Employee Referral programs can do wonders for a business as long as the company has a great employer brand.
Dropbox was founded in 2008. It now boasts over 300 million users. This growth is backed up by a $10 billion valuation because it uses a clever referral and social sharing reward marketing strategy.
Instead of advertising their product, Dropbox rewards users with extra storage when they refer friends.
Referrals are a huge benefit to any business, just ask the luminary marketer, John Jantsch.
Here are a few tips for creating a successful referral program for your pipeline.
Allow More of the Right People to Make Referrals
- Be creative with who can provide referral leads
- Allow referrers – whether internal, non-employee or recruiters – to refer outside of their own areas of expertise.
- Enlist clients, retired employees, and other stakeholders to refer leads.
Have different processes for Referred Candidates
- Rather than have all candidates handled by the same system, put referred leads in the fast lane for processing and evaluation.
- Make sure you let the referrer know you and what the status of their referral is – whether positive or negative.
- Provide the referrer with feedback on what made a good or otherwise lead so learning and refinement can take place.
Vary Reward Structures
- Dan Pink, author of Drive wrote: Humans respond to benefits as well as monetary again.
- Relate how good referrals strengthen a company’s prospects, underpinning job security company performance.
- Acknowledge and recognise a good referral via internal and external social sites, thank you notes, a special meal at a restaurant or via the company site.
- Set goals for team referrals. Create targets for the volume of referrals from given teams.
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