Finding a cost-effective way to grow your ecommerce audience through word-of-mouth (that actually works!) isn’t easy.
Fortunately, that’s the exact problem ReferralCandy sets out to solve.
The number one thing that sets it apart from other referral tools floating around is that it’s a turnkey tool that guides you through the referral process without needing to have any developer know-how.
It’s there to help you customize how you want to award referral rewards, protect yourself against referral fraud, and grow your referral base.
Below we dive deep into the pros and cons of ReferralCandy as well as its overall reputation and its most useful features.
ReferralCandy Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easy no-code setup
- Offers referral analytics so you always know how your campaigns perform
- Easy-to-use templates you can customize to your liking
- Mobile-first customer experience
- Developer-friendly tools for greater customization through HTML and CSS
- Prevents referral fraud by automatically banning fishy referral activity
- Automations allow you to promote referral programs on autopilot
- Lets you create referral landing pages
- Makes it easy to add trackable referral links to newsletters
- Integrates with the biggest ecommerce platforms
Cons
- Some find ReferralCandy difficult to customize
- Can be a costly investment for up-and-coming businesses
- Customer success support could be better
ReferralCandy Features
ReferralCandy is a pretty straightforward referral tool that does what it says it does. Likewise, its features reflect that. Here’s an in-depth look at some of its best ones:
Referral Templates
You’ve got to love templates when you’re building sales tools. And with a referral program, it’s no different. ReferralCandy offers plenty of templates that can help you get started building a referral workflow that’ll bear results.
Its out-of-the-box templates help you navigate setting up your first referral offers.
They’re a great jumping-off point if you aren’t experienced with referral offers and want a solid starting point. It can take as little as 10 minutes to get everything set up. You’re able to choose your preferred reward, whether that’s a store discount you give as a thank you for referring a friend or a cash payout.
Thankfully, you aren’t just limited to store discounts or cash payouts. ReferralCandy makes it easy to create custom rewards, whether you’re using a template or starting from scratch.
Fraud Prevention
While fraud might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a referral program, it’s definitely something you want to watch out for. As safe and foolproof as your referral offer can be, there are always users out there that’ll try to play the system to receive more rewards than they’re really due.
ReferralCandy recently integrated new features where you can detect fraudulent referral activity. These features allow you to monitor referral spikes from specific users, and make sure users don’t create self-referrals. These fraud detection features are definitely must-haves.
Referral Analytics
What would a referral system be without any analytics that clue you in on how your referral system is actually doing? ReferralCandy lets you know about any new sales you make from referrals as well as what your top traffic sources are.
Better yet, you can also see who your top referrers are and what they’re saying about your brand on social platforms. It’s easy to see how this can be a helpful insight for any business, big or small. It’s data like this that can help you make more informed decisions that don’t kill your budget and help you grow.
Cross-Promotion Tools
A big part of successfully managing a referral program is letting people know it exists. There are a ton of different places you can let customers know about your referral offer to increase the number of referrals you receive.
These are places like:
- Your landing pages
- Customer checkout pages
- Your business newsletter
- Your signup forms
- Your store pop-ups
ReferralCandy lets you embed your referral offer in any of these places. For example, once your customers are finished checking out, you can set up ReferralCandy so that it automatically integrates a popup letting each of your customers know about your referral offer.
From there they can either join your referral program or opt in at a later time. In emails, ReferralCandy lets you include referral links that’ll entice your customers to refer you to their friends and family. You can imagine how trying to do this from scratch can be hard if you aren’t a developer. It can be especially hard to keep track of it all with a larger customer base as it has the potential to get tedious and too time-consuming rather quickly.
This is what makes ReferralCandy such a valuable tool for any ecommerce business regardless of the niche or industry it operates in. It streamlines the process of creating referral campaigns that are tracked, managed, and accounted for in one place. It also removes the need to have any advanced developer knowledge.
Workflow Automation
Automation is the glue that holds ReferralCandy’s referral workflow together. Once you’ve onboarded ReferralCandy and you’ve built your referral program exactly how you want it, you can set the automation guidelines and then let ReferralCandy do its thing in the background.
While it’s winning you sales and a new customer base from your existing one, you can focus on running other, more urgent parts of your business.
ReferralCandy’s automation options help you with time-consuming tasks like:
- Police and prevent referral fraud when it happens
- Track your most prolific referrers
- Know exactly where most of your referral traffic comes from
- Promote your referral program to any and all your customers
Personalized Referral Emails
With ReferralCandy you can personalize the email process. Uploading your brand’s logo and banners to emails and pages makes brand recognition easier. You can also choose your own brand colors and fonts for additional personalization. Once you add some copy of your own that speaks to your customers, you’ll be ready to send your email blasts.
As far as sending emails goes, ReferralCandy integrates with email marketing apps that help you get the job done. Email is an integral part of any ecommerce store’s marketing plan. With ReferralCandy, you can be sure you’re covered on that front.
App Integrations
If your store’s platform doesn’t integrate with ReferralCandy, it’s pretty much a no-go. However, ReferralCandy integrates with some of the biggest ecommerce platforms around, including:
- Shopify
- Shopify Plus
- WooCommerce
- Magento
- BigCommerce
- ReCharge
- PayWhirl
- Bold
- Cratejoy
- Volusion
- LimeLight
- Celery
- 3DCart
- LearnWorlds
ReferralCandy also offers JS integration and API integrations for developers to create custom integrations.
One downside? It doesn’t yet seem to integrate with Zapier. As Zapier is such a handy tool for any businesses’ tech stack that wants more control over integrations, hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before this happens. ReferralCandy is pretty good about adding new features as it listens to customer feedback.
ReferralCandy Pricing and Package Options
ReferralCandy’s two pricing tiers are pretty clear cut. Most small businesses can gain from its $49 a month plus commission tier.
However, you don’t have to plunge into a paid ReferralCandy plan right away. You have the chance to try it free for the first 30 days to really get a feel for how well it can work for you.
- Premium – Billed monthly at $49 a month plus commission
- Enterprise – Billed annually at $3,999 a month
To help with estimating the referral cost process, especially since it’s a base monthly charge of $49 plus any commission, ReferralCandy offers you a handy referral calculator that helps you look at how much you’d possibly spend and gain if you use it.
Our recommendation? You should totally take advantage of the calculator to get a better idea of the tradeoff you’d be making by signing up and using it. From there, it becomes easier to have peace of mind in knowing you’re making a sound investment. Check out its referral calculator here.
ReferralCandy Reputation
Like virtually every other business tool out there, ReferralCandy comes with plenty of its own tradeoffs. Though generally, user sentiment is positive. Users love how ReferralCandy makes it easy to generate an additional customer base through existing customers at a cost-effective rate.
However, the number one complaint users do have is how customizable ReferralCandy can be. It seems to be limited in that department, despite claiming the opposite. In the end, it seems like you really have to do some digging to go through the process of customizing your pages and pop-ups beyond the basics.
Beyond that, it can be a little hard to test how well your referral setup works internally. Some users do lament the fact that you can’t quite create simultaneous referral campaigns in different currencies. It’s a feature that would come in handy for international ecommerce brands trying to grow their customer base.
Also, keep in mind that ReferralCandy’s payout options, if that’s one of the ways you decide to reward customers, can be limited to PayPal. If your business is looking for additional payout alternatives as part of the automated process, this might be something to keep in mind when you’re trying to decide whether to go with a tool like ReferralCandy or a competitor.
You also don’t have the ability to batch remove a set of customers or export large amounts of data easily. Overall, ReferralCandy has a solid loyal customer base that loves the features it offers. Though that doesn’t come without pointing out some of the areas it falls short in.
Features like being able to create brand ambassadors or working with an automated points system aren’t its strong suits. However, there are other referral tools that are better equipped to cater to those types of referral systems.
Summary
As a referral tool that takes care of the basics, especially for storefronts with more than 100 monthly transactions, ReferralCandy can be the tool that gets the job done. It’s not too complex to where it’s overwhelming for small to midsize ecommerce stores, and for the most part it’s relatively intuitive to use.
However, if you’re looking for a more varied array of tools, or referral systems with a bit more flexibility, below are three alternatives worth looking into.
Smile.io is a referral tool built around the idea of increasing brand loyalty. How? By enabling you to award customer points, allowing you to offer customer VIP status, and helping you increase your referral rates. It’s built to be intuitive to use for both you and your customers and comes with more pricing options. You can start using it for free and have access to its customer points and reward email features here.
A B2B referral program is no doubt different from a referral program you’d use in a B2C setting (which is what ReferralCandy is built for). So if you’re looking for a powerful B2B option that helps you build product awareness through your existing customer base, you might want to take a closer look at Influitive. You can easily request a demo to learn more about Influitive here.
Talkable is all about creating sustainable growth through referral programs your customers can truly appreciate. This means you can create brand ambassadorships as you target and reward your most loyal customers. It also easily integrates with some of the most popular ecommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. To learn more about Talkable’s pricing, you’ll have to book a demo here.
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