We all know that Dropbox hacked its way to success with their simple, yet smart, referral program.
Now, ReferralCandy lets any online service run a similar scheme. Handy, right?
An e-commerce store would create some discount codes on their platform and set up ReferralCandy to distribute them when users/customers do some actions. Someone buys from the store? ReferralCandy, which is integrated with the shopping cart app, knows it and sends an email to the customer including a referral link they can now share to their friends. Easy.
The model is working as the company has now run campaigns for thousands of retailers. The majority of which is in the US and the UK. High profile customers even include Yatra, a leading travel agency in India (not kidding: they have 30% market share!). ReferralCandy’s customers usually get a 3-15% referral rate once they implement the solution.
ReferralCandy charges on transaction value so one can implement their referral strategy with little risk (they did not go full on with performance, as they still charge a minimum of $25 per month).
Co-founded by Dinesh Raju and Zach Cheng, the ReferralCandy product was released in the year 2010 and the team is now 20 people strong, including ⅓ focusing on product, ⅓ on marketing and the rest on admin and support and success. The success team is based in the Philippines where the combination of low cost and english speaking allows to serve qualitatively global customers.
They are pretty advanced in terms of data, with their Salesforce completely customised for their needs: Activity of their customers is reported there automatically for full analysis of their funnel, from lead stage to active customers. They even have David Fallarme, who has experience of growth at companies such at EA and App Annie, to lead their marketing efforts.
Sitting down with Dinesh, we asked him our favourite questions:
What is SaaS for you?
SaaS is the future of how all businesses will use software. Not clunky. No upfront payments or long-term contracts. With SaaS, if you don’t deliver value, customers will simply stop using you.
Technology should help solve problems. SaaS delivers on this promise and motivates us to build a product that delights the customer.
What are your current challenges?
We have grown fast recently with a product that is needed by the market. Our biggest challenge (and opportunity!) right now is capturing the market as quickly as possible. This means discovering and executing on the various marketing channels that are the most appropriate along the way in our growth to $10m ARR!
What is your favourite SaaS keyword?
Churn. And expansion. Both of these hold us accountable.
We monitor churn to confirm that we are delivering value. We love watching expansion since it shows that we’re helping our clients grow their business!
This article was initially published on SaaS Business Asia dedicated website. The SaaS Business Asia site was closed in 2019 and moved to Future Flow.