impact.com, the world’s leading partnership management platform, announced the launch of impact.com/advocate, a customizable customer referral marketing solution that empowers brands to engage their customers effectively with tailored offers. With custom and highly engaging referral programs that fit their unique business needs, brands can now build authentic, profitable, and scalable partnerships with their customers.

“Today’s modern buyer no longer trusts conventional advertising techniques; they’re seeking out reviews and recommendations from people they can trust and searching social media where they can see the product being used”

With impact.com/advocate, brands can build flexible, fully automated referral marketing programs that are straightforward to manage and easy for their customers to use. The platform streamlines customer referral marketing, known for its ability to drive customer advocacy and community, and attract new customers entering the discovery phase.

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The announcement comes when consumer trust in advertising is at an all-time low, but reliance on trusted, personal recommendations is higher than ever. More than 90% of people seek online reviews before making a purchase, with a reported 88% of people finding recommendations from family and friends more valuable than other channels.

impact.com research also reveals that 86% of consumers say recommendations and reviews are important in their purchase decisions, while only 2% consider traditional ads influential in their buying choices. While recommendations are becoming more important, 1 in 5 shoppers say they feel uncomfortable recommending a product only to receive a reward. Instead, 65% of referrers report they prefer it when they and the person they’re referring receive a reward.

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“Today’s modern buyer no longer trusts conventional advertising techniques; they’re seeking out reviews and recommendations from people they can trust and searching social media where they can see the product being used,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO at impact.com. “And we’re seeing that referrers aren’t just making recommendations for their own benefit, but they’re altruistically helping their network access great products and benefits. It’s a type of partnership that feels less transactional, and driven more by genuine care and connection, which adds a unique depth to our offering. With the launch of impact.com/advocate, brands can access a seamlessly integrated referral partnership solution that empowers them to engage their customers authentically through tailored referral programs. All while allowing them to manage all their partnerships — traditional affiliates, influencers, media publishers, other businesses and now customer referral marketing — from one, unified platform.”

The new solution builds on impact.com’s 2023 acquisition of SaaSquatch, a best-in-class provider of customer referral software. The native integration of SaaSquatch’s offering with impact.com’s innovative platform allows brands to leverage customer referrals via impact.com’s existing suite of tools and technologies, providing the most robust and comprehensive partnership marketing ecosystem.

Brands can use the flexible technology to build fully customized referral programs that not only support their strategic vision, but also the needs and desires of their customers. With impact.com/advocate, brands will be able to:

• Build programs that fit their unique strategy and business goals with impact.com’s flexible and configurable program builder.
• Offer exciting rewards their audiences care about and incentivize participation by gamifying their programs with leaderboards and reward exchanges.
• Create on-brand and easy-to-use referral experiences and embed them at top conversion points in the customer journey.
• Review and optimize a program’s performance with impact.com’s robust tracking and analytics capabilities.

“Leveraging impact.com’s customer referral solution to enhance our monthly user acquisition has helped our business achieve a significant boost in revenue and ARR,” said Giacomo Bertollo, head of product marketing at Hack The Box, a leading cybersecurity workforce development platform. “Combining our customer referral and affiliate programs to one platform with impact.com has also helped us ease security reviews, reduce costs, and streamline our workflow. We’re excited about the future of this platform which can evolve and grow with us, and look forward to leveraging its full potential to drive even greater results.”