The rewards you choose are arguably the most important thing in your referral program, so it's worth spending some extra time thinking about what you’ll offer.
Digital content? Unique coupons? T-shirts? Mugs?
SparkLoop makes the entire process super simple and intuitive. Plus, you can use our Printful integration, API, and webhooks to handle fulfilment of even the wildest of rewards!
Choosing your rewards
Though the best rewards for your specific use case may vary, there are some best practices we’ve identified from helping hundreds of newsletters.
Be generous
When it comes to referral programs, it's better to be generous than to be reasonable.
Your referral program is much more likely to succeed if you offer people rewards that are proportionate to the amount of effort required. For example, if you’re asking somebody to refer 10 friends, which is a substantial investment in terms of time and energy, make sure your reward is well worth the effort.
Start small
You don't need many rewards and you almost certainly don't need to have multiple swag, like The Morning Brew or TheHustle do.
In fact, the majority of our most successful customers have only one or two highly attractive rewards.
Attract the right people
No one is going to go out of their way to recommend you for a mediocre reward.
It defeats the purpose of having a referral program at all, and may actually cause you to lose customers if they think they’re being undervalued.
(Need help brainstorming reward ideas? Check out our rewards library.)
How to add a reward
To add a new reward to your referral program, go to the Rewards page in your dashboard and click on the button + Create new reward.
In the modal, enter:
Reward Name: What you'd like to call your reward.
Referrals: The number of referrals an advocate needs to make in order to win this reward.
Reward is recurring: There might be situations where you want a subscriber to win the same reward multiple times, for example, a 15% coupon code for every 3 referrals or an Amazon Gift Card for every 10 referrals.
In SparkLoop, these are called "recurring rewards.”
To set up a recurring reward, simply switch on the Recurring reward option.
Require manual approval: You can also choose whether the reward requires manual approval. Learn more about how to do this here.
Image: The rewards image you upload in SparkLoop will be used on your hosted referral hub page.
⚠️ These images won't automatically appear in your newsletter referral section. If you want to display the reward images in your emails, you must upload them in your newsletter.
Once you've made all the selections and entered in your choices, click on "Create reward" and you will be taken to the Reward Fulfilment page, where you can choose the type of reward you'd like to offer and how you'll be handling the delivery.
For detailed instructions on the fulfilment options, read this support article.
Review your Rewards
PLEASE NOTE: Your Rewards Page is easily accessible once you have completed your Referral Program's onboarding checklist. But to see the Rewards you've created prior to completing the onboarding checklist, do the following:
1. Click on the 'Set up reward fulfilment' step in the onboarding checklist
2. Click the 'Show me how to do it' button
3. In the modal that appears, click on the 'Rewards page' linked text (see image below).
Multiple rewards
In case multiple rewards are triggered at the same time, the subscriber will get all the rewards in one go.
For instance, consider a referral program with 2 rewards:
Reward X for every 2 referrals.
Reward Y at 6 referrals.
A subscriber who refers 6 friends will get both reward Y for having referred 6 friends and reward X because 6 is a multiple of 2.
You'll want to tell your subscribers when they've won a reward. You can do that with this handy guide to automating reward emails.
Activating your reward
By default, your reward is saved as a draft. In order for it to be live and ready to send, you need to activate it.
You'll be able to do so once you've chosen fulfilment options and decided on how you'll send your reward emails.
And that's it. Your rewards are set up, ready to be delivered, and just waiting to be won.