Extole Case Study Madison Reed

1. CASE STUDY MADISON REED MAKES REFER-A-FRIEND AS EASY TO USE AS ITS HEALTHY HAIR CARE Madison Reed is a new company that brings a healthier, luxurious hair care experience right to consumers’ doorsteps. The brand makes hair color and hair care products without the harsh chemicals found in drugstore and online brands. It also delivers a salon-quality color experience at home, with easy-to-use tools for finding the perfect color and a team of professional colorists ready to provide personalized help by phone, email, or chat. The company’s mission is to make personal care more personal by providing exceptional service and building authentic relationships. It realized it could also use authentic relationships to acquire new customers, through a referral marketing program that rewards customers for referring friends to the brand. To build such a program, it chose to use Extole’s referral marketing platform. As Madison Reed’s Vice President of Marketing and Growth, Jen Monteleone, puts it, “We wanted a strategic partner who spends all day focused on this, building the best tools, reporting dashboards, and tools to prevent against fraud. This way we could focus on our core business.” Using Extole’s platform, Madison Reed developed a program that delivers a seamless refer-a-friend experience for both advocates and friends, one that’s tightly integrated into the brand wherever people interact with it. It gives advocates $15 worth of product credit for each friend they refer, and gives those friends $15 off their first order. Madison Reed promotes its program “everywhere,” in Monteleone’s words, such as in multiple places on its website and in all its emails (including customer service, newsletter, and transactional emails). It takes particular advantage of two Extole platform capabilities: driving mobile referrals in-app and on responsive web, and enabling offline sharing. It also helps Madison Reed deliver instant consumer gratification through quick reward delivery.

2. ENABLING IN-APP AND MOBILE WEB REFERRALS “Having a very seamless login and user experience is very important to consider,” says Monteleone. “You really want to make it very easy for the user to make referrals without having to worry about ‘How do they do that?’ or ‘Do they need a different login?’” This is even more critical in a mobile setting. Madison Reed enables referrals both in its iOS app — using Extole’s flexible API — and on mobile web, by taking advantage of the Extole platform’s sharing templates, which are built to be responsive. In the iOS app and on mobile web, refer-a-friend gets prime placement, with a call to action right in the main menu. (The brand experiments with different CTAs between the two: “Get $15” on mobile web vs “Refer Friends” in-app.) On mobile web, one tap brings up a responsive sharing experience that lets consumers quickly share via email, Facebook, and Twitter. In-app, Madison Reed can nimbly market the program by promoting it right on the home screen. It can also dynamically insert banners for targeted users based on their app usage and where they are within the customer lifecycle. “We really wanted to make sure it was easy to access whenever our customers thought about sharing with a friend,” says Monteleone. “Our iOS app is a strong place to target customers because they always have it at their fingertips.” According to Monteleone, in-app response to the program has been “fantastic,” with engagement levels even higher than those on mobile or desktop web. BRINGING THE PROGRAM OFFLINE FOR EASY SHARING EVERYWHERE To make it truly easy for advocates to share absolutely everywhere, Madison Reed uses the Extole API to create memorable, custom share links for all advocates. These links contain users’ name. This simultaneously makes it easy for them to share at any time and creates a very personal connection with the brand. Madison Reed can include these share links in any offline material it creates, such as in its printed instructions or on its packaging. It includes standalone inserts with the links inside its packaging. These inserts in particular are driving a great response, says Monteleone.

3. DELIVERING INSTANT GRATIFICATION — AND ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE One other way Madison Reed creates a personal connection with advocates is by sending them a message when their friends convert, which means they’ve earned a reward. Extole delivers rewards instantly and automatically once qualified conversions happen. Madison Reed lets advocates know they then have a $15 credit to use, which gets them excited all over again about the brand. Then it uses this moment of customer delight to drive further referrals, by including a clear, easy CTA (“Keep Spreading the Word”) that brings them back to the sharing experience. It’s the perfect time and place to promote the program... because who doesn’t like earning even more rewards once they’ve gotten a taste of them? “We see referral as an acquisition channel because we love the quality it brings,” Monteleone says. By giving customers clear, easy-to-find, easy- to-use opportunities to refer friends, Madison Reed gives itself another way to make personal care even more personal.      ABOUT EXTOLE Extole enables brands to acquire new, high value customers at scale with its referral marketing platform. With Extole’s simple, turnkey solution, marketers can create a complete, efficient, and reliable acquisition channel by encouraging their customers to refer new customers. www.extole.com | www.extole.com/blog hello@extole.com (877) 739 - 8653 ©2015 Extole Inc. All Rights Reserved. PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL