Referrals play a big role in any business, improving customer relations with customer referral incentive programs while attracting new clients in the process. This unique person-to-person style of lead generation maintains the balance between new and existing customers, ensuring good business. When you find the referral system ‘formula’ that works for your business, it would yield great results and it would create new business as well as maintain existing clients.

And while it’s commonly known that people generally do respond well to incentives, studies reaffirms this fact with findings on how incentives increase customer satisfaction and how these would generate valuable leads and referrals. A 2005 study by the advertising faculty of Louisiana State University and Glenrich Business Studies that was conducted for Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), the trade organization for suppliers and distributors of promotional products, showed that marketers can use direct mail promotional product offers to secure valuable customer referrals and to ensure customer retention.

The PPAI study found that marketer requests for referrals accompanied with incentive offers of promotional items (and/or some other special eligibility such as sweepstakes and other free gifts) resulted to as much as 500 percent more referrals compared to those referral request letters sent alone. This reinforces that any niche market would respond to businesses and would most likely avail of their services with a good sales pitch and this favorable marketing strategy. The study also concluded that business produced from a customer referral system with good promotional product incentives is likely to surpass promotion costs, which, in turn, is contingent on the quality of the referrals received and the persistence of marketers in following up these leads.

Businesses must learn how to use this positive response to referral incentive programs to leverage their revenue by choosing quality business promotional items from a trusted supplier to make their incentive programs work well. Low promotion costs work to a business’ advantage, especially when the generated revenue from referral incentive programs surpasses the amount it took to initially finance the said program, which makes finding just the right promotional products supplier for your purpose and preference imperative. Play it smart — enjoy quality business through a great customer referral incentive program with quality promotional products. Though it takes a lot of creativity and proper management for any customer referral system to work to your advantage, the long-term returns would be very beneficial for your business.