Customer engagement is the lifeblood of every business. More successful businesses will have at least one;

• Loyalty Scheme
• Partnership program.
• Affiliate schemes.
• Distribution List (Newsletter).
• Referral Program.

Data on the power of word of mouth.

• 84% of customers trust friends and family through word of mouth. Nielsen
• 20-50% of purchases are due to word of mouth. Mckinsey
• Word of mouth drives sales. Forbes
• See even more statistics on WOM. When choosing a restaurant millenials are 99% mnore likely to rely upon social media than GenX and Baby Boomers. Convince and Convert

We looked at available solutions, especially in light of GDPR and realised there are some significant commonalities.

• Many large companies see security breaches and incur huge fines.
• Smaller companies will find it harder to be compliant as regulatory scrutiny increases.
• Startups will almost certainly not be compliant with GDPR.
• We are seeing reliance upon cookie based tracking as being frowned upon by customers.

We asked several questions;

• How do we avoid spamming customers?
• Can the network effect let visitors to our site help us sell our products?
• What schemes are already out there?
• Is it possible to not breach data protection rules?
• Is it possible to fairly compensate referrers?

• Referrers should have available information to make sound decisions on whether to join our scheme.
• We should try to avoid making contact until a referee contact us.
• Referrers and referees should have the right to be forgotten.
• It is more than simply a user clicking on a link to a website or a tracking cookie.
• Data should be stored as securely as possible.

• Mailbox scanning for new messages from referees and referrers.
• Right to be forgotten.
• Encryption of email data.
• Activation links for referrers.
• Multiple schemes.
• Multiple programs.
• Thresholds on numbers of referees per referrer.
• Document and links to programs.

Based upon our work with our integrated versions, we are planning to launch other versions we think customers need. Some customers already have websites and will just want to take advantage of our cost-effective referral software solutions.

• Shared/Multi-tenant.
• Dedicated.
• Reseller.