Make Your Student Referral Program Work | Strategies to Promote

We all want students who are so excited about your course that they start bringing their friends, who bring their friends, and your enrollment starts growing on its own. And referral marketing is all about that. It is exactly how Dropbox exploded their user base by 3900% just by getting people to invite others with a double-sided referral program.

Did we just compare your school to a billion-dollar tech company? Absolutely. Because the truth is, you do not need a massive budget or a big team to make referral marketing work for you.

In this guide, we are going to break down exactly how you can promote your student referral program that helps you sell more courses without feeling awkward or pushy. Get ready to put on your marketing hat as we will start to look at some examples, too. 

How referral marketing helps to sell more courses 

Referral marketing is one of the most effective ways for you to increase course enrollments. But they say it about every other marketing strategy. What is different about this approach? 

Ways to promote your student referral program 

To let more students know about your loyalty program, we will be using your main marketing channels. How exactly? Let’s look at some examples. 

Create an email sequence 

Why start sharing your referral program via email? For one thing, with email campaigns, you can get 40 times more enrollments than using Facebook and Twitter together. 

The results sound promising unless you decide to send your student referral program offer to everyone you have on your subscriber list. If you want the campaign to work, make sure you

• Send that to a particular segment
• Have a ready and automated sequence
• Have an offer that is very clear 

• Which student segment is the most effective to promote? 

The best group is your engaged learners. By engaged, I do not mean the ones who enrolled in multiple of your courses. 

But the subscribers who open your emails, click your links, and send replies. They are the ones most likely to tell a friend even if they have not enrolled yet. You can filter their list using your email automation tool. 

Another group is the students who have just finished your course. Especially because 83% of consumers are willing to refer a business after a positive experience. If you have students who bought more than one course or stayed active in your community, even better.

• How shall I present the student referral offer?

Another important part of your email is your content. When you present the referral program, make sure the offer touches the following points. 

• What is the reward for the student who refers
• What is the benefit for the one who gets referred
• What exactly do the subscribers have to do to earn the reward
• And if you have requirements for the referral program, include those too

When it comes to presenting the program, I recommend using the words you/your. You want to highlight that they are helping someone achieve a similar transformation as they did. 

And if you reward with a definite amount. For example, let’s suppose you are offering a fitness course to build strength. In your copy, you can mention how many protein shakes they can get with your reward. 

• Set up the sequence 

Your email sequence can consist of four emails. 

In the first, you present the referral program with the points we discussed above. But the thing is, most people usually do not jump at the first chance they get. So, the first email is mostly there to present your student with the opportunity. 

That is why you want to have a reminder email, which should actually get more student referrals. 

The last two emails are there to strengthen your relationship and establish a strong relationship with the referred student. So, with your third email, you can thank your loyal students and send more details about how they can get their bonus. 

To summarize your campaign, do not forget to email the student who got referred. Present them the details once more and make them feel welcome in your community. 

Many eCommerce brands usually use this strategy. One of them I want to highlight is Omsom, which delivers Asian saucy noodles. In their email to the referee, they once again highlight the opportunity and lead to the reward. 

Add a consistent block in your automated emails 

But if you do not feel like creating a whole email campaign, there is one more way to let your students know you are open to referrals. 

For that, create a new block with your email automation tool right under your signature, and add it to all your automated emails. You can use a simple copy like “Loved your learning journey? Share it and earn 10%. Invite a friend to join us and get access to my [Community Name] community”. 

This can be one of the incentives, but we will cover more reward examples further in the article. 

Here is an example of how CoSchedule did it as they sent me an email about AI in Marketing Automation. As an incentive, they are offering a free marketing calendar tool. 

Add a pop-up before checkout 

Another touchpoint with your students is the moment they want to purchase the course. And reminding them of your program is the perfect time, as 

• They are already excited and have decided to enroll
• They get more excited as you present them with another bonus. It might be free access to your community for both the student and the other they refer, or other helpful resources. 

The thing is, you should be careful to choose a reward that will NOT keep them from enrolling as they think of someone to refer. Quite the contrary. You want to encourage them to explore more of your courses and products. 

Here is another example from e-commerce that you can adapt to your business

Use your Thank You page 

Similar to the strategy above, you can share the program not before purchase, but after, using your Thank You page. 

Instead of a plain "Thanks for signing up" message, use your Thank You page to say something like, "Want to invite a friend and earn a reward?" or "Know someone who would love this course too? 

Here, you can direct them to your referral program form and present the rest of the details on that page. 

Post in your community 

If you have a student community, it is one of the best places to promote your referral program. This is the very touchpoint where you already enjoy trust and the engagement you need from your loyal students. So, why not use it?

You just need to create a post presenting the details of your referral program, add the link to the landing page where they can find more details, and pin that post. 

Here is an example of how one of the Uteach creators shared about her referral program with her community, which is built into her school platform. 

Add information on your course sales page 

Even if you already have a landing page for your referral program, you can present the offer on the course page, too. 

You should position that in a way that a potential student understands they are getting something special for helping someone else. And there are a few common ways brands usually present such offers. 

• You can place a banner above the fold with something like “Enroll with a Friend and Get 20% Off for Both of You!”
• Right before your main button for enrollment, insert a mini-section that communicates the idea that learning is better with friends. 
• Add a small widget that tells visitors to get rewarded, and when they click on it, they can see the details of your student referral program. 
• Or you can just use the announcement bar. 

To present an example, we will refer to another e-commerce brand. Vivobarefoot presents several offers in the announcement bar, and one of their current offers is referring a friend and getting 20% off for the next order. The announcement bar also changes to present more of their offers and sales. 

Start a social media campaign 

You already use social media to engage with your students and promote your school brand, so why not start a referral program? 

The best thing about social media is that when you come up with a great idea, the results grow like a snowball. And by mentioning a referral program campaign, I do not mean just making an announcement post about your referral program. 

Besides announcing your referral program, you can actually reach more students. 

• Hashtag challenges
• Students or your followers sharing content
• Create multi-level rewards
• Build it around charity, etc. 

One of the best examples is Starbucks’ #RedCupContest. The idea was that people posting a picture of their red cups could win $500. And besides getting engagement, they also got UGC for their future marketing campaigns. 

Some ideas you could use to promote your referral program include students posting a photo or video about why they love your course and tagging a friend they would want to join. Or if you support a movement and you know your community of students is on board with you, you could let them know you are donating a certain amount for that movement. 

Incentives to offer as part of your referral program 

If you want your students to not just think about sharing your course but actually do it, you have to make the rewards good. Because a polite thank you message is not enough. A few ideas that you can try are the following. 

• One idea is discounts. Everyone loves saving money. You could offer a ten percent discount on their next course or maybe give them twenty dollars off if they bring in a new student.
• Also, you can offer free access to exclusive content. Maybe a bonus workshop, a private Q&A session with you, or even a mini-course you have not released publicly. 
• You can also offer a shareable coupon to their friend. This makes your loyalty program double-sided and more effective. In fact, 65 percent of referrers prefer to share rewards. 
• If you have a private community group, a members-only forum, or even a monthly live session, you can make those part of the reward. 

Create your student partner with Uteach 

Are you ready to put these strategies into use? You can create your student referral program with Uteach and drive more enrollments easily. 

To do that, head to the Marketing section of your dashboard and choose the Student Affiliate section. You can activate and disable the program anytime. 

Setting the terms  

To begin with, the referral offer can apply to all your courses, products, memberships, and any resources you created, or choose a specific course you want to promote. 

Now, we can decide on the conditions. Those include: 

• Commission fee - this is the percentage your student partners will get as a result of the sales.
• The minimal affiliate request - set the minimum amount the students can request for commissions. 
• Generated profit request availability - set after how many days the student will be able to request the commission.

What is great about Uteach is that you do not have to wait for the students to use their referral link. As the admin, you have the opportunity to invite the members. 

You can invite your loyal students to use the program once you insert their email addresses. 

Managing the program 

When the students request to join your referral program, you can access all their requests from your dashboard and manage them. And when you pay the set amount, there is a function to mark them as paid and control the status as well. 

In another report, you can access all your partners, see the students they invited, and the amount of purchases that they made for you. 

Ready to build referral partnerships? 

If you want more students to join your referral program, you need to promote it where they are already paying attention and feeling positive. 

Use your email campaigns to reach your most engaged subscribers, share the program naturally inside your student community, your social media, or any other channels you use to communicate with your students. 

The idea is to make it feel like the next natural step, not a sales pitch. Also, remember to make it easier for students to join. 

If you are looking to start on an all-in-one course creation platform that also helps you manage referrals, start with Uteach. With Uteach, you can monetize your skills by selling digital products, recorded courses, live courses, coaching, memberships, and so much more. 

Book your free call with our expert, who will walk you through every step of getting the most out of your business.