As marketers increasingly seek out ways to optimize budgets, capture market share and drive growth, digital referral rewards offer simple, cost-effective solutions for financial services, retail and consumer service organizations.

Consumer companies are struggling to grow in the face of mounting customer acquisition costs, and the most promising source of new buyers is their own existing customer base. To address this growing market demand for refer-a-friend solutions that accelerate customer acquisition, Blackhawk Network (BHN), a global branded payments provider, is now partnered with Extole, a customer engagement technology company. Through the partnership, BHN now empowers its clients to drive increased customer acquisition by delivering automated, near-real-time digital rewards and incentives to their customers for referring friends or completing value-generating activities through Extole’s platform. These rewards can easily integrate into mobile wallets and help meet increasing consumer preferences for on-the-go payment and reward options.

Extole-powered marketing programs, including refer-a-friend, ambassador, and welcome programs, help businesses combat skyrocketing paid media costs by nurturing two-way relationships with existing customers—driving affinity and ongoing engagement while also encouraging loyal customers to support new customer acquisition, awareness, and activation efforts.

“Your customer base is an untapped army of advocates waiting to be activated,” said Matthew Roche, CEO at Extole. “Social media traffic is reliable but shockingly expensive, while customer-led growth has lower acquisition cost and higher long-term value. Our data has shown that friend referrals drive significantly more ROI than other marketing channels with 3 to 6 times higher conversion rates, 115% higher spend and 125% higher lifetime value. BHN can delight its clients’ customers by providing a huge range of rewards delivered quickly and conveniently, building loyalty for brands. We appreciate BHN’s leadership and expertise in the rewards industry; its breadth of digital prepaid and gift card options enable more meaningful connections between its partner brands and their customers, no matter where they are.”

With lower customer acquisition costs than other traditional marketing tactics, BHN’s new refer-a-friend capabilities offer customizable, turnkey referral marketing program templates, flexible integration options and exceptional service. Optimal ROI is possible in 90 days or less, and thanks to the seamless integration between BHN’s solutions portfolio and Extole’s platform, users do not have to hassle with traditionally cumbersome processes to manually issue payouts since the process is fully automated in near-real-time.

“People want the ability to choose their own reward and have it quickly delivered no matter where they are. Our research¹ found that one reward in particular stands out above the rest: 63% of respondents want digital rewards in the form of prepaid cards or egifts,” said Bill Warshauer, Vice President, North America Incentives at BHN. “Modern, secure, evolving SaaS solutions can help businesses by simplifying business operations to deliver more powerful marketing applications. Our compelling rewards and incentives help brands in those endeavors, and now, through our partnership with Extole, we can help marketers drive awareness, acquisition and retention through engagement programs targeted to existing customers. Our collaboration empowers brands to identify, activate and motivate engagement with existing customers at a holistic level—creating bigger deals, happier customers and supercharged growth in the long run.”

BHN’s robust rewards solutions, now seamlessly integrated with Extole’s platform, offer a highly disciplined go-to-market approach that can help retailers, financial services (e.g., banks, credit unions) and consumer services companies (e.g., travel, hospitality) reshape the way they approach customers and increase their lifetime value.

About Blackhawk Network (BHN)

Blackhawk Network (BHN) is the leader in global branded payment technologies. We strengthen relationships between brands and their customers, employees, and partners by transforming transactions into connections. BHN’s portfolio includes Gift Card & eGift products, promotions and distribution that grow revenue faster; Rewards & Incentives that build loyalty and acquisition and are integrated into today’s leading platforms; and Payments that enable businesses and customers to access and disburse funds in convenient and innovative ways. BHN’s network spans across the globe with over 400,000 consumer touchpoints. Learn more at BHN.com.

About Extole

Extole is the Customer-led Growth platform. With Extole, marketers fight skyrocketing paid media costs by turning their customers into a primary source for acquisition, awareness, and activation. With Extole’s SaaS platform and expert services, marketers rapidly launch programs such as refer-a-friend, ambassador, and welcome programs, personalized to important behavioral segments. Customer-Led Growth drives revenue, lowers customer acquisition cost, and generates an important source of first-party data. To date, Extole boasts 500+ customers at leading enterprise brands, 30+B events per day via 1.4B consumer relationships. Learn more at Extole.com.

¹ The Global State of the Union Insights study was conducted on behalf of Blackhawk Network (BHN) in March 2022. The sample size included 2,165 respondents ages 18+.

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