Intro
I've seen thousands of newsletter operators launch a referral program to grow their audience.
And — the truth is — most fail.
Which sucks... because setting up a newsletter referral program isn't as quick & easy as running free recommendations or adding a Partner Program to grow your newsletter.
No, a referral program takes time and energy. And — if it flops — it's easy to feel a bit embarrassed for failing in front of your entire audience.
So, before you go to all the effort of designing your referral program and creating rewards, I recommend taking a few minutes to figure out if a referral program would work for your newsletter.
Here is the simple test I run with clients (to save them $$$ and hours of wasted work)👇
Pre-Referral Test: Will readers share your newsletter?
Referral programs work as a growth multiplier...
The rewards incentivise your existing audience to share more, and more frequently.
With a good program, you'll amplify your "organic" sharing by anywhere from 5-20x.
But referral programs aren't magic.
If only a tiny % of your audience is willing to share your newsletter "just because" they love it... even the best rewards in the world won't fix it.
(20x a tiny number is still a tiny number)
In my experience, most newsletter operators overestimate how good their newsletter is (and how many readers would want to share it).
So — before starting work on your referral program — you should run a quick test to establish your "organic sharing baseline".
In other words... "are enough readers willing to share my newsletter, that it would be worth giving them rewards to do so?"
Here's how to run the test...
Step 1: Create Your Sample Audience
Next time you send your newsletter, wait a few hours and create a "test" segment of ~1000 subscribers who opened the newsletter.
(if you don't have enough subscribers for that, just include everyone)
Step 2: Send Them A Poll
Send your test audience an email poll with the following options:
(most newsletter platforms have in-built polling tools. Otherwise you can use SparkLoop's free reactions tool)
For readers who click on 1-3 stars, send them to a form where they can share feedback and suggest improvements (Google Forms are free and work fine).
What we really care about are readers who give a 4-5 ⭐️ rating.
Send these readers to a different form, prompting them to share your newsletter:
If you want, you can ask people who click "not right now" for more details on why they won't share. This can help identify issues with the newsletter and its perception.
Readers who click "yes, sure" should be taken to a thank-you page with 2-3 sharing options:
Step 3: Analyze Results
Based on the results of your poll + survey, you can quickly estimate how successful a "good" referral program would be for your newsletter...
- Check in your form tool to see how many people clicked the "yes, sure I'll share" button
- Calculate this as a percentage of your test sample audience. Eg if you sent the poll email to 1000 people and 100 of them clicked the "yes, sure I'll share" button, your "Will Shares" percentage is 100/1000 = 10%.
- Use the table below (based on our years of experience running newsletter referral programs at SparkLoop) to predict how successful a "good" referral program would be for your newsletter 👇
For example:
If 30/1000 polled subscribers say they would share, you have a "will share" value of 3%.
That means — with a really good referral program — you can expect something like 2-5% of your readers to try and share with friends.
And your newsletter to grow something like 5-10% faster than it was before.
Should You Launch A Referral Program?
At the end of the day, it's your decision.
But — in most cases — if your test left you with a "bad" or "average" rating, you probably won't get a good ROI on your referral program. There are much better places to invest your time and money.
A "great" or "exceptional" rating on the other hand is a clear green light to go ahead and launch your referral program.
And I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that in next week's newsletter, for free.
