What's the Difference between an Affiliate Program and a Referral Program?

There is a high probability that some of your customers/users are already sharing your product/service with their friends and family. Generally speaking, your customers are typically greater advocates for your business than affiliates, as they are are the warmest connections for your new leads (their friends/family/colleagues), and thus the chance for conversion is higher, and the chance for churn is lower (stickier customers).

When the reward for your referral program hits the motivational sweet spot with your audience, you unlock a highly sustainable, cost-effective acquisition strategy for your business.

Example: Dropbox provides 250MB in free lifetime cloud credits to every new signup that a user refers. The newly signed-up user also receives 250MB.

What's the difference between an affiliate program and referral program?

The simple way to differentiate between a referral program and affiliate program is asking yourself what is the incentive? If the reward is cash, it's most likely an affiliate program.

However, it should be noted that sometimes an affiliate program can be the same as a referral program (e.g, when cash is the reward, your customers also become your affiliates).

Running an affiliate program and referral program requires different resources, and it's not a bad idea to be running both.

At the end of the day, if you have a compelling product/service, there's a good chance you already have some ambassadors who are already sharing or would be willing to share your business, and supercharging those effects could make for some tremendous results.

At GrowSurf, they provide internet businesses with an out-of-the-box referral marketing solution. Check it out at https://growsurf.com.