Influitive Adds B2B Referral Solution to its Advocate Marketing Platform to Boost Sales-Ready Leads

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TORONTO, Oct. 16, 2013 /CNW/ - Influitive, the advocate marketing experts, today introduced Influitive Referrals, a B2B referral solution that helps marketers generate more sales-ready leads from customers, partners, advocates and fans. Within AdvocateHub, the company's flagship advocate marketing platform, Influitive Referrals overcomes many of the problems associated with B2B referral programs by providing a simpler, more rewarding experience for participants.

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Today, word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind up to half of all purchasing decisions, according to research from McKinsey. Advocate-generated referral leads are 10 to 20 times more valuable than direct sales or inbound web leads, yet very few B2B referral programs are successful because they rely on manual, poorly targeted or ill-timed campaigns to solicit leads from existing customers.

"Nothing fires up sales teams more than happy customers referring motivated buyers," said Mark Organ, CEO and Co-founder of Influitive. "Our approach is simple: if you want more referral leads, develop a program to tap into the passion of your advocates, fans and evangelists."

Influitive Referrals is a comprehensive suite of tools that make it easy for B2B marketers to ask for referrals and enjoyable for their customers to participate. The solution is based on Influitive's experience generating thousands of referral leads for B2B clients this year, and comprehensive research into what motivates B2B customers to advocate for their vendors.

Influitive Referrals offers five advantages over alternative referral automation solutions:

• Influitive Referrals is built on a foundation of advocacy: Embedded in Influitive's AdvocateHub software, the leading advocate marketing platform, Influitive Referrals cultivates high-quality leads from customers, fans and advocates who are predisposed to recommend products, ensuring high participation.
• Influitive Referrals uses instant recognition, rewards and game mechanics to ensure high engagement and a more pleasing experience for advocates.
• Influitive Referrals features a seamless integration with LinkedIn that proactively suggests potential referral names from advocates' social networks. Administrators can set specific keywords to find the right match. With a few clicks, customers can select and submit leads.
• Influitive Referrals includes real-time status updates and notifications as referred leads progress through a vendor's qualification and sales stages. This feedback loop increases advocates' participation rates and lead quality over time.
• Through Influitive's integration with salesforce.com, referred names are passed directly into the CRM software as new leads. Administrators can easily sync salesforce.com lead status and opportunity stage fields with Influitive to enable status notifications and track revenue impact.

Influitive Referrals is part of Influitive's Fall 2013 product release, which includes a number of other key innovations powering B2B advocate marketing programs:

• Advocate-to-Advocate Messaging empowers advocates to collaborate, network and communicate directly with each other within AdvocateHub.
• Auto-verification for AppExchange reviews and blog comments makes it easy to track and confirm advocate reviews on salesforce.com's AppExchange and comments on blogs powered by Disqus.
• Private Leaderboards allow administrators to segment leaderboards by types of advocates, such as customers, employees or partners, to ensure fair and friendly competition.
• Maven by Influitive, the only B2B advocate marketing application for iOS, now includes challenge notifications and other user experience enhancements.

These enhancements are immediately available to all customers. For more information on Influitive Referrals and AdvocateHub, please visit influitive.com.

About Influitive
Influitive, based in Toronto and San Francisco, is changing the face of B2B marketing through its innovative AdvocateHub platform and Maven mobile app for advocate marketing. Today's buyers are leveraging knowledgeable peers at roughly twice the rate than they did even four years ago. Influitive helps marketers capture the enthusiasm of their best customers, followers and evangelists, turning that into direct support through all stages of the buying cycle, from social media reviews and customer referrals to case studies and references. Influitive's customers include some of most successful and fastest-growing business-to-business software and technology firms in the world. To learn how to get your advocates working with you, please visit www.influitive.com.

SOURCE: Influitive

Jim Williams, VP of Marketing, Influitive, [email protected], [phone]

http://www.influitive.com

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