Referral programs are effective ways to both encourage customer acquisition and promote customer retention.

There are plenty of statistics that show why customer referral programs are so effective. Here are a few popular ones:

• 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than any other form of marketing.

• People are 4 times more likely to buy something from a business when they are referred by a friend.

• Referral programs aid customer retention as well: they bring in loyal customers who stay with a business for longer periods of time.

• One Wharton study reports that referred customers are 18% more likely to stay than other customers.

With the attention span of the average person being a scant eight seconds, it’s best to offer engaged customers an incentive for referring friends as quickly as possible. Look for times when promoting your referral program will make the most impact, with the most efficient speed.

For example, you can send an email right after someone makes a purchase (when they’re highly engaged), asking them to refer-a-friend in exchange for an attractive reward. Or, even faster, you can launch a referral program pop-up immediately after the customer checks out.

If you send surveys or questionnaires to your customers, and you identify some key customer as prime promoters, you can also directly invite them to participate in your refer-a-friend program.

These days, we’re used to getting reminders – for appointments, meetings, scheduled deliveries, and more. Why not send a reminder to follow up with customers who were interested in the referral program? Some may have already signed up to the referral program, but simply forgotten about it. Send them a quick reminder. Let them know the program – and all its rewards – are still there.

Your follow-up message can be simple. Something like “Hope you’re enjoying our referral program” or “We’re excited to meet your friends” can be enough to remind them to refer their friends.

And if a customer has referred a friend, but the friend still seems on the fence about making a purchase from you, you could follow up with the friend and remind them of any reward that their peers sent through the referral program. Omsom provides a great example of a friend follow-up below (Referral software lets you do this automatically