Building a Refer-A-Friend Referral Program using Marketo RTP

[Anonymous]

Happy New Year! Just curious if anyone has any experience building out a refer-a-friend program using Marketo RTP. This is our proposed setup for the campaign:

-We'd be using the RTP Dialog (with a form embedded) and it would function as a popup when a logged-in user lands on the checkout page on our website.

-RTP dialog pops up on checkout page and says something to effect of: "Save 10% Now! Simply refer a friend, and we'll send them a coupon for 10% off, too"

-Referrer fills in the form on the popup with the email address of their friend

-The friend receives an automated email with a coupon code and a message about "Hey your friend wants to save you 10% off!"

That above is all fairly simple. Here is where it gets a bit trickier. There are two options below:

1) Automatically apply 10% off the referrer's shopping cart once they fill out the form with their "friend's" email address (knowing that they might put in a bogus email or another one of their own email addresses rather than an actual new lead)

2) Referrer only receives the 10% off when their referred friend uses the 10% off code. So once the friend uses the 10% off code, the referrer will receive an automated email notifying them that the referral code has been activated.

The option #1 above is pretty simple. Option #2 requires some additional thought and logic...and I would welcome feedback if any of you have done a program similar to this.

Questions:

-How to create the the unique code or tracking ability so that the referrer's coupon is activated ONLY when the referred friend uses theirs?

-How to activate the coupon code...

-Is it possible to track the number of referrals per email address (and who they are)?

-Is this something that is possible with Marketo or will it require the use of a third party?

-Has anyone used RTP to deliver a popup in this way?

Thanks! Any suggestions, best practices, or thoughts are greatly appreciated!!

ADDITION: If anyone has experience implementing the #1 option above with success (or failure) I'd welcome that feedback too. Obviously, it is not as "sophisticated" an option, but curious if you have run it what the average bogus emails that would be submitted just so a person could get their 10% off automatically applied.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I think the question should be moved to Products​ as it's Marketo-product-specific.

Anyway, to begin...

That above is all fairly simple. Here is where it gets a bit trickier. There are two options below:

1) Automatically apply 10% off the referrer's shopping cart once they fill out the form with their "friend's" email address (knowing that they might put in a bogus email or another one of their own email addresses rather than an actual new lead)

2) Referrer only receives the 10% off when their referred friend uses the 10% off code. So once the friend uses the 10% off code, the referrer will receive an automated email notifying them that the referral code has been activated.

Well, those are very different offers, aren't they? #1 expressly gives the referrer 10% off regardless of whether the referree ever becomes a customer. It's just a matter of order-of-operations but which operations are required. If the intent is to reward someone for bringing in revenue then you obviously need #2.

As far as "coupon activation," this isn't going to happen in Marketo without a webhook to communicate across leads and keep fields updated. You could, for example, have a JSON field that stores a list of randomly generated coupon codes -- as there could be more than one -- issued to a lead over time for distribution to other leads. Pull a coupon code off the list whenever they make a referral and mark it as pending.  Push that code onto the new lead together with the referrer's email address. If it's finally used, call back into the referrer to update.

This kind of cross-lead communication is not native to Marketo, but you can put together something workable using a combo of triggered outbound webhooks and (unfortunately, given rate limits) inbound REST. Solid requirements/specifications are necessary. You should get a developer involved right away, so they can figure out what can and can't be done... lest your dreams get too big.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Sanford. This is great information. (And I moved this thread over to the Products section, too.) Would you recommend a Marketo-specific developer for this type of work, or is it something that our in-house developers (not Marketo certified devs) would be able to handle? Alternately, is it something that a somewhat non-technical Marketo Admin could learn fairly quickly and dive into? I've used webhooks with other marketing automation tools before so I do have familiarity with the capabilities, but come to think of it, I've typically worked closely alongside developers to execute.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It isn't something that either side could do alone, but if you bring your Marketo savvy together with an in-house dev who gets DoS vulnerabilities and knows how to code securely to a spec, you could pull it off together.

There's a real liability with this kind of project if people don't think about malicious use (I don't mean people getting discounts they didn't earn -- though that's of course part of the ecosystem, too -- but people jamming up the whole process at a technical level, whether or not they profit).

[Anonymous]

Sanford,
Pardon my continuous questions... but can you clarify what you mean by "people jamming up the whole process at a technical level"? Just trying to wrap my head around what would be involved/timelines, etc.

Thanks so much,

Katie

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'm talking about the discrete (and, in the world of modern security, very low) limits on the types of API calls you might think of using to make this work.

At a high level, let's just say: the seemingly easiest way would prove the most vulnerable. That's why your dev needs to apply defensive coding practices and avoid easy/fragile stuff in favor of a relatively solid, but more complex, approach.

(The above truisms apply to any Marketo project, or indeed to any software project, to be fair! But the way that data needs to criss-cross leads for your specific goals adds a multiplier effect that needs extra attention.)

[Anonymous]

Hi Katie,

I came across some of your post and thought to share our experience with you for Customer Referral Program built in Marketo.

Just to introduce, at Grazitti Interactive, we have helped 100+ customers with Marketo consulting to achieve their marketing goals.

I would be happy to connect on a call and answer your queries in detail, showcase few relevant examples and program flowchart.

Please feel free to reach me via email at shailendrap@grazitti.com or call at +1-650 417 9738

Thanks,

Shailendra Pratap

Marketo Consultant | Grazitti Interactive

M +1-650 417 9738 | E: shailendrap@grazitti.com

[SanfordWhiteman]

So do you have an answer that's relevant to this particular question? All I see is referral forms like we all build.

[Anonymous]

Hi Katie Beck​

The examples I shared earlier were for very basic referral programs. My apologies for posting incomplete details.

Option 1

For option 1, I saw that your website is currently on Wordpress. Are you planning to implement the new RTP widgets on that?

If yes, you would need a connector/integration between Marketo and Wordpress to ensure that when the user fill out the form with their "friend's" email address, and their shopping cart automatically implements 10% discount.

Option 2:

For the second option, you may not need to do integration between Marketo and Wordpress. When a user refers a friend, we can store friend's information in Marketo, and generate a random discount code for the user. This random code will be passed over to the friend's record, and inserted in the welcome email ("Hey your friend wants to save you 10% off!").

Later, when the friend uses the discount code from the referrer (assuming this will be tracked in CRM or some Marketo field), we can update the record of the referrer. Further, this can then trigger an email to the referrer telling that the referral code has been activated. This would surely involve development of at least 2-3 web hooks in Marketo, and some customization on the Salesforce side, if you are using that as your CRM.

Happy to set up a call with our Marketo technical team and share more details.

Regards

Shailendra

[Amanda_Thomas6]

Hi Katie Beck​, did you end up implementing this? How do you track the number of people that clicked on the link that was shared? We're looking to have a link for a refer a friend program, but want to report on the number of people one brings in with the link they shared. Since each link is unique to that person who is sharing it, we can't figure out a solution where we can report without asking them to fill out the name of the person who referred them.