How Cello helped plancraft achieve an impressive referral ROI of 5.7

Plancraft provides an intuitive SaaS solution that empowers craftsmen to concentrate on their core business, the craft. The tool helps optimize office work and teams, streamlining tasks from offer preparation to project planning and time tracking, for a chronically overworked target group.

Plancraft saw increasing engagement and organic referrals among its users (business owners, managers of desk-less workforce), so they decided to double down on referrals as an acquisition channel by introducing a user referral program.

As a small team with limited developer resources, it became clear that building a solution in-house would require more time and effort, diverting attention from improving their core product further. So they were looking for referral software that made it easy to set up the program initially, as well as to maintain it.

How did they succeed?

Cello was plancraft first’s engagement with a formal referral program, so they aimed to test this new channel and see how Cello works for their product.

Easy implementation and low maintenance

The setup and connection with their existing tech stack turned out to be straightforward through Cello's offered API, and pre-configured referral experience. As Cello is an E2E solution, providing the UX, infrastructure, automated referral payouts, as well as tax and compliance, plancraft were able to keep the management and maintenance effort of their referral program at a minimum.

Hence, without a lot of required engagement from both the developer and the marketing side, they were able to see results quickly and generate constant revenue through referrals.

To implement and bring Cello live quickly, they decided to first use Cello’s easy-to-set up floating action button as integration option. After first success was proven, the Cello referral component was integrated more natively, into the web app’s first-level menu.

They had initially started with a pre-configured page provided by Cello, on which new users land once they open the referral link. This was later replaced with a custom-built referee landing page, to engage new users even better.

Plancraft also took several actions to promote their program on their social-media:

• They launched a video by their CEO introducing and explaining the referral program to their users
• They promoted Cello among their online-community of micro-influencers and power users

The combination of implementing best-practices and actively promoting the go-to-market of their referral program increased plancraft’s program performance steadily.

Expansion to partner referral use case

After seeing increasing success with their Cello user referral program, they decided to expand their referral program further. To supercharge the sharing among their community of power-users and micro-influencers, they launched a second campaign for this group, incentivising them even better.

The result?

Additionally, referrals account for a significant 10.6% additional monthly revenue growth.

Plancraft’s referral program shows a 47% free trial-to-paid ratio, highlighting its effectiveness in not only attracting new users and but also converting them into paying customers.

Furthermore, the referral channel powered by Cello, stands out as their most cost-effective acquisition channel, with a CAC that is only 20% of their average CAC. The overall program ROI stands at an impressive 5.7, showcasing remarkable profitability of the referrals as a sustainable growth channel.