A Chat With Kirsty Sharman, Founder at Referral Software Company: Referral Factory

Tell us about Referral Factory

Referral Factory provides plug and play referral software that enables businesses of all kinds and sizes to build their own referral programmes. It was born out of the challenge that many marketers will recognise: it’s hard and expensive to acquire high quality leads.

Consumer trust, in general, is waning. With ads everywhere, consumers simply filter them out. They’re way more likely to trust the recommendations of their friends and family. And stats show that if people have a good experience with a business, they’re more than happy to tell their friends. So, if you want to get high quality leads that already trust your business, the best way is to ask your existing customers and fans to refer their friends. This is exactly what Referral Factory helps companies do. 

What do you think makes Referral Factory unique?

Custom referral programmes can be challenging to set up. You need a developer or at the very least, serious technical expertise. That may be fine for large businesses with significant budgets, but it makes the process difficult for independents, SMEs, and startups. 

Referral Factory’s biggest USP is that it’s a no-code solution. Businesses of all sizes can track referrals end-to-end and even automatically reward people when their referrals are successful.

We make this possible through very deep, direct integrations with major CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Intercom, and Monday.com, and payment gateways like Stripe. Since Referral Factory easily plugs straight into these business tools that people already use, referred leads can be sent straight into their regular workflows and successful referrals can be tracked through those same workflows, providing a quick, simple, and effective referral solution that can be deployed almost anywhere.

How has Referral Factory evolved?

When we first launched Referral Factory, we specialised in customer referral programmes. Our software has grown a lot since then, becoming an end-to-end referral tracking solution that can be used to ask anybody for referrals — affiliates, partners, influencers, ambassadors, employees.

More than that, our customers can now run multiple referral programmes at scale. 

What can we hope to see from Referral Factory in the future?

Right now, the focus for Referral Factory is building seamless integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce, to better service our customers in eCommerce. We’re also working on a direct integration with Paypal, to make paying out cash rewards much easier and faster.