Sounds like plain referral. To me, the key to the Dropbox system is that the referrer is rewarded with more Dropbox. This makes the recommendation more sincere. Another issue is that the Curebit referral seems to occur before customers have received the product, so they can't logically recommend it, in general.
Dropbox addresses my ethical concerns about referrals; Curebit doesn't (based on this submission).
Good points. The system is pretty flexible, and what you're talking about is possible.
The referral happening is just an action - so a SaaS company using it could easily provide credit, as with Dropbox. You could provide a callback URL for us to notify you when the referral happens, but we handle all the tracking, url generation, analytics, split testing, etc. Check out the custom integration instructions:
http://www.curebit.com/integration#custom
Some of our stores (mypuppypads.com) delay the offer by a week - giving their customers a chance to first try the product.
I guess my complaint is more to do with the submission title :)
However... there is an intriguing idea that you might be more successful by only doing it the dropbox way. It seems counterintuitive to restrict your options, but then you really would be productizing the dropbox approach - you'd be offering not only the implementation of it, but also a guide to it, an explanation for why it works etc. Not technology, but valuable business guidance. It would also be simpler and more convenient, by being less customizable to use; and more definite and concrete in your marketing materials, making it easier to understand and pass on, and be stickier.
But developers hate artificially limiting their technology; and I'm far from able to guarantee it would sell better (or, indeed, at all).
I guess you could simulate it, by having a form/wizard, that guides the user through the issues of a dropbox-style referral - sort of like "referral model advice" - but one that ideally would also create the system on the spot! I'm thinking that many people have much less idea of referral programs than you do (and value their ignorance); making the choices simpler is a big plus for these folk. Of course, I don't know if referral systems are well-understood enough yet to be reduced to simple rules that always work (or work reasonably reliably, well enough for a first iteration for the client).
We started with one simple model under the assumption there's a "best" model. Now we're discovering there's more than one "ideal" model - different models work better on different sites (although some things work well consistently, and some things consistently don't). For example, on some sites providing an incentive for the referrer increases conversion (not surprising).. but on other sites, it hurts conversion - the social value of altruistically sharing a good deal outweighs to social cost of sharing something to your own benefit.
Now our product vision is to offer a small variety of simple models proven to work well, to get people started. But we also let hackers tweak stuff so it can work more seamlessly with their products.
This (i think) would increase implementation difficulty. While the walkthrough on "how to use it" at the front end would be an easier on-boarding process, but the complexity of figuring out what unit "more dropbox" was in most sales wouldn't be as easy as letting the seller define any offer and defaulting to the easily understood/implemented discount offers.
re: ethics, if we look at curebit as a platform that's encouraging more ethical referrals (by focusing on pre-built social network relationships and encouraging retailers to use best practices), we shouldn't expect them to have to limit their growth by forcing early users into unfamiliar patterns in order to be the moral police on anyone wanting to try their platform.
Great product! You've basically built something every company tries to build when first launching a product.
Ever think about a badging system to go along with this? I mention this because this is similar to what we built to use on Fanvibe for awarding users virtual goods and real life deals on tickets etc.
Love it, but I see 1 problem: when I see something on Facebook like: "I just bought Product X and unlocked a 10% discount for YOU", I presume it's spam. Copywriting is going to be very, very important to this.
Seeing these over and over will reduce their efficacy unless the offer really is targeted. Almost everyone buys from Amazon, it's got universal appeal. I can think of very few other companies that have that sort of reach/appeal.
Am I parsing the name wrong? I saw this a few hours ago and I still can't help but get the impression this is somehow medical related (the "cure" part).
I love this idea. The problem I have with Groupon-like sites, at least in terms of sharing, is that I don't want to blast everyone I know with offers. Most of the people i know aren't even in the same area.
But- usually I know a few people that would be interested in whatever deal or product I'm buying. Being able to target them specifically, and get rewarded for it, is brilliant.
Do you already know those friends' email addresses in these cases? If not, would you want us to get them from gmail/facebook so you can have autocomplete?
I'm bias as i'm in competition with these guys although we're trying to make something more social with a proper backend for earning badges, no referrals, twitter support and other cool things.
But this sounds worse for the Merchant and user.
User: Has to sort out a rebate for something they already paid for, has to refer friends and get them to buy to earn.
Merchant: The user has no inventive to return as you're giving them money off.
If a user actually likes a product and if worth the merchants time and money giving them a reward like a coupon (25% off or a free item when they buy something else would be far more powerful) In my opinion at least.
I've been working on this since mid last year and am happy with our implementation but this shows what a big market this is going to be, the best of luck to them, although we are doing similar things I don't think we're close to the same.
Let's be honest it's going to be rare that anyone will earn a rebate so giving them a code to return would mean they earn something and the merchant has the hook.
Sounds like plain referral. To me, the key to the Dropbox system is that the referrer is rewarded with more Dropbox. This makes the recommendation more sincere. Another issue is that the Curebit referral seems to occur before customers have received the product, so they can't logically recommend it, in general.
Dropbox addresses my ethical concerns about referrals; Curebit doesn't (based on this submission).