Item: Extole
Rating: 8
Author: Kelly Saux

Overall Satisfaction with Extole

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Extole's Refer a Friend technology to power our loyalty program and allow our customers to share special offers with their friends and reap rewards if they make a purchase. We look at this as a way to both reward our current customers and keep them engaged with the brand and as bonafide customer acquisition channel.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Track advocates and reward friends.
Fraud prevention/Abuse of incentive program.
Reporting is easy and provides good insights.

Cons

Lacks geo filtering capabilities (i..e, ability to serve refer a friend only to visitors from specific countries). Our team had to put that logic in place on our side instead of relying on Extole.
Platform requires assistance from account manager for some actions/features that should be in the hand of the client.
Quality Control has been an issue at time. Our program has gone down because a new global platform update went out and affected our implementation. Extole has been responsive in these types of incidents, but that should not happen.

Return on Investment

It took a few months to become ROI positive with Extole, but the ROAS has been good since. It probably represents about 2% of our new customers per month.

Alternatives Considered

Mention Me - Referral Marketing Platform, Referral SaaSquatch, ReferralCandy and Ambassador

More robust on fraud side. Good support.

Other Software Used

Tealium iQ Tag Management System, ion interactive, Oracle responsys

Likelihood to Recommend

Anyone that has a business with a high NPS score should take advantage of this acquisition channel. If your business isn't promotional in nature (i.e., doesn't offer discounts), this type of program may not be as effective. It is important for both the advocate and the recipient to get something out of it. If only the advocate gets rewarded, it will likely diminish your returns.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

Ben Caplan
commented 5 years ago
Thanks for the review! This is helpful in choosing a referral platform that both rewards the referral and the referee.

Here's my referral