Program Manager - Marketing

Key Responsibilities

1. Referral Journey & Customer Experience

Design, optimize, and continuously improve the end-to-end referral journey for both referrers and referred customers.

Map key customer touchpoints and identify opportunities to improve conversion, engagement, and overall experience.

Ensure the referral process is simple, seamless, transparent, and customer-friendly across all channels.

Identify friction points, drop-offs, and process gaps across the referral funnel and implement corrective actions.

Develop customer communication journeys across relevant touchpoints, including referral invitations, reminders, status updates, reward communication, and post-referral engagement.

Monitor customer feedback and insights to continuously improve the referral experience.

2. Referral Program Strategy & Growth

Own the strategy and growth agenda for the referral channel, with a focus on increasing referral participation, referral volumes, conversion, and customer lifetime value.

Identify new opportunities to expand the referral ecosystem and strengthen customer-led acquisition.

Design and test innovative referral propositions, campaigns, incentives, and engagement mechanisms.

Explore and implement new referral models, including:

Tiered referral rewards

Ambassador programs

Loyalty-linked referral initiatives

Milestone-based incentives

Gamification and recognition programs

Community- or advocacy-led referral models

Benchmark industry best practices and emerging referral trends and translate relevant ideas into actionable initiatives.

3. Experimentation & Continuous Improvement

Develop a structured experimentation roadmap to test new referral ideas, messaging, incentives, journeys, and engagement strategies.

Run A/B tests and controlled experiments to evaluate different referral propositions and customer communications.

Analyze experiment results and identify scalable winning models.

Establish a continuous improvement culture around the referral channel by using customer data, business performance, and market insights.

Document learnings, best practices, and recommendations to inform future program development.

4. SOPs, Playbooks & Internal Enablement

Develop comprehensive SOPs, process guides, training materials, playbooks, FAQs, and communication tools to enable internal teams.

Create clear operating procedures covering referral generation, pitching, lead handling, tracking, follow-ups, reward fulfilment, issue resolution, and escalation.

Develop training modules to help sales, relationship management, customer service, and other relevant teams effectively promote and manage referrals.

Create referral pitching frameworks, sales scripts, objection-handling guides, talk tracks, and customer-facing sales collaterals.

Ensure internal teams have the right tools, knowledge, and resources to consistently deliver the referral proposition.

Conduct periodic training, refreshers, and knowledge-sharing sessions based on program performance and evolving best practices.

5. CRM, Automation & Technology

Identify opportunities to automate referral processes and reduce manual intervention across the customer and internal journeys.

Partner with technology, product, CRM, data, and operations teams to develop scalable referral solutions.

Identify CRM improvements required to enable better referral tracking, lead management, customer segmentation, communication, and reporting.

Define business requirements and workflows for referral-related technology enhancements.

Improve visibility of the referral funnel through effective CRM tagging, lead tracking, attribution, dashboards, and reporting.

Leverage technology and automation to improve speed, accuracy, scalability, and customer experience.

6. Sales & Referral Pitching

Develop compelling referral value propositions and pitching frameworks for different customer segments and use cases.

Create structured sales scripts and conversation guides that help frontline teams confidently introduce and promote the referral program.

Develop objection-handling frameworks to address common customer concerns around referring others.

Build customer-facing collateral such as pitch decks, one-pagers, FAQs, digital communication assets, and referral campaign materials.

Work closely with sales and frontline teams to understand customer conversations and continuously improve referral pitches.

7. Performance Management & Analytics

Establish and track key referral program KPIs, including:

Referral participation rate

Number of referrals generated

Referral-to-lead conversion

Lead-to-customer conversion

Referral activation rate

Cost per acquisition

Reward/revenue economics

Customer engagement and repeat referral rates

Referrer retention and activity

Referred customer quality and lifetime value

Develop regular performance reports and dashboards to track program health and identify opportunities.

Use data and customer insights to identify high-performing segments, channels, campaigns, and referral sources.

Translate performance data into actionable recommendations for business and leadership teams.

8. Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management

Collaborate closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, CRM, Technology, Operations, Customer Experience, Analytics, Finance, and Compliance teams.

Drive cross-functional initiatives required to launch and scale referral programs.

Align stakeholders on program objectives, processes, customer journeys, technology requirements, and success metrics.

Manage initiatives from ideation through implementation, measurement, and optimization.

Ensure referral programs are operationally scalable and aligned with business and customer experience objectives.

Key Deliverables

End-to-end referral journey and customer experience framework

Referral program strategy and annual/quarterly growth roadmap

Referral SOPs and operating processes

Internal referral playbooks and training materials

Referral pitching frameworks and sales scripts

Customer-facing referral communication and sales collaterals

CRM and automation improvement roadmap

Referral experimentation and A/B testing roadmap

New referral models and incentive structures

Referral performance dashboards and KPI framework

Best-practice repository and continuous improvement framework