Very quick once I was able to establish…
Very quick once I was able to establish how to get into the account which was not easy to do
Sara Bleanch
Solutions · Referral programs
Referral programs
for accelerated growth.
Referred customers come pre-trusted, convert faster, churn less and refer others themselves. Use incentives to turn word-of-mouth into a measurable, omnichannel acquisition program.
Referral programs are your acquisition channel with the highest ROI.
Paid channels get more expensive every year. Referral is the way out: referred customers come pre-trusted, convert faster, churn less and refer others themselves. Your CAC stops being a number you bid for and becomes a number you set as a reward.
Growth1
10%+
additional acquisitions
Trust2
88%
trust recommendations from people they know
Profitability3
16%
higher lifetime value
Virality4
31 to 57%
more referrals from referred customers
Quantum Fiber
Brands that define their categories run referrals on Aklamio.
Three reasons enterprise growth teams work with us.
At Lebara we understand the value of word-of-mouth and the role it plays in brand perception and customer acquisition. We chose Aklamio due to their unique capabilities to help us deliver our vision.
Case studies
Stand out from your competitors with an outstanding referral experience.
Six steps, optimized for simplicity and high referral rates.
Step 01Referrers sign up
A referrer registers on the landing page. (Skip this step using our APIs.)
Step 02They get their referral link
Which they can share through the sharing channels of their choice.
Step 03A friend receives a referral link
It arrives where people actually talk, as a message from someone they know.
Step 04The friend follows and picks how to buy
Online, by phone or in store. The referral is tracked whichever route they take.
Step 05The reward is automatically tracked
Rewards are added to the referrer’s incentive wallet, and an email lets them know.
Step 06The reward is confirmed
Confirmed rewards are fulfilled in the user dashboard.
Whoever should refer you, we have the right program.
Your customers, your staff, your power sellers or everyone. Run as many referral programs as you want on one infrastructure, with a single ledger, one set of fraud controls and one reward catalog.
Every sharing channel your customers use.
Copy link, email, WhatsApp, Facebook and X are on the widget by default. Each is tracked as its own funnel, so you can see which ones bring sales rather than only which ones bring traffic.
That distinction matters: social posts reliably earn the most clicks per share and the fewest sales per click. Ranking channels on clicks alone gets the answer backwards.
Every sales channel in one program.
Aklamio supports every sales channel, not only to reach referrers but above all to convert the people they refer. The referred friend chooses whether to buy online, by phone, in store or through a field agent. Aklamio captures deals across channels, on every route, and attributes them to the referrer.
- Online · your website and app promote the program and capture deals.
- Call center · agents invite referrers and capture referrals.
- Shops · staff turn customers into referrers and capture referrals.
- Door-to-door · field agents promote the referral program.
Your brand, end to end.
Every surface a referrer or a referred friend sees carries your design system, from the first invitation to the reward email. Configured by our team as a service, or by yours in self-service.
- Landing pages, in your layout and your words
- User dashboards, where rewards are tracked and claimed
- Reward emails, in your templates
- All of it fully customizable, down to copy, colors and components
The entire referral journey on your domain.
Landing pages, referral links, user dashboards and reward emails are all served from your own domain. Customers stay on the domain they already trust, with no clickout to a third-party page and no vendor name in the referral links.
It takes a CNAME record on a subdomain such as rewards.your-domain.com. Aklamio configures the certificate and the sending domain during onboarding, so the work on your side is a DNS entry rather than a build.
Maximize visibility and engagement. Ask for referrals at the right moment.
A referral program underperforms when nobody sees it. Put it where your customers already are: on your website, in onboarding emails, in the account area and in the app. Run campaigns to keep interest up. Get your employees involved to drive additional deals.
Start with no integration.
Automate when you want to.
Aklamio can run a program entirely outside your systems, or all the way inside them. Both are production patterns running with enterprise customers today. Pick the depth that matches your team capacity and IT roadmap, not the platform's preference.
Mode 01 · Run it outside your systems
Set up programs outside your stack.
Aklamio hosts the whole program: landing pages, customer dashboards and the reward experience all run on Aklamio's side. Rewards are played in by CSV upload, or confirmed by your team directly in the Partner Interface. Nothing has to be built on your side to go live.
- Hosting, landing pages and dashboards provided
- Rewards played in by CSV upload
- Or confirmed in the Partner Interface
- Or tracked through your affiliate network
- No integration work required to start
Mode 02 · Automate it inside your stack
Aklamio lives inside your stack.
Once you want the program to run without anyone touching it, the wiring starts: sales events posted from your shop or backend, referral links generated through the API, and reward state read back when you need it. More to build, and more moving parts, in exchange for a program that runs itself.
- Sales events via the Events API
- Referral links generated via API
- Tracking JS on your own pages
- Reward state read back via API
- Integration on your subdomain (on-domain experience)
Both modes use the same platform and ledger underneath, so you can start without an integration and automate later without re-platforming.
Reward flexibility
that maximizes referrals
What the reward is, who gets it and how it changes over time are all yours to set. The right reward is what turns a satisfied customer into one who actually refers.
Fully managed*.
Minimal effort.
Maximum performance.
Aklamio’s services maximize program performance while minimizing the effort it takes from your team. You set the strategy and own every customization decision.
Prefer to run it yourself? Most of the platform can be run self-service too.
Explore servicesRead how IONOS cut internal effort by over 90% moving from in-house to AklamioThe metrics your operations, growth team and CFO actually ask for.
Aklamio delivers highly granular data on every program, available in the Partner Interface or via API. Operations sees live program health, the growth team sees performance by channel, product, employee, entry point and referrer, and the CFO sees the cost and ROI of the referral program.
- Referral program health and reward tracking in real time
- Agent-level insights for call center, shops, field and broker teams
- Campaign performance vs previous campaigns or industry standards
- Channel analysis by program and entry point
- Referred products and conversion rates
- Referrer activity and referrer data to enrich your CRM
Referral programs are rarely standalone.
The fastest-growing teams run referral programs alongside other incentive programs. One platform, central control and programs that reinforce each other.
With our referral programs you choose maximum profit.
An optimized referral program across every sales channel generates millions in additional profit per year. A suboptimal in-house build, and every quarter of delay, can cost millions instead.
| In-house | Aklamio | |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | ||
| Time-to-live | ||
| Multichannel | ||
| Services | ||
| Multi-program | ||
| Compliance | ||
| Total cost over 3 years |
Built for regulated industries. Ready for procurement.
Compliance and fraud prevention are handled by the platform, not handed back to your team.
GDPRCCPAISO 27001SOC 2FCAMFARBAC
Your customers will love us.
Don't take our word for it. Here's what people say on Trustpilot.
Questions we get asked
Straight answers on how a referral program behaves once it is live: who can refer, how fraud is stopped, and what happens when an order is cancelled.
Book a DemoDoes the program have to be open to everyone?+−
No, the choice is yours. An open program lets anyone refer, including people who are not customers yet: the classic refer-a-friend. The upside is the widest reach at the lowest barrier, since nobody has to identify themselves first. The downside: you know less about who is referring, and fraud prevention has to do more of the work. A closed program, member-gets-member, lets only existing customers refer, recognized by login or a token in the link. The upside: every referrer is known, the reward can be tied to their customer account, and abuse is rarer. The downside is narrower reach, since only your customer base can share. Both can also run side by side as separate programs on the same platform.
How do you stop referral fraud and self-referral?+−
Fraud prevention runs as part of the service, not as a feature you configure. Device and identity signals, velocity checks and duplicate detection run on every referral. Aklamio's operations team reviews suspicious cases and blocks the referrer account where abuse is suspected. Self-referrals are treated differently from abuse: they are monitored and flagged with the supporting evidence, and the payout decision is yours. Whether a customer referring their own household counts as abuse depends on your program terms. Rewards are released only once the sale is confirmed.
What does a referral program typically deliver?+−
For a new customer, our target is around 10% additional sales. Well-run programs can deliver significantly more, poorly run ones significantly less. The main drivers are high visibility, attractive rewards, deep integration across every channel, continuous campaign logic and choosing the right partner. On top of the deals generated, referred customers usually cost less to acquire and stand out for higher lifetime value and higher virality, which lifts the ROI of a referral program further. In a first demo call, we work out your goals together.
Can a referral be tracked if the friend buys by phone or in store?+−
Yes. Referrals are tracked across online, telesales, in-store and field sales, not only on the web. A referred friend who calls instead of clicking quotes a reward code, an agent looks the referral up in the agent interface, and the sale is attributed to the original referrer on the same ledger as an online purchase. This is what separates an enterprise referral program from a web-only referral widget.
What happens to rewards when an order is cancelled or returned?+−
A reward is only confirmed once the reward criteria you set are met. Usually that means the underlying order has cleared your cancellation or return window. A cancellation after confirmation usually cancels the reward automatically too, provided your systems are connected to our APIs. Referrers see the status of all their rewards in a dedicated user dashboard.
Can we run different referral programs in different markets?+−
Yes. One program design can run across multiple markets with local rewards, local currency and local terms, or each market can run its own program with its own rules. Reporting rolls up across all of them, so a group view and a single-market view come from the same data rather than from separate tools.