Footwear Referral Program Examples: Greats Shoes

We've had a love affair with Greats for quite a while now. They're a really cool brand with a really cool product, and they've been using ReferralCandy for over a year now running a really cool referral program. We've mentioned and featured them here and there, but we thought we'd take the time to really put it all in one place.

They have a great about page:

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Our interview with Ryan Babenzien of Greats:

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Where do your customers come from?

"At first, it’s all press, social and word-of-mouth.

Social continues to be huge. So many  customers are super stoked to get their sneakers, photograph it, and post to IG that they become incredibly influential brand ambassadors for us."

What are your marketing challenges?

Actually, we haven’t really worried about marketing. Our focus is on getting our shoes on the right person, the rest will come from there. We just focused on telling our story visually on IG and making sure we got sneakers to our friends who happen to be very influential. (V: Fun fact – Ryan used to be an agent and manager in the entertainment industry, and was Head of Entertainment Marketing at PUMA.)

Our core customer today is helping us acquire customers and continuing to help us grow but we're really just over a year old.

Visual stories are the best tool we know of to sell sneakers. People want to see how they look, how it's styled in a look, and IG helps us do that very well.

Other than RC, what other marketing tools do you use?

- Shopify to run the store.

- MailChimp to send newsletters.

Your referral rates are great. Why do you think that is?

It's all about deeply understanding your core customer and why they share. Young, millennial, digital native. Loves style. Love to hook up his crew.

They’re all about sharing. We give them social validation. Referral incentives just accelerate that, so they’re constantly referring people to the brand.

What feedback do you have for ReferralCandy?

Given the supportive nature of our customer, ReferralCandy has been very helpful. Our average checkout is 1.5 pairs, so guys are buying multiple pairs at once, largely inspired by their friends' referrals. That's amazing for us.

Further reading:

• Greats.com – About Us
• NiceKicks.com – Industry Interview: Ryan Babenzien talks Greats Brand & The Bab
• Forbes.com – Greats is building the next great footwear company

Cool things to note about Greats' Referral Program:

Greats have a "great" refer-a-friend message with the CTA posted prominently on their landing page AND their about us page:

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Greats has a really cool About page, which is definitely necessary if you're building a lifestyle brand that you want people to buy into, contribute to, be a part of. We could all take a lesson in how to promote referral programs from Greats.

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Click through and you'll be brought to this page:

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Fill out your referral email details and you'll get your own unique referral link that you can share with your friends:

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Greats also left us a wonderful review which you can check out on the Shopify app store:

Check out more referral program examples!