Noun
[ree·fuh·ruh pahr·t·nur]
Referral partners send qualified leads for your team to close and earn a percentage of the revenue when a deal goes through. The audience of a referral partner is not as large as that of a marketing partner, but a referral partner typically know more about the people they are referring, often having a direct one-to-one relationship, meaning the leads they send tend to be highly qualified.
Example: My B2B SaaS business has a referral partner program where we collaborate with other companies to refer clients to each other, creating a mutually beneficial relationship.
Noun
[Ree-fur-uhl link]
A referral link is a unique UR used by customers in referral programs to promote a company's brand and products. Customers enrol in a referral program, are given the referral link by the vendor, and then can use that link to drive traffic and sales to the vendor. The customer gets a cut of profit made from traffic to the link.
Example: When I signed up for the online course, I received a unique referral link that I could share with my friends, and for each person who enrolled through that link, I earned a discount on my next purchase.
A reseller partner sells a vendor’s product directly to their client. In contrast to the relationship between affiliate/referral partners who are involved only at the start of the customer’s journey (it gets handed off to the vendor), a reseller partner owns the whole customer relationship.
Resellers are the most complicated partners to work with, and for good reason! They give you access to a relatively limited but highly qualified audience. This is why they often require more support and enablement resources.
Also see: Affiliate partner, Referral partner