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Gift certificates for referral

Written by: John Jantsch

Article Overview: Sending gift certificates, good towards the purchase of your products and, yes, services too, can be a great way to stimulate additional purchases.

Gift certificates for referral

Sending gift certificates, good towards the purchase of your products and, yes, services too, can be a great way to stimulate additional purchases. It’s also a great tool to use for referrals. Send out gift certificates to customers and ask them to give them away to someone who might use it. Then give your customer additional credits for each one of those gift certificates that comes back by way of a new customer.

PayPal has a feature that makes creating online and printable gift certificates for your products and services pretty simple. Here’s an example on Duct Tape Marketing (Just an example execution not trying to trick you into buying gift certificates - although people have asked!)

The only real downside is that to redeem the certificate the user must be or become a PayPal member.

If you are an existing PayPal merchant the process for creating gift certificates is as simple as completing a form and pasting the buy button into your web page code.

Another promising looking online referral tool is ReferNow. This service allows you to create referral campaigns that make it very easy for customers to refer. The service creates the tools that make it very easy for you to motivate referral sources and track referral activity.

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Article Tags: additional credits, campaigns, downside, duct tape marketing, execution, paypal member, printable gift certificates, referral sources, referrals, web page code



Related Forum Posts
Viral Incentive - One way I found extremely effective is by making viral reports that generate back end revenue for referrers. What I do is whenever I want to promote a site, I use Viral PDF to create a report for anyone to change their links to attach their referral IDs embedded within the report. They give away the report, and when new members are generated as a result of their referral, it helps them gain commission. For this website, there is something we all gain from. I haven't really paid attention to it since I have been here, but I believe Evan splits Google Adsense revenue with people who come to visit this site as a result of your referral. We can create a report, make the link brandable to whoever want to pass out with their referral IDs. I need to look into how the referral program worked one more time to configure it. But this way, it gives you the incentive to pass around the branded report because it's a soft-sell on your end. The key to make this successful is we need to come up with great, useful report. Things like helpful links, helpful information, collection of popular threads even work -- this is the hardest part of it all. We'll compile them into a PDF, I will sign them to add tags you can download to change them into your own IDs. That usually takes two buttons to push. Then let the visitors pour into the site. This is great because there are quiet observers in the forum that are seemingly inactive, yet visit the forum often. Even those people will feel compelled to spread the report. Regards, Takuya
Re: 3 Ways to Grow Your Business in 2011 - Hi Alan - great idea! I have sent simple things like Amazon gift certificates but I had to follow up as they ended up in the person's junk folder - it's hard to do surprises by email as it can be seen as fake / spam. What about saying that you've put in a new CRM system and were hoping to get her address so you can fill in the information properly for her? I've sent some great gifts via SendOutCards (the brownies are especially delicious) - people never expect to get something physical from a web based company. Good luck!
Re: Anyone good with CPA affiliate here? - ok - share. I have no idea what this is. Can you explain it a bit for us? is it a referral fee situation??
Import/distribution Business - I have 12 years experience in importing/distributing Kitchen/Gift items from Europe. I’ve been a successful entrepreneur to run the business. Recently, I lost my business ($5 million annual revenues) in my recent divorce and I'm ready to go again. I know the markets, the reps, the customers and the ropes. Need an investor. Is it you?
Making marketing products - Have any of your created gift certificates? I need to make a bunch for an upcoming event. I've tried making some on my own, but they take a really long time to look nice. I know that vistaprint has some good post cards that could double as a gift certificate. But has anyone found a good option for making a nice, small gift certificate? Thanks!


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