Tracking Referrals with SocialLadder
SocialLadder provides many options for tracking referrals from automated tracking pixels installed on your e-commerce page to APIs installed direct in your tech stack.
While these automated referral tracking mechanisms are the most efficient, we also understand that some of customers like Banks, Credit Unions, etc. have sensitive data about their customers and are not comfortable, or sometimes legally allowed, to install tracking mechanisms directly into their tech stacks.
This should not be a concern, as SocialLadder provides easy ways to track your ambassador referrals without compromising your customer's data privacy.
How to safely track referrals in high-security environments
For this example, we will use a common scenario of an ambassador referring someone to get a new Checking Account with a financial institution. While we want to make sure that the ambassador gets credit for each and every Checking Account they refer, we also want to ensure that there is no risk to the data integrity of the new customers signing up. But this same flow can be used for any type of sign up / referral.
Referral Code
The tracking of referrals in high-security environments starts with a referral code.
Each ambassador is assigned a unique referral code that will be used to track any referrals they might have driven. These codes can be pre-loaded into SocialLadder and automatically assigned to each ambassador as they join, or more personalized codes can be manually added to each ambassador as you invite them into your program. Regardless of how you choose to assign the codes, each ambassadors code will be the main mechanism for tracking their referrals.
Sharing Their Referral Code
There are 2 main mechanisms for allowing an ambassador to share their referral codes for new applicants to sign up for a checking account.
Applicant manually enters referral codes - In this method, all you need to do is add a new field to your applicant that allows an applicant to manually type in the referral code of the ambassador who referred them and store this field onto that application. While this method is usually quickest to implement a few things to keep in mind are:
Is the referral code easy to remember? Since the referral code will have to be manually added by the applicant, long or confusing referral codes are not ideal
What if the applicant "forgets" to add the code? Unfortunately, if the applicant forgets to add the codes to their application there is no way to track the referral back to the ambassador. This is the biggest downside of this approach. Unless the referral code gives the applicant access to some perk (a free trial of a premium product you offer, for example) it is likely that many applicants will forget to put in this code, leading to frustration for ambassadors.
Accepting the referral code as a URL Parameter to your application - This is the most ideal option and avoids the concerns from option #1, however this requires some minor development from your web-developers.
In this option, you would create a URL parameter on your application that would accept the referral code from the ambassador and automatically track it onto the application. For example, if your application link is www.mybank.com/apply, an ambassador who has the referral codes AMBASSADOR001 could share a link like the following:Your developers would need to build the mechanism on the application page that would pull this value off of the URL and track it along with your application, but using this option ensures that every referred applicant has the code tracked and eliminated the manual steps on the applicant to remember / add the code.
Reporting Conversion Back to SocialLadder
Now that you are tracking the ambassador's referral codes on your applications, you'll need to choose at what "trigger" you want to give the ambassadors credit for this conversion. For example, do you want to give them credit for every application submitted with their referral? Or only for applications that have been submitted? Or only once an approved applicant has made their first deposit?
Once you decide your trigger criteria, you'll need to coordinate an internal process so that you can provide SocialLadder with the information on these conversions. This can be done in two ways.
You can automatically fire the information against our APIs when the conversion trigger is met
You can manually upload the conversions on some regular frequency. (Weekly is the most common choice, but you can do it on whatever frequency works best for you)
Most of our customers in high-security system choose the second option since this allows for a manual step to ensure that absolutely no sensitive data is included in he data transferred to SocialLadder. But if you are interested in using the APIs, let your Implementation Specialist or Account Manager know and they will help provide the correct documentation for this integration.
Regardless of which option you choose, the information that you will be providing back to SocialLadder will be the same. We will need the following information for each conversion:
Conversion ID - This can be any unique value that you choose. This can be an internal Applicant ID or a completely created value on your end. This value is used to ensure that we do not attribute the same conversion more than once on SocialLadder. It's important to make sure this value is not an Account Number or something sensitive inside of your system
Referral Code - This is the referral code for the ambassador who should get credit for this conversion.
Payouts / Compensation
Once you've uploaded the conversion (or used our API to automatically send them over) the ambassadors will immediately be given points or compensation based on the configurations you decide on. These points / compensation will be combined with any points or compensation earned by other non-conversion related actions the ambassadors have completed and can be paid / redeemed inside the SocialLadder based on your overall program setup.