referrals.

For example, "Receive both $20 off" and then for every 3 successful referrals, you get a bonus $40...

Of course, you never stop tweaking/optimising where possible for an initiative like this.

Ultimately, you start to see results as your customer database grows and have a decent sample size of customers to constantly run mini-experiments too (ideally at 10k+ customers).

A good experiment worth trying is doing an offer via post purchase - as a key tip/reminder, I'd be doing an offer like this with conditions, such as repeat customers (just have to be mindful not to affect any key objectives/goals you have with AOV and post-purchase upsells).

Here's an example of what a pop-up could look like from 'Invite Referrals' (see more info here).