Referral Funnel Overview
The end-to-end journey consists of two main participants:- Referrers: Your brand advocates — existing customers who share your referral offer.
- Referees: Their friends — the people receiving your referral offer and being encouraged to become new customers.
- Volume metrics: impressions, shares, orders
- Conversion metrics: share rate, purchases per sharer
- Revenue metrics: first order revenue, lifetime value
Core Metrics
Orders
The foundation of your business. This metric highlights important trends such as the impact of promotional events, seasonality, and year-on-year growth. An order is defined as having a customer (email), value and currency, and a unique order ID.Impressions and Exposure
- Impressions / Shown: The number of times a referral offer is displayed by Mention Me. This only includes pages served by Mention Me, not external email marketing or banners.
- Unique Impressions: The number of unique customers who saw a referral offer within a 24-hour period. Running a report over a week will not simply sum daily unique impressions, since the same customer may appear on multiple days.
- Seen: The number of unique customers eligible and registered to share referral offers, either actively or passively.
Customer Enrolment
- Enrolled: Customers enrolled in your referral scheme through automatic enrolment (e.g. post-purchase overlay) or manual sign-up. Enrolments into distinct offers are counted separately — if a referrer enrols into two offers in one day, that counts as two enrolments. However, seeing the same offer more than once only counts as one enrolment.
- Actively Enrolled: Customers who click on a referral offer at post-purchase or register directly via a landing page. All of these customers receive a Referral Registration email.
Sharing Activity
- Sharers / Sharing Customers: Unique referrers who shared the offer during a given time period, via email, social links, or by entering their name during checkout. This metric considers unique sharers within the selected period — if a referrer shares on Monday and Wednesday, the weekly count is still 1.
- Shares: The total number of shares made across any channel (email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Name Share, etc.). A single customer can send multiple shares.
- Shares per Sharer: Average number of times each customer shares. Higher figures suggest sharing across multiple platforms or to multiple friends.
Mention Me takes a conservative approach to counting shares. A share is only counted when there is confidence it was sent:
- Email sharing: counted when someone clicks the link in the email
- Social media sharing: counted when the social network follows the link (evidence it was posted)
- Name sharing: counted only when the referee uses the referrer’s name during checkout
Referee Response
- Share Responses: The number of actions taken on a shared offer (e.g. link clicks or entering a friend’s name at checkout). There is no deduplication — multiple clicks by the same person are all counted.
- Responses per Share: Engagement rate calculated by dividing share responses by total shares.
Referee Registration and Incentives
- Registered / Incented Friends: The number of referees who enter their email and receive an incentive or promise of a reward. To reach this step, the email must be valid. Not everyone who registers will receive an incentive — some may be held in gaming queues, or vouchers may have run out. Unless you experience significant gaming, registered and incented counts should be roughly equal.
- Incented per Response: The likelihood that referees who click a referral link register for the offer and claim their incentive. A target of 50%+ is considered healthy.
Conversions and Outcomes
- Confirmed Purchases: Referees who place an order after engaging with the referral offer. Only transactions tracked via Mention Me order tags are included.
- New / Qualified Customers: Referees who make their first purchase and meet your qualification criteria for rewards (e.g. product category rules or subscription completion).
- Purchases per Incented: Conversion rate from incentivised referees to actual customers.
- New Customers: Distinct referees who complete their first order, matched by email.
- Unique Successful Referrers: Referrers who introduced at least one friend who became a new customer.
- Rewarded Referrers: Referrers who received a reward because a referee completed the necessary action.
Revenue Metrics
Revenue figures associated with referred purchases are split into three categories:- Revenue from New Customers: First orders from referees.
- Revenue from New Customers’ Subsequent Orders: Orders made by referees beyond their first.
- Revenue from Rewarded Customers: Purchases made by referrers within 45 days of receiving a reward.
Revenue is the order value passed to Mention Me through the tags. It should be net of shipping, discount, and taxes. All revenue is displayed in a single reporting currency (usually GBP by default), configured at the account level. Orders can be placed in any currency, but the platform converts them using up-to-date exchange rates. The reporting currency cannot be changed dynamically by campaign.
Conversion Ratios to Monitor
- Overall Customer Share Rate: Sharing customers / unique customers. Strong programmes reach 30%.
- Purchase Rate (Purchases per Sharer): New customers / sharers. Mature programmes average 15-20%.