How Atmoph Expanded Its Referral Program Worldwide and Achieved a 24% Referral Rate With ReferralCandy

Atmoph is a design and technology business based in Japan.

Its principal product, Atmoph Window, began as a crowdfunding project and is now enjoyed by customers across the world.

Challenges: Attracting new customers with a small team and marketing budget

In the hyper-competitive world of ecommerce, having a great product is no guarantee of success. Innovative businesses must be masters of marketing too, but that’s not easy when internal bandwidth is small—and budgets are even smaller.

This was the challenge faced by gadget-makers, Atmoph.

The company was eager to unlock more sales and revenue from its innovative digital ‘windows,’ but was finding customer acquisition a headache.

“We are a really small team and we’re not always sure where to target our limited marketing dollars,” explains Sales Lead, Tokinari Shioya. “We didn’t have a lot of money to advertise on social networks and other digital media, and we didn’t get many orders through advertisements.”

But they had an idea.

“If we could get our customers to introduce the product they like, it would be a really good way to spread our product to the world,” says Tokinari. “So we started looking for a service like that on Shopify.”

Additionally, Tokinari wanted a solution that would scale with them as they took their business international.

“We wanted our overseas market to grow, which meant encouraging referrals internationally too,” explains Tokinari. “But many of the products we saw didn’t provide the multi-language functionality we’d need to go global.”

Then ReferralCandy came to the rescue.

“If we could get our customers to introduce the product they like, it would be a really good way to spread our product to the world.”

Tokinari Shioya
Sales Lead, Atmoph

Solution: Growing sales with an automated referral program that fires up word-of-mouth marketing

Atmoph discovered ReferralCandy, which enables ecommerce brands to set up referral programs in minutes, and also runs automatically, so brands can get on with running their businesses.

To put the software to the test, Atmoph rolled out a program for customers in Japan. While merchants often complain that referral programs are complex and resource-intensive to build, ReferralCandy made it easy.

Connecting the tool with their Shopify store was fast and automated. Tokinari simply entered the store’s address into the platform, and ReferralCandy did the rest.

“It was so simple to get started,” he says. “The app itself integrates with Shopify easily. I don’t do programming or know HTML, yet it was really easy for me to set it up.”

Building the program itself took a matter of minutes.

The main tasks Tokinari had to do were to set up the reward—¥1,000 (~$9 USD) for the referrer and a ¥1,500 (~$13 USD) discount for the new customer—and customize the referral emails and pages with Atmoph’s branding.

With the whole campaign buttoned up, Tokinari did a single click to activate the program—and new customers and referral revenue began rolling in. Even better, rewards are paid out automatically, with zero pull on the team’s time.

Atmoph saw domestic sales blow up, with the referral program performing so much better than ads at getting them customers. It was the logical next step to expand the program to international customers.

With ReferralCandy, Atmoph could set up their referral program in multiple languages and give out cash rewards through PayPal, regardless of the customers’ country.

A dedicated account manager from ReferralCandy stepped in to help Tokinari perform all the required tasks, including activating multiple languages and ensuring the right translations for every page and email.

“ReferralCandy’s customer support has been consistently amazing,” says Tokinari. “Our account manager helped us enable multiple languages for our referral program and quickly clarified our concerns around it.

“Getting timely support from Shopify apps is really rare, so we’re so grateful to ReferralCandy.”

Tokinari Shioya
Sales Lead, Atmoph

Results: 24% referral rate, which is 7x higher than the industry average!

ReferralCandy has radically improved Atmoph’s reach, customer acquisition, and sales—both at home and worldwide. And all with next to no work for their team, because the program runs on autopilot.

ROI has been great. A single referred sale covers Atmoph’s monthly costs for using the software. But sales performance is light years ahead of that.

In fact, after using ReferralCandy for a year and a half, Atmoph has a 24% referral rate.

In other words, 24% of all sales come from new customers through the referral program, who might not have purchased otherwise.

That puts their referral rate 7x higher than the industry average for gadgets and electronics, which stands at 3.4%.

As well as introducing brand new customers to the product, Tokinari says the referral program provides the final, critical nudge of persuasion that pushes many wavering prospects over the line.

“I think lots of people see our advertisements and get interested, but they don’t end up purchasing because they don’t really know the product and it is pretty expensive,” says Tokinari. “But when they receive a referral from a friend, they get the reassurance they need—and they buy!”

By extension, some customers who love Atmoph are using the program to generate additional income. Through their social media accounts, they’re introducing Atmoph to much bigger audiences and helping Atmoph sell even more products.

Tokinari says people buying from these ‘power’ referrers has increased 87% this year. These referrers are earning more commission while fueling Atmoph’s growth!

Tokinari also plans to collaborate with YouTubers and other influencers who are fans of their products to scale their sales globally.

“Even if they really like our product, they might not talk about it if they won’t earn anything. With an incentivized referral program, we could offer the influencers a reward for introducing our product,” he says.

With so much growth in referral revenue and traffic, Tokinari recommends ReferralCandy to any ecommerce founder or marketer who wants to find more customers.

He concludes: “ReferralCandy is simple to use and flexible for us. For our customers, it is a really nice way to refer. It has been so valuable to use ReferralCandy to convince people who are buying for the first time.”

“It has been so valuable to use ReferralCandy to convince people who are buying for the first time.”

Tokinari Shioya
Sales Lead, Atmoph