Referral Program

• You want to build a customer referral program ("refer a friend") and need help designing the incentive structure, share mechanism, and referral loop.
• You're launching or restructuring an affiliate program and need guidance on commission models, recruiter outreach, and platform selection.
• Your existing referral program has low share rates or poor conversion and you need a systematic optimization approach.
• You want to compare referral CAC vs. other acquisition channels and understand the LTV impact of referred customers.

• If your goal is virality at product launch specifically, the launch-strategy skill is a better fit.
• If you need to build out email drip campaigns for referral nurture independently, consider the email-sequence skill instead.

Walks you through each stage of the referral loop — Trigger Moment → Share Action → Convert Referred → Reward — with ranked share mechanisms (in-product sharing, personalized links, email invitations, social sharing, referral codes) and guidance on when to use each.

Covers single-sided, double-sided, and tiered reward models with guidance on incentive sizing relative to customer LTV and CAC. Helps you choose the structure most likely to maximize both share rate and referral conversion.

Provides a structured framework for diagnosing low performance — low awareness, low share rate, low conversion, fraud — and recommends specific A/B tests across incentive amount, messaging, and placement to systematically improve results.

Defines the metrics that matter (active referrers, referral conversion rate, CAC via referral, LTV of referred customers, ROI) and provides industry benchmarks such as referred customers having 16–25% higher LTV and 18–37% lower churn.

Includes a pre-launch, launch-day, and 30-day post-launch checklist alongside ready-to-use email templates for program announcements and a referral nurture sequence (Day 7, 30, 60, and milestone triggers).

Maps leading referral and affiliate platforms — including Rewardful, Tolt, PartnerStack, Mention Me, Dub.co, Introw, and Stripe — to use cases so you can select the right tool for your stack without trial and error.

A B2C SaaS founder wants to add a referral program to reduce paid CAC. The skill helps identify the best trigger moment (post-"aha" milestone), design a double-sided reward, configure a tool like Rewardful or Tolt, and build the launch email sequence.

An e-commerce brand wants to recruit bloggers and influencers as affiliates. The skill guides commission structure decisions, affiliate recruitment messaging, platform selection (PartnerStack or Tolt), and ongoing payout tracking via Stripe.

A company has a referral program in place but sees low participation. The skill diagnoses the funnel — low awareness, a friction-heavy share flow, or weak incentives — and recommends prioritized A/B tests and product placement changes to recover performance.

A B2B software company wants to build a tiered partner program with deal registration and quarterly business reviews. The skill surfaces Introw as the right tool and structures the tier logic, partner incentives, and reporting cadence.