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Invite 5 Friends and 5% off - How might we do this?

  • 16 January 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 239 views
L
Rank
Badge +1

Hi, 

 

We’re trying to encourage rapid newsletter growth and would like to do something similar to the above. So users give us 5 email addresses of friends to invite to the newsletter and in exchange we give them a newsletter. 

 

Any idea how this could be done? Not just technically, but I guess practically are there implications e.g. GDPR, can we even send these emails as we don’t have direct permission from the email owner themselves? Is there a way in which the emails can be sent from the users own email i.e. they CC us into an email with the 5 invites? 

 

Any ideas much appreciated. We have heard of a similar campaign working very well for a company in the past but do not know the details of how they achieved it. 

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Best answer by Akers Digital 27 January 2023, 00:17

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David To
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Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hello @Lazar96,

I wouldn’t recommend this route of asking your subscribers to provide their friend’s email addresses as an incentive for a discount. Not only does this borderline on MLM (multi-level marketing) - which isn’t allowed on our platform, but I would suspect this would have a strong negative effect on on your sending reputation. 

I’m sure others share my sentiment, but I’m not a fan of receiving emails from a brand that I’ve never actively subscribed to. Sure, I may open the email out of curiosity, but there’s also a large likelihood I’m going to mark the email as spam. Resulting in more harm done to my sending reputation than good. 

Not to mention, those referred email addresses actually have not provided explicit consent. This too would be a violation of not only our Klaviyo acceptable use policy but also a number of regulations such as CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL, etc. 

To achieve something similar, I would suggest using a third-party tool/app such as Smile.io or Swell to setup a referral program. This way, your subscribers can share their own referral code to others instead of selling out their friends. You can also checkout a number of other referral providers that have partnered to develop integrations that connect directly to Klaviyo from our Tech Partner Directory. 

I hope this helps!

David

L
Rank
Badge +1

Hi,

Thank you for the response. 

I agree fully with what you are saying although the idea is similar to what Smile.io do in the sense that it would be ‘John Doe has sent you a 5% discount’. So although unsolicited, the content would at least be something worthwhile and if anything they'd blame John Doe rather than ourselves haha

 

Example

User A is browsing our site and a pop up comes up with an offer to ‘Invite friends and receive a 5% discount on your first order’ or words to that affect. 

User A invites their friends (user B, C & D). 

User A, B, C & D have 5% discounts available to them. 

 

We’re aware of the practical implications that this kind of idea presents. As you say, there’s GDPR issues, they haven’t given explicit consent to receive emails from us etc. 

 

To give you a little more background so you can see where we are coming from. We supply wood finishes (oils etc) and our thinking is that if John Doe is a tradesman looking to purchase, he will no doubt have other friends/colleagues also interested in our products and who a 5% discount would no doubt benefit. If we could not only get them to purchase but also join our newsletter that would be excellent! 

 

Will give it some more thought, it's just an early idea at this stage. Thanks again for your response. 

 

Akers Digital
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +21

What platform is your site on? I think a 3rd-party solution is probably the best as well. There are apps out there that will create unique referral codes so the original customer gets a kickback whenever it is used. 

Alternatively, you could also just give the current customer five discount codes to give out to friends. We do this a bunch and call them “Friends & Family Sales”. This works well because it is just a really simple. No apps, no special links, nothing like that. 

L
Rank
Badge +1

This is usually handled by a referral app rather than something like Klaviyo. There are definitely ways to do this with Klaviyo but adding those referred emails as subscribers would be a big no-no in my opinion. I would stick with something that’s built for referrals.

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