Leesa Added ReferralCandy and Found a Steady Stream of New Customers

Leesa is an online mattress retailer and a pioneer of the burgeoning bed-in-a-box industry.

How Leesa competes in a competitive industry

Like most entrepreneurs, the founders of Leesa saw a problem, then set out to do something about it.

They hated the way that mattress were sold: in retail showrooms, with salesmen pressuring you to make a decision, selling products from companies who make it difficult to comparison-shop.

And so they set out to build a mattress company that would be the complete opposite of the typical experience: online-only, with no salesmen, with complete transparency behind the product they were selling.

The result? People love Leesa and their mattress. With their 100-night trial, social impact programs and incredible product ratings, Leesa is a definitely a company that gets people talking.

The Leesa team soon found that they weren’t the only ones who had their sights set on disrupting the old guard of the mattress industry.

They lost the first-mover advantage to another mattress company that had launched before them, and many more have followed since.

Even established companies have seen the sands of the industry shifting and have begun to aggressively incorporate ecommerce into their business model, resulting in some channels becoming saturated and expensive.

"Customer acquisition can be tough. Our competitors are ready to spend. We’re in the growth phase of our company, so getting new qualified leads to our store is vital to our success."

‍Matt Hayes
‍Head of Ecommerce, Leesa

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All this leads to a very competitive industry — many companies bidding for the same search terms, jockeying for the same press coverage and fighting for the same consumer mindshare. Succeeding in this industry means more than just outspending your competition; you have to find every edge you can.

Knowing that their “luxury premium” positioning and stellar reviews made them unique, Leesa found that investing in word of mouth would help them leverage their existing customer base to keep them at the forefront of the young industry.

“We knew the importance of building word-of-mouth into the product experience”

Leesa’s customers were delighted with their mattress, and often excited to refer their friends to Leesa.

The Leesa team knew that customer referrals would be a key channel for fueling their growth phase. As a team composed of several marketing and ecommerce veterans, they knew the influence that friends’ recommendations had on shoppers’ purchase decisions.

"Consumers place a tremendous value in the word-of-mouth referral from a trusted friend. We knew the importance of building word-of-mouth into the product experience."

‍Matt Hayes
‍Head of Ecommerce, Leesa

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In seeking out referral program software, they needed something that would integrate seamlessly into their ecommerce store and generated as many customer referrals as possible.

After seeing ReferralCandy’s strong reviews on the Shopify app store, they installed the app in a few clicks then quickly got everything set up.

Leesa turns to ReferralCandy to generate a steady stream of qualified leads

Armed with their referral program, Leesa’s customer base now helps them generate a steady stream of high-quality leads.

With ReferralCandy, there’s no cap on the number of visitors or advocates your referral program can have. This means that every single Leesa customer gets invited to their referral program:

Being able to invite every single one of their customers to their referral program is one of the reasons why Leesa gets so many word-of-mouth referrals.

"We got a couple calls from some of our older customers about our referral program. They were amazed how easy it was to share their referral links."

‍Matt Hayes
‍Head of Ecommerce, Leesa

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Leesa turns to ReferralCandy to generate a steady stream of qualified leads

With ReferralCandy’s social network integration, this means that Leesa is constantly seeing their customers give them shout-outs and recommendations on Twitter and Facebook.

The visibility not only drives additional revenue to their store, but helps them passively increase consumer mindshare in their competitive industry.

Referral program automation frees Leesa to focus on other ways to grow their business

When Leesa added ReferralCandy to their store, they were amazed at how it fully automated the customer referral process.

"We love that you just plug it in, set it up, and that’s it. Other that keeping an eye on it, we don’t change much. It just works."

‍Matt Hayes
‍Head of Ecommerce, Leesa

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Setting up ReferralCandy is a breeze, and all the important stats are available on your dashboard.

Most importantly, it reduces the admin work that the Leesa team has to do in managing their referral program, allowing them to focus on strategy and new ways to push for the next level of growth.

"Using ReferralCandy helps our finance guy out. A lot. Automatic payouts mean way less work for him. We’re bootstrapped. We don’t have the time to manage that."

‍Matt Hayes
‍Head of Ecommerce, Leesa

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Everything is automated by ReferralCandy; from sending out coupons, tracking your stats, looking out for fraud, and even sending out cash payouts.