Choosing the right referral program for your park

As we have discussed previously, the Trampoline Park sector has two clear focuses when it comes to increasing turnover, driving your re-visitation and building your customer pool.

One way the parks can increase their customer pool is through referrals. Referral programs help parks grow by engaging and leveraging their brand’s biggest assets: their customers. What often start as a great idea for growing their business can often became well-executed programs that catapult their customer growth.

Like all marketing programs, referral marketing is most effective when managed efficiently and optimized to attract the right customers. Building an attractive referral marketing program is only half the battle; ensuring that your marketing actively encourages the referrals – meaning that your loyal customers recommend your business to their friends and family is the real challenge. Like other marketing programs, you can build it, but it doesn’t always lead to success. Today we discuss some of the top referral campaigns that we believe can work for your park.

When you search in google, it is apparent that very few parks appear to offer a referral program. They are therefore missing out of what is a valuable and cost effective way to increase their customer pool.

What to consider with a referral program

Before you start acquiring new customers, you need to make sure you’re targeting and attracting the right type of customer. Over 65% of marketers say that referral marketing attracts loyal, satisfied and profitable customers. This is most likely to occur when you encourage referrals from your existing loyal, satisfied and profitable customers.

Keep it systematic. Where possible, let your software do this work. Collect the data and nurture leads.

Select rewards that your customers will value and that you can afford

Not all businesses can afford cash rewards in return for customer referrals. If you don’t quite yet have the margins that can justify a dollar or percentage discount off your list price, then consider offering different types of currency as rewards. Such as vouchers or similar.

Promote your campaign.

Make sure it is easy to share. When you set out to plan your referral marketing strategy, the single most important thing to remember is to make it easy for people to share your content, product and/or service. Think of your social, email and mobile marketing channels to ensure it stays at your customers fingertips.

Example of referral campaign that may work for you.

Creating a referral campaign can often depend on where your most loyal customers sit. Use data to analyse your revisitation rates by sector (jump, parties, fitness etc), and look for trends. If you measure your lifetime customer value, then correlate this with the products they use and shifts your focus accordingly.

Birthday Parties

Birthday parties are on of the easiest places to generate data for your referral campaign. Most bookers will be bringing upwards of 10 extra jumpers for you to generate data from. A recent BookNow customer saw a 10 fold increase in leads generated when implementing a systematic Birthday party campaign. This involved an e-invite being sent to all the friends who were able to register for a pre birthday jump session for a discounted rate. In addition, by capturing birth dates from your new leads you can implement a systematic communication program to target your new leads for future birthday parties.

Fitness users

Gyms and Health Clubs have been using referral campaign for many years and continue to focus on this area as a key facet of their lead generation. Users can monitor the amount of classes someone attends each week and through regular monitoring of their net promotor score can confirm who their likely top referrers will be. Offering a free class pass for them to bring a friend and rewarding them during conversion allows you to easily expand your sales team beyond your own staff. On average a gym will generate around 30% of it’s lead acquisition from this method and conversion tends to be around 5-10% higher that other lead sources.

Jumpers

Do you know your top 100 jumpers? If not, it is time to start measuring. These patrons who are attending regularly are some of your best options for referral. Regularly reward them with discounted bring a friend vouchers to help increase your customer pool and re-visitation. Implement a systematic program. Include regular communication designed to cultivate your new leads into regular revisits.

Summary

In summary, make sure you use your data to analyse where your best opportunity is. Look at your current users and understand their loyalty and lifetime value. These represent your best opportunity to generate leads. Where possible, ensure a systematic process is implemented. Use your system to generate leads consistently and constantly. Finally, measure your acquisition and conversion rates regularly

Talk to us today

If you are looking to understand more about how BookNow can help implement a systematic referral program for your park, then chat with us today. Email [email protected]