Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Raul Galera, as they will be discussing leveraging this channel as an eCommerce business and how to best benefit from loyalty and word of mouth programmes. Raul is the Chief Advocate at RefferalCandy, an app that allows eCommerce brands to set up and run customer referral programs

Connect with Raul: 

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒:  https://www.referralcandy.com/ 

𝑅𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raulgalera/ 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

Episode transcript:

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you're on The Market Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Raul Galera, the Chief Advocate to ReferralCandy, an app that allows ecommerce brands to set up and run customer referral programmes. Today, we'll discuss leveraging this channel as an ecommerce business and how to best benefit from loyalty and word of mouth programmes as well, during the upcoming shopping season. Without further ado, Raul, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's the morning going?

Raul Galera  

I've got doing well. Thanks for having me.

Andrei Tiu  

No worries, it's my pleasure. You look very fresh. How's everything going on your side with the business, with life, with, you know, customers?

Raul Galera  

Pretty good. I actually recently just relocated to Mexico City. So this is where I'm speaking from right now. This is my first 48 hours here. I literally just got here like this past weekend. And things are going very well. I mean, in terms of ReferralCandy, as you can, as you can imagine, the ecommerce world has exploded over the past 18 months. So we've experienced a lot of growth. And with that, obviously a lot of new improvements that we've done to our app, to better serve our merchants. So yeah, it's a pretty exciting time for free comments in general. And we're trying to help us make Mitchison as we can.

Andrei Tiu  

Great, some great stuff. So, let's start by maybe introducing you a bit more to the audience and help our guys here understand your background and what ReferralCandy does? And how do you engage with the ecommerce players let's say, so that we can dive into discussion in more depth as we go?

Raul Galera  

Yeah, absolutely. So about myself, I actually been at ReferralCandy for the past five years now, mostly running the partner programme. So we obviously collaborate with a bunch of other companies in the ecommerce world. Whether it's their ecommerce agencies or other tech companies, or you know, media companies that touch in with marketing or ecommerce in general. I'm in charge of managing those relationships. And ReferralCandy specifically, for those that are listening that are not familiar with us. We are an app that allows e commerce stores to set up and run customer referral programmes. So think about the traditional the world-famous Dropbox referral programme, Uber referral programme in which you, us a customer, get something every time that you refer a friend and kind of like bring new brand new business to the store. So we basically allow brands to set it up and run it on autopilot, just by giving each customer a unique referral link that they can share with their friends. And we're able to track rewards. And it's basically an easy way for merchants to first of all, acquire new customers through a channel that it's completely owned by them, they don't need to depend on a third party platform, and we're talking about leveraging their customer base to acquire new customers. But also it's a way for them to retain those customers that they already have. By giving them an incentive the next time they and every time they refer a friend, they can get a discount on a future purchase. So you're kind of giving them an additional incentive to come back to your store for more. It's overall a good way to acquire new customers and retain your existing ones without having to depend on platforms or other algorithms that might change your entire marketing mix and overnight.

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, it's also a very good way to you know, get people in, like directly involved with your brand not only consuming products from you, but actually having an invested interest in making money with you in a way.

Raul Galera  

Yeah, exactly. I mean, when brands typically think of the post purchase a kind of like flow after somebody has left the checkout and acquire the new customer. Something that it keeps seeing, not only as a somebody that works in ecommerce, but as a consumer myself, I see a lot of brands that are just like trying to get you to that second purchase pretty much right away, without realising they literally just made a purchase. You probably need some time until that happens again. So you know, there's a lot of push for promotions to get that second purchase and if you can switch the direction of the conversation after purchase and direct it towards a referral or maybe doesn't have to be a referral but maybe like joining a loyalty programme or leaving a review or like just doing something that's going to engage with a brand other than making a purchase, that's gonna pay off down the line. So it's another way, like you said, another way to kind of retaining people and make sure that you're brand staying top of mind without having to direct people to your product page.

Andrei Tiu  

You mentioned something really cool there. And I think this can be an angle for our discussion forward, which is what happens after the purchase happens. So you know, during the podcast, and as marketers as well, we have discussed a lot, and we are still discussing what happens, and how you can bring those people into the community, how you can drive traffic, drive conversions etc. But what's at least equally important is what happens after the first purchase, because mainly with ecommerce, the first purchase, not never, but many times, it's not necessarily profitable for the business. Many, if we talk about consumer goods, the profit lays in the repeat purchase. So how to facilitate that repeat purchase is a question that needs answer, needs, you know, a very good answer. And I think it would be a great framework for our discussion now, to tackle this point of the customer journey. And for you guys tuning in that own online stores, or that are marketers or activate within an ecommerce business, to think in a bit more depth on this topic. Hopefully, we'll be able to inspire you to, you know, take a couple more actions that maybe you are not at the, at the moment, are mainly in preparation for Black Friday, and also Christmas, because it's just around the corner really? Yeah, already, like, it's still a month or a month and a half. But really we should all Prepare from now. So, Raul. What's interesting in the business right now, like, let's talk a bit in the moment, what are you guys up to? How are your clients doing? What are they up to? That will be relevant for our people here.

Raul Galera  

Yeah, so I mean, as you mentioned, pretty much everybody is preparing for the busiest time of the year. Although there has been a shift in how these has evolved in the past year and a half. I mentioned this a lot, but I think it's pretty telling in terms of like how Ecommerce has evolved in the past year and a half. I was at a Shopify event in Amsterdam, in February 2020. So literally just weeks away before, everything just gonna change. And the CTO of Shopify was there. And he was showing us a graph up - this is actually his Twitter so maybe is still published there, and maybe people can find it. But he showed us a chart that showed kind of like the peak in sales that Shopify was registering every single year in Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So you could see the entire year just kind of