Growing Your List With a Referral Program

<p>Creators always ask, “how do I grow my audience?” While the answer is different for everyone, when you’re an emerging creator with a tight budget, referral programs are a great way to expand without burning revenue. And not only expand, but find subscribers more likely to engage.</p><p><br></p><p>As we continue moving away from open rates as our main metric, referral programs are a great step toward increased engagement. Luckily, where there’s a will, there’s an app. Tools like SparkLoop smooth out the logistics and make tracking your referral progress fun and easy. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa discuss the benefits of a referral program, the steps to referral success, and examples of creators who are doing it right. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Key Takeaways</strong></p><ul> <li>[07:09] - Referral programs are a great way to grow your audience in a way that’s relatively “hands-off”.</li> <li>[08:39] - Tools like SparkLoop help you automate your referral program. Automation is especially useful if you’re a small creator.</li> <li>[14:24] - People trust referrals from friends more than anything else. A referred subscriber has built-in trust with you that otherwise, you would have to spend time, money, and energy to establish. </li> <li>[16:11] - Referral programs reward subscriber engagement. </li> <li>[16:47] - Using incentives not only drives traffic to your newsletter but also the content outside of your newsletter. </li> <li>[19:22] - Referral programs lower the cost of subscriber acquisition and get people excited about your upcoming content. </li> <li>[22:18] - Before launching a referral program, you need a newsletter with measurable subscriber value rather than a brand new newsletter with no built-in audience. </li> <li>[24:08] - You also need a clear explanation of how your referral program works so it’s obvious to your subscribers what they have to do. </li> </ul><p><br><strong>Quotes</strong></p><p>[12:12] - “Any other way to try and find people to join your list, like m