The Email Experience Council recently reviewed several email newslet-ters each from 103 of the top online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot to see which included refer-a-friend (RAF) links in their emails. Only three did: jewelry retailer Blue Nile, pet supplies retailer and pharmacy Drs. Foster & Smith, and computer and elec-tronics retailer TigerDirect.

While send-to-a-friend (STAF) programs can be useful to just about any retailer for generating viral buzz, refer-a-friend (RAF) programs appear to have their niche with retailers with limited or no store pres-ence, particularly those with higher end products. Unlike STAF, which forwards a newsletter along to a friend, RAF programs send an email that introduces the friend to the retailer. Interestingly, none of these three retailers offer STAF along with RAF. Even more interesting was the different way that each retailer implemented RAF.

For instance, Blue Nile sends a substantial HTML email with links to gifts in different price ranges, links to shipping, gift card and returns information, and a banner that includes links to different product categories. Blue Nile’s is also the only one of the three to incentivize the friend, offering them a personal code that’s good for a discount of up to $100 (depending on how much they spend)—and if the friend cashes in the discount, then the referrer is sent a code good for the same discount. It’s a smart way of incentivizing newsletter subscribers to refer their friends and of spurring the friends to take advantage of the referral discount. 

In contrast, Drs. Foster & Smith sends a brief, text-only message, which the sender can edit if they wish: “I was just on the www.DrsFosterSmith.com web site and thought it might be one you'd like to visit. They have a huge selection of pet products and good information.” Besides the link to their homepage, there are no other links. This looks like a pretty clear missed opportunity to better convey the benefits of shopping with the pet supplies retailer and pharmacy.

TigerDirect takes a very different spin on RAF, using the program not to convince people to shop at their website, but to convince them to sign up for their newsletter. Because of this, their RAF program is clearly in lieu of a STAF program. In fact, what the friend receives is the tail end of a double opt-in process. When we conducted our RetailEmail Subscription Benchmark Study last summer, we found that TigerDirect was only one of two major online retailers (Lowe’s was the other) that used a double opt-in subscription process. So with their RAF program, the referrer is actually signing the friend up for TigerDi-rect’s newsletter, and the message that the friend receives is a modified version of the subscription confirmation email asking the person to confirm that they want to subscribe.

There are a few areas of concern with these RAF programs—namely, a lack of attention to privacy issues, ease-of-use problems, limited integration into email campaigns, and concerns with adherence to the JumpStart ruling. We look at all of these concerns in more detail.

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