A referral program to boost customer acquisition in the US

New customer growth had slowed massively. Referral marketing can drive significant new customer acquisition, with the potential to attract a loyal and profitable customer. Create a refer a friend acquisition channel initially for the US market, creating extra value for our loyal customers (referrers) and incentivise new customers first purchases (referees).

The interaction between the referrer and referee was a complex process. With this in mind, I created mobile web user journeys in Overflow to grasp the different routes and depict all the edge cases that we had to consider. The flow delved into the intricacies of the referral flow, like how the sharing link would appear on Facebook and what pre-determined text would be pasted in when composing an email. Essentially, the expansive flow depicted the complete journey from a referrer sharing a referral link, to a referee applying the code in checkout. The flow was integral for product managers and the development team.

The use of inviting and friendly imagery was a big part of the marketing program. Especially on desktop web, imagery was designed to take a centre stage and appeal to a prospective referrer or referee. I contacted the brand experience team requesting images that would fit this theme, making sure that the types of images evoked that sense of friendship. They gave me access to a range of studio images from the Collusion brand. These images worked well as the ASOS Collusion brand was a uni-sex clothing style, so the images portrayed male and female models posing together in a relaxed friendly manner. Preference testing was conducted to narrow down the variations of images that could be used. Images where the models were seemingly 'looking at the offer' were effective as the users eye-line would be drawn to the offer.

I produced an unmoderated user testing scenario for people in the US, with nine participants testing the referrer flow and another nine testing the referee flow. The majority of users stated that the referral discount of 10% was too little. This made sense as the US is a discount-driven nation, especially with extreme discounting on Black Friday. Users were also confused as to whether they had to enter their details or their friends details when signing up to the programme. In addition, the 'share by name' feature also caused confusion, as users thought they could simply enter their friends name in the promo code box to apply a discount. This was not the case.

It was agreed that positioning the offer in the post-checkout experience would be the best option to start with. With the feedback gained from the testing phase, the copy was made airtight, and the referral offer was increased to 15% for both the referrer and the referee. I designed native pop-up sliders for both iOS and Android, as well as crafting a simple pop-up animation for web to indicate how the module will display when a user arrives on the post-checkout screen. Similar to previous projects, edge cases were taken seriously, and transient error messages were set just in case the connection to Mention Me's API was not working. The referral programme is currently live to customers in the US. The next steps would be implementing the offer in other areas, such as the ASOS home page, as well as encouraging users to share more by giving them their very own referral dashboard in their My Account section.