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Leverage the power of audience-segmented referral campaigns to target specific subsets of your customer base. With tailored messaging and rewards, you can maximize the impact of your referral programs by offering personalized experiences that speak directly to your audience.

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Key Considerations

When designing an audience-driven campaign, ask yourself the following questions.

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How would you like to reach your audience?

  • Directly with a promotional email
  • General onsite CTAs
  • CTAs behind login

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How do you send events to Extole?

  • Daily files
  • Onsite tags
  • API

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How are you defining the audience?

  • Audience file set up in Extole’s My Audiences
    • Static one-time upload
    • Updated daily via SFTP
    • Updated real-time via API
  • Extole audience dynamically generated by scheduled reports
    • Successful advocates
    • Referred friends
    • Biggest network
  • Attributes passed via a tag or request
    • Specific locale or domain
    • Behavior on profile

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Supported Program Designs for Targeted Audiences

We support three program designs that cover the majority of use cases for targeted programs. *Restriction Level: Low - Invites sent to select audience, no technical rules built in to restrict sharing *. This program design is perfect if you want to extend a limited-time referral offer to a specific audience. It entails creating a program where an exclusive invite email is sent to the targeted users, promoting the special offer. The audience is then uploaded, and the email is sent directly to them. Key Features:
  • Any shares generated from these invites will qualify for the higher-value offer.
  • Users outside the targeted audience will still see the evergreen campaign on-site, but only those with the invite will have access to the special offer.
  • No participation validation is in place, meaning anyone with the link can participate.
Best For:
  • Early access campaigns
  • Simple audience campaigns
However, since invites can be forwarded, this program design is not a great option if you want to run an exclusive offer.

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Eligibility-Based Referral Programs (loose privileges)* Restriction Level: High - Only identified users in the selected/uploaded audience are permitted to share. Others may see the CTAs but will not be allowed to share. *If you want to create a more restricted campaign where participation is limited to a specific audience, like employees, this program design lets you set up a participation rule based on an email address or other identifying information.

Key Features:
  • Participants must enter an email address or other identifier that links them to the selected audience.
  • This is ideal for programs where only certain customer groups are eligible to share, such as employees or partners.
  • You can promote the referral program via various channels, including intranet, onboarding emails, or partner communications.
Best For:
  • Employee referral programs
  • VIP or partner-only campaigns

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Customized Offers for Logged-In Advocates (tight privileges)* Restriction Level: Very high - Only identified users will see the CTAs to share, and only those selected will be permitted to complete the share.*

This program design is the most secure and integrated option, allowing you to target logged-in advocates with customized offers based on their profile data and behavior. This is the most integrated approach and is only available for Extole clients where all CTAs and share experiences are behind a login, making it ideal for highly targeted campaigns. Key Features:
  • The offer displayed is tailored to the advocate’s eligibility and profile.
  • This is particularly useful for re-engaging past advocates or segmenting offers based on product type, or customer attributes
  • Advocates are authenticated through login using an identifier that could be matched to the audience or using data attributes as passed in the tags or API
Best For:
  • Re-engagement of previous advocates
  • Highly personalized referral campaigns
  • Advocates who have never shared before

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FAQs

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How do I establish program priority when there are multiple programs the participant qualifies for?

Advocates should always be targeted to the most exclusive program they are eligible for. For example, if an advocate is eligible for both the evergreen referral program and a program with a higher offer targeted to advocates with at least one successful referral, they should see the higher offer program.

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How do I handle “offline” aspects of my program, such as in-branch referrals or sales-generated leads?

Referrals created offline will be targeted by default to the evergreen campaign. We do recommend special targeting for referral events generated offline.