I hope you’re feeling great. :)
The picture on the left is from when I was standing under a tree Don and I loved in Venice Beach, California. We’ve been here since Friday and are having such a great time!
We’re staying in a place about 5 minutes away from where I used to live. L.A. was the first place I moved to after leaving my parent’s house years ago, so this trip has been very nostalgic for me. Don must have heard of about at least 100 places I used to visit or aren’t there any more or have changed. Can you guess how much he’s enjoying that? ;)
We’ve been having lots of fun though. Over the weekend we strolled down the boardwalk on Venice Beach, got competitive over air hockey (and Skee Ball, and Whack-A-Mole, and Big Bertha, and… ;)) at the arcade at Santa Monica Pier, had a drink at 3rd Street Promenade, enjoyed the ocean, and did a lot of people-watching.
Last night I had dinner with a good friend of mine. She’s a high end coach who has had a 100% referral-based business for 19 years.
Referrals in general are an awesome way to get business, both online and offline. I mean – it’s risk free, “conversion rates” are higher because someone you trust is referring you, and you can reach all kinds of people you ordinarily wouldn’t.
Because of that I thought I’d share a couple tools you can use to benefit from referrals, all starting with free plans. I’m not an affiliate for any of them:
– For Shopify, Rewards and Referrals is really great. It’s free for 100 orders a month which is pretty perfect if you’re just getting started or have a smaller store.
This tool will create affiliate links that give customers discounted links to offer people. When they refer purchasers, they get points or discounts of up to 25% on future orders. You set up exactly how much you want to give away.
– If you don’t use Shopify and/or have an offline business, I’ve heard awesome things about Genius Referrals.
This tool will help you create marketing campaigns, give people custom referral links, then monitor via in-depth analytics to see where you’re getting the most bang for your buck in terms of advertising. It’s a great way to figure out where to potentially do PPC or other advertising as well.
if you’re really digging the referral thing, there’s an article on Tim Ferriss’ blog that goes over exactly how a company gathered over 100,000 emails in a week via referrals. It also gives away the software they used to do it. That’s here:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/07/21/harrys-prelaunchr-email/
One more thing in case you love groan-worthy humor as much as me. I saw this on Pinterest as a realtor strategy:
Personally I’d love getting that, and I don’t even like goldfish! ;)
Anyway, I better sign off now before Don kills me. He’s been waiting on me to head out for a while now. We’re about to do a little shopping and I’m sure there are at least 30 places he wants me to point out to him on the way. :)
