As customer acquisition costs continue to rise, referral marketing is fast becoming an effective growth channel for brands. However, building a successful referral programme that truly engages and nurtures customers takes more than simply offering a discount.

From the emotional relevance of the message to building trust and authenticity, at Mention Me’s Advocacy Live we heard from Huel, Abel & Cole and Secret Escapes on how they’re rethinking the value exchange at the heart of referrals and adapting promotions to better connect with their audiences, all while driving performance.

Optimising value exchange for engagement

The central pillar for successful referral programmes remains the incentive, said Emily Hollis, Loyalty & Retention Lead at Huel. She urged brands to think about launching or optimising referral campaigns by first considering the value exchange being offered and whether this is compelling enough to prompt action.

“You can put all the time in the world into optimising the copy, the imagery, the campaign creative, but in the end it all boils down to the incentive,” she said. “If it doesn’t offer perceived value for the customer, they won’t share it with their friends, and their friends won’t make a purchase, so ultimately you won’t end up with a good programme.”

Once an offer has been stress-tested, Hollis recommends ensuring enough surround sound to continually promote the referral programme, ensuring it doesn’t get lost or compete for share of voice with other campaigns or channels.

Beyond incentives: tapping memorable, shareable moments

“Having the right incentive is very much part of making sure your campaign is successful, and promotion without promotion will always fall flat,” agreed Julia Brown, Senior Marketing Executive at Abel & Cole.

Going beyond the incentive, Brown recommended brands think about how personalised, memorable and shareable their referral offering is to further boost performance. Abel & Cole has seen success in its programme by building personalisation into its referrals, offering incentives around key customer milestones or creating ‘reasons to share’ tied to awareness days, such as National Friendship Day.

“Our most successful campaigns always hinge on something shareable, adding in something that’s of personal interest to each customer or a shareable moment.”

Julia Brown, Senior Marketing Executive, Abel & Cole

As a luxury holiday and travel brand, tapping into memorable moments is a natural fit for Secret Escapes, which has focused on building shareability into its referral campaigns.

“Holidays are one of the most natural things to share. When we go away, we tell our family, our friends, our colleagues – even our hairdresser – where we’ve been,” Selina Jervis, Senior CRM Manager at Secret Escapes, added. “Our challenge is about how we maximise the moments that might not be everyday or every week, but are the ones that we naturally want to talk the most about.”

Jervis explained how Secret Escapes uses Mention Me for A/B testing, and how it has recently experimented with changing its incentive proposition from ‘refer a friend’ to ‘share the secret’, which culminated in “some good uplift.”

Don’t assume, test

A/B testing – and challenging your assumptions – was something that both Abel & Cole and Huel advocated for – and which had thrown up some surprising results and conversion outcomes.

“A/B testing is what drives the biggest increase in share rates and conversions,” said Brown. Working with Mention Me, Abel & Cole tested its prior assumption that having people in its imagery would be more human and would therefore increase share rate. However when it was put to the test, product images actually performed better, highlighting the need to regularly revalidate audience preferences.

Huel had a similar experience. When expanding into the U.S. market, it had assumed the North American consumer would be more offer-led, Hollis explained: “We had always assumed that the U.S. is very offer-led. Recently, we tested offer-led messaging – get $20 off, for example – versus more emotive messaging, featuring a ‘Huel is better together’ tagline.”

Contrary to its initial assumption, Huel’s emotive messaging lifted U.S. conversion rates by +15%, prompting Hollis to suggest: “Don’t rest on your laurels or your assumptions – keep testing.”  

“It’s about encouraging customers to live a brand – which builds into authenticity – allowing consumers who genuinely want to tell others about the brand they love, rather than just tapping into a discount mentality.”

Emily Hollis, Loyalty & Retention Lead, Huel

Micro-influencers, macro performance

With retailers under pressure to do more with less, and with every dollar on marketing spend being increasingly scrutinised, micro-influencers and brand ambassador programmes offer new channels for brands to grow authentic UGC and engage new audiences. The recently launched Mention Me Influencer platform helps brands find, engage and manage micro-influencers profitably, at scale. 

Brown described how Abel & Cole had been using Mention Me’s Influencer solution to identify micro-influencers within its customer base, taking its active customer list and matching those within its CRM that have “influencer style” social media accounts and followings. These customers were then invited to join the Abel & Cole brand ambassador programme, resulting in hyper-authentic content that’s helping the brand build trust.

“Because they are our actual customers, the content they create is so authentic – you couldn’t brief in that level of enthusiasm,” Brown said. “It really doesn’t get much more authentic than using someone who already shops with you to advocate for you.”

Authenticity becomes consumer currency

As brands continue to navigate an increasingly competitive and value-conscious landscape, referral programmes present a powerful channel for growth – but only when thoughtfully, analytically and authentically executed.

By embracing continuous testing, amplifying shareable moments and leveraging the authenticity of real customers and micro-influencers, brands can transform referrals into more than just another marketing channel and into a trusted, scalable engine for advocacy and long-term loyalty.