Impact.com launches new referral marketing platform

impact.com has announced the launch of its new platform, impact.com/advocate, a customisable customer referral marketing solution aimed at enabling brands to engage with their customers via tailored offers and flexible, automated referral programs.

impact.com/advocate is designed to build authentic partnerships between brands and customers through straightforward and easy-to-manage referral marketing programs. Such programs are known to drive revenue, foster brand growth, and accelerate the acquisition of new customers.

New research commissioned by impact.com in Australia highlights the growing importance of referrals and recommendations in consumer purchase decisions. The research reveals that 84% of consumers base their purchase decisions on referrals and recommendations from someone they know, with 58% trusting personal acquaintances the most for purchasing information. Trust in traditional advertising channels, in contrast, was found to be significantly lower at 3%.

The research also indicates that 26% of shoppers feel uncomfortable recommending a product only to receive a reward. However, 61% of referrers reported preferring a reward system where both they and the person they refer receive a reward.

Adam Furness, Managing Director APAC at impact.com, commented on the trends underpinning the need for the new solution. "The launch of impact.com/advocate comes when consumer trust in advertising is at an all-time low, but reliance on trusted, personal recommendations is higher than ever," he said. "impact.com/advocate allows brands to authentically engage their best ambassadors, their own customers, through tailored referral programs that can manage a diverse range of rewards for the referral and to the referee."

The platform consolidates the management of various partnerships—including traditional affiliates, influencers, media publishers, other businesses, and now customer referral marketing—into one unified system. This new offering builds on impact.com's 2023 acquisition of SaaSquatch, a provider of customer referral software, and integrates it with impact.com's existing suite of marketing tools and technologies.

Brands can leverage impact.com/advocate to build fully customised referral programs that meet their strategic goals as well as customer needs and desires. The platform offers features such as a flexible and configurable program builder, the ability to offer engaging rewards and gamify participation, creating on-brand referral experiences, and robust tracking and analytics capabilities to review and optimise program performance.

Giacomo Bertollo, Head of Product Marketing at Hack the Box, a cybersecurity workforce development platform, shared his positive experience with the integrated solution. "Leveraging impact.com's customer referral solution to enhance our monthly user acquisition has helped our business achieve a significant boost in revenue and ARR," he said. "Combining our customer referral and affiliate programs to one platform with impact.com has also helped us ease security reviews, reduce costs, and streamline our workflow. We're excited about the future of this platform, which can evolve and grow with us, and look forward to leveraging its full potential to drive even greater results."