Tip: Increase referrals by using an altruistic CTA

The chance to help a friend can be a more powerful incentive than a financial reward. If you've got a referral program, make it more effective with a call to action that emphasizes what's in it for the recipient.

Word-of-mouth tends to be intrinsically motivated, so extrinsic incentives (like financial rewards) can sometimes hold a referral program back. The trick is to bring your incentives into closer alignment with your customer's intrinsic motivation by emphasizing their friend's reward: "Give $X off to a friend and you'll get $X too" or even "Refer a friend to give them $X off." In one study, using this type of altruistic CTA in a referral program increased the likelihood of a customer making at least one referral by 60%. And both the total number of referrals and the conversion rate of new customers increased by 86%.