Cooperation can be tracked and automated.
If you are building a partner network with other companies, stores, or specialists, and your store, products, or services are recommended — this can be tracked. At the same time, no one will be forgotten when paying partner rewards.
What is a referral program?
A referral system – is customer acquisition based on recommendations.
The person who recommends – the referrer, receives bonuses or a reward for attracting customers.
Referral programs are available to all business industries.
How to find a referrer?
Recommendations or «word of mouth» — are one of the most effective sales tools. When looking for a product, buyers search online for advice, recommendations for good service, and ways to save money.
Referrers – partners can be:
Bloggers. Their task — mentions and recommendations of products on social networks, YouTube, or TikTok. To link recommendations in such cases, promo codes are most often used.
Opinion leaders. These are people with a large number of engaged followers. As a rule, they cooperate with brands whose products they use themselves – they openly recommend them, vouching for the brand with their reputation.
Media — news or niche platforms that place information about a brand on their website for regular rewards or purchases. Buyers in such cases are tracked by referral links — web links with special tags that determine that the customer came from this particular website.
Niche specialists – those who use products from your store for their work. For example, stylists – for cosmetics stores, or foremen – for construction stores.
Partner companies in related fields, partner stores, neighboring stores – those with whom you do not compete, but can cooperate and recommend each other. For example, from the classics – this is the interaction between a doctor and a pharmacy, in retail – an auto parts store and a service center, a cosmetics store and a beauty salon, a coffee shop and a store selling coffee machines.
How to use a referral system to increase customer loyalty?
In Marketing → Customers, you can view a report on partner-referrers and their employees — how many and which customers were brought by a particular partner.
Based on this information, the business owner can:
- pay rewards to partners when a certain number of attracted customers is reached,
- create special offers for the partner's customers, joint marketing campaigns,
- assign individual discounts to customers,
- send personalized mass mailing,
- hold promotions for such customers, involve them in the club discount system.
What is needed to track partner recommendations?
- Torgsoft accounting program Ultra or Terminal.
- Additional option «Referral system: tracking partners and recommendations».
How to track partners and their employees in Torgsoft?
Add partners to the list: Settings → Partner-referrer, (and in Settings → Counterparty, Marketing → Intermediaries, if regular payments to the partner for customer purchases are planned).
If referrals are handled by different employees of the referrer, they also need to be added: Settings → Referrer employee.
When a customer comes by recommendation, create a customer card, issue a discount card, and link the customer to the referrer: Marketing → Customers → Other.
How to track mutual settlements with a partner?
Online trade: sale in Trade with invoice issuing.
One-time payments to the partner
Issue an invoice to the customer → create an expenditure invoice → in Marketing — Customers sort customers by referrer → pay the partner a reward for the customer → link the payment to the partner as an expense to the expenditure invoice — this way you will see the real profit on the invoice, and in Marketing — Intermediaries — the amounts of payments to the partner.
Percentage payments after each purchase: balance control with intermediaries
Marketing — Intermediaries: set the referrer's percentage depending on the type of product.
Next steps:
Issue an invoice to the customer → in the invoice settings, Invoice form – select To customer through intermediary (customer pays).
After payment of the invoice and creation of the expenditure invoice, in Marketing → Intermediary → Balance with intermediaries you will see the amount that needs to be paid to the referrer.
Sale in store: Sales mode
When selling a product, scan the customer's discount card and complete the sale.
There are two options for tracking mutual settlements with a partner:
1. At the time of settlement with partners, in the Marketing — Customers menu, filter customers by referrers →
Pay the partner commission according to the agreements →
Create a contact with the customer that the reward has been paid →
Record the payment in the financial document if you keep full financial accounting.
2. Automation: linking to the «Bring a friend» promotion.
When selling a product, scan the customer's discount card, product, and referrer's promo code. Under the terms of «Bring a friend», the customer may be given a discount, and the partner – bonuses.
To convert bonuses into cash, in Sales mode → Customer → select the referrer → Additional actions → Cash out bonuses.
Additional modes in Torgsoft for working with partners
- «Bring a friend» promotion.
- Balance with partners.
- Trade with invoice issuing — sale of goods through an intermediary, with conditions of who pays for the goods — the intermediary or the customer.
- Sale of goods to a VIP customer.
- Analysis of discount usage.
- Analysis of bonus movement.
Go back to the previous step