Referrals

WhirLocal’s platform makes it easy to give, receive, and track referrals. Reviews, recommendations, and referrals go hand-in-hand towards building your reputation, social proof, and revenue.

When you give referrals to places that you know, like, and trust, it also builds goodwill.

This is a great feature for networking groups, referral partners, chamber members … anyone who loves to give referrals to other businesses and organizations.

Get Your Personalized Referral Link

After you add Recommended Places to your virtual recommendations wall, we make it very easy to refer to your recommended places using our platform.

Step 1: Click on the “Send Link to My Phone” button to get your personalized Referral Link.

Step 2: Enter your mobile phone number and agree to the terms.

Step 3: Open the SMS text message. It will say something like, “Hi [name], here is the link you requested”.

Step 4: Click on the link, and save it to your mobile phone home screen.

IOS users, you can also follow this process to create a shortcut.

Refer on-demand

Giving referrals is fun, easy, and great for your business. When you hear a need from a friend, family member, or colleague for the services that one of your recommended places provides, simply open up the link or shortcut on your home screen. This will open up your recommended places.

No need to carry around a whole bunch of business cards, fumble to find them, or even worse … leave a referral up to chance.

Step 1: Once you open your recommended places page, search for or scroll to find the place you’d like to refer to. You can also click on the “filter” icon to set your search parameters.

Step 2: Tap on their logo to open their profile card

Step 3: Click on the Refer A Friend button

Fill out the referral form

Once you’ve identified a need, found the company you want to refer, and clicked on the “refer a friend” button, the system opens up a mobile-friendly referral form.

Step 1: Make sure your information is filled in correctly so you get credit for the referral. If you’re using the link as directed above, the system should fill it in automatically. But, you can double-check at any time by clicking the “Edit My Info” button.

Step 2: Hand your mobile phone to your friend, family member, or colleague.

Step 3: Have them fill in their contact information and select the services (if defined) that they are interested in.

Step 4: Click or tap on the “Submit” button to send the referral on its way. They will now receive a link to the place that is being referred via their mail.

Paid Options:

All WhirLocal memberships can receive referrals in this manner. However, paid memberships can take advantage of additional powerful features within the Referrals process.

The person requesting the referral can ‘opt-in’ as a new contact for the place they are requesting information from, essentially giving the place permission to reach out to them directly. This is permission-based marketing at it’s finest and supercharges the referral process.

Here’s how it works.

1. The user ‘opts-in” by toggling the “Allow
   /5 based on Reviews to contact me directly”
2. The user can specify how interested they are about the places products or services by sliding the bar appropriately based on their interest level.

When this happens, our WhirLocal minions go to work, providing three additional functions for the place being referred.

1. Automatically adds the person as a contact in the CRM (contact manager).
2. Automatically sends an email with the contact information to the notification emails as defined in the business profile.
3. Ability to set up an automated email campaign, trigged by the new referral. This is powerful stuff!

Tracking Inbound Referrals

This inbound referrals tab provides an at-a-glance view of referrals that you have received via the referral form. You can see the following:

• Referrals you’ve received
• Open referrals
• Referrals won (closed business)
• Referrals lost (business you didn’t close)

You can easily manage each referral with the following information:

• Status (Open, Contacted, Closed-won, Closed-lost). Simply click on the button and choose the current status.
• The dollar amount that this referral is worth to your business. Enter the amount and click on the save button

This helps tracks your inbound referrals and how much business it is generating for you.

Tracking Outbound Referrals

The Outbound Referrals tab allows you to keep track of referrals that you have given to others through the WhirLocal platform. The referral partner that received the referral can manage their Inbound Referrals as described above, and this will provide insight into the referrals that you are giving.

This can be invaluable over time to answer the question, “Is this a good referral for you”.