5 Fun Ways to Incentivize Registrations With Social Referrals

There’s only so much marketing—both paid and organic—you can do to bring in new faces to your camps, classes, and programs. But you have an easy and accessible right at your fingertips: your existing participants!

Folks are more likely to sign up for a new experience if they know someone who has either participated in the past or someone who is already participating so they don’t have to go it alone. But don’t stop there. To sweeten the deal, consider incentivizing social referrals with one (or more!) of the following five ideas.  

Discounts and Discount Tiers

Simply offer discounts or a certain amount of a participant’s own registration fee for every person (or a certain amount of people) they refer to your organization who successfully sign up for a camp or class. Take it a step further by creating discount tiers where the discount amount goes up with every person the participant refers.

For example, if they refer one person, they get 5% off their registration, but if they refer three people, that number goes up to 10% off. Or give participants $5 off their registration for every successful referral.  

Group Discounts

Camps and classes are much better when experienced with a group of friends! Offer discounts through referrals when groups sign up together. Not only will you get more folks participating, but everyone will enjoy the discounted price to sign up, not just the one doing the referring.

Exclusive Swag

Everyone loves free stuff. That’s why it’s a common incentive: Sign up for this thing and get a free tote bag. Or drink coozie. Or T-shirt.

Why not apply it to your programs, too? When a participant refers a certain number of people to your organization, offer special swag that is only available for this incentive program. Plus, the cooler the swag, the more participants are going to work to refer their friends and family.

Switch this up a bit and put all participants who refer a friend or family member into a pool for a random drawing to win a prize after a set increment of time. Even folks that refer just one friend would be eligible to win.

Early Access

For ultra-popular camps and classes at your organization, create an incentive to gain early access to register for either that year or in future years through social referrals. When a participant successfully refers someone to your organization, send them an early access code to sign up for another class. This makes participants feel like they are in an exclusive club and encourages them to refer their friends so they can have access to these perks.  

Charitable Donations

If you’re looking to give back while growing your organization, consider creating a donation-based incentive program where you donate a set amount to a charity of your organization’s choosing for every successful social referral participants make. Not only are you helping to increase participation, but you’re giving back to the community as well.