Can Referral Marketing Increase Your List? An Upviral Review

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Can you use your email list to create viral marketing campaigns?


Upviral says you can — with their viral referral marketing system that easily integrates with your existing funnel and tools.


They claim their tool helps your business get the attention it needs to grow.


But can Upviral put their results where their mouth is?

1. What is Upviral?

Upviral's logo

Upviral's logo

Upviral isn’t your standard email marketing tool — instead, it focuses on running contests to create viral referral campaigns.


If you’re looking to get more visitors to your website through a referral-based marketing strategy, Upviral might be the right choice for you.


As with other email marketing platforms, you can use Uprival to create marketing campaigns, send emails, test content, and track results.


So, what’s the difference between Upviral and the other tools out there?


Their patented referral system — it’s what turns your established list into a constantly growing source of new leads.

2. Upviral’s features

Upviral's features

Upviral's features

There are 3 primary activities enabled by Upviral’s features:

  • Viral giveaways via their sweepstakes
  • Viral contests with sought-after rewards
  • Viral product launches with packed waitlists

The possibility of turning one existing lead into many new ones is a great concept, and it’s what brings people to Upviral.


The Upviral referral link is the icing on the cake, it provides accountability for your visitors and guides them to the point of conversion.


Providing incentives gets your subscribers to share the link with everyone they know — they get rewarded, you get more leads, everyone wins.

2.1. Email automation

Examples of Upviral's automated emails

Examples of Upviral's automated emails

Upviral offers a standard amount of email automation tools.


You can send timed/triggered emails based on users’ actions, embed social sharing buttons, and send multiple email triggers to help get more shares.


Automated alert emails with social sharing buttons are available to remind your subscribers to share the link so that they can reach their next goal.


With Upviral, you can create long-term campaigns with multiple steps, triggers, and actions using templates as you would do anywhere else.

2.2. A/B testing

Upviral's split testing

Upviral's split testing

Split testing (A/B testing) is used by digital marketers to determine what will bring in the best results by comparing the responses to different variations of the same element.


If you choose to use Upviral, you can test nearly every element of your campaign, including:

If your software doesn’t offer a way to A/B test everything, you need to move to another platform like systeme.io.

2.3. Lists into leads

Upviral's email templates and links

Upviral's email templates and links

This is what separates Upviral from the competition.


The referral links inside your existing emails are what Upviral uses to turn your list into perpetual lead sources.


Don’t be fooled by the terminology — this is almost identical to an affiliate program, which is something offered on many other digital marketing platforms.


While some email marketing tools like Mailchimp prohibit affiliate marketing, on systeme.io we actively support it by tracking and managing the whole process for you.

2.4. Referral link system

Upviral's referral link tools

Upviral's referral link tools

Using the referral link you get from Upviral, you can create a point-based system that offers rewards for subscribers who share it.


You can customize the contest by including the number of points they need to have and how many they get for each action they perform.


This is a great way to get people to share your content since you’re offering a reward that’s easy to understand.


You have complete control over what rewards you offer, how much they’re worth, and what type of actions are required for the subscriber to get that reward.


You’re giving the subscribers options, which increases the chances of them taking one or the other.


You can also use Upviral’s subscriber dashboard as a way to explain your expectations and how leads can score some great rewards.

2.5. Customizable rewards system

Upviral's rewards system

Upviral's rewards system

With Upviral, you can scale your rewards system.


For example, you could offer a downloadable file for everyone who shares their referral link on social media.


If you have an ecommerce store, you could:

  • Create a campaign to draw attention to a specific sale
  • Send an email blast to 500 people urging them to share a link on social media
  • Each person who shares the link receives a 10% off coupon code for your entire store

2.6. Simple setup

Upviral's email features

Upviral's email features

Automation and templates make your life hassle-free — Upviral makes this possible through:

  • New subscriber emails — Thank subscribers for inviting new leads
  • Welcome emails — Welcome new leads and begin communication
  • Goal achievement emails They’ll automatically receive an email and be able to retrieve their reward
  • Automatic winner selection — For more significant contests and giveaways based on parameters you set
  • Congratulations email — Take the next step towards offering winners their free reward

If creativity isn’t your strong suit, you’ll manage using the “high converting” templates that have already been tried and tested.


There are many custom sharing opportunities that you can tweak according to your needs:

  • A customizable social sharing feature
  • Customize and control how people share their links
  • Customize and control the appearance of posts that people share

This factor is important, so you know that your affiliates are representing your business or website in the right way.

2.7. Robust social sharing

Upviral's social sharing and incentives

Upviral's social sharing and incentives

Part of what makes Upviral so powerful is the user's ability to share their giveaways and contests on social media.


Upviral makes it easy with customizable social sharing that’s optimized for different social media platforms.


This feature includes:

  • Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, and Pinterest integrations
  • Facebook news feed optimization to increase referral tracking
  • Built-in rich-tweet capabilities
  • Complete creative control over the appearance of posts
  • User-selected options that make sharing easy

A huge component of creating a viral campaign is making your offer easy to share.


If there are too many hoops to jump through, the user will think that your offer isn’t worth it.


Upviral ensures you can use social media to boost your business.

2.8. Integration

Upviral's integrations

Upviral's integrations

Upviral works with almost all Customer Relationship Managers (CRMs) and list-building software, so you can move everything over without having to start over.


If you’re using an autoresponder, you can also get Upviral to work with it and send referral codes directly in your automatic emails.


These features are useful, but there’s nothing groundbreaking about them.

2.9. Automated security and analytics

Upviral's automated security tools

Upviral's automated security tools

Upviral comes with automatic fraud detection using cookies and IP tracking, so there’s no cheating or abusing the contests or giveaways.


You can track the performance of your campaigns with Upviral’s easy-to-use dashboard that can be calibrated to include:

  • Information on your leads
  • Viral campaign activity
  • Top influencers
  • Campaigns, emails, social channels, and split tests

These advanced analytics tell you which contests and giveaways are working best — guiding your future campaigns and decisions.

2.10. Mobile optimization

Upviral's mobile responsive software

Upviral's mobile responsive software

As with almost all email marketing tools, Upviral is mobile-optimized.


With 91% of people using a mobile device to access the internet, optimization of this kind is essential.


Here are a few other noteworthy features of Upviral:

  • Easy to export data
  • Use your own custom domain
  • Complete training program
  • Available in all languages

3. Using Upviral for referral marketing

To know if Upviral is the right tool for you, you have to first understand what referral marketing is and how it works.


If you don’t, you’ll have a hard time making any use of this tool.


If you’re already a dab hand at referral marketing, you can skip ahead to the next section.

3.1. What is referral marketing and how does it work?

At the most basic level, referral marketing is old-school “word of mouth” marketing — one of the simplest and oldest forms of marketing available.


Think about how barbershops offer incentives.


You get a little card after your cut that says, “if you refer three people to us, you’ll get a free haircut,” simple right?


Referral marketing works in the same way, but this digital medium spreads your message to more people, with less effort.


82% of B2B sales and marketing leaders say that referral programs generate the highest quality leads.


It’s no secret that word of mouth generates leads, but it only works if you do.

3.2. Referral marketing setup and process

Upviral's templates for viral marketing

Upviral's templates for viral marketing

We’re going to give you an in-depth breakdown of everything you need to know to create a campaign using Upviral.


Here’s a quick overview of how referral marketing works using Upviral:

  • Send an email blast out to your list
  • Subscribers follow through and promote their unique link
  • New leads click the link and land on your landing page
  • They enter their email address on your landing page
  • New leads now get their own promotional link and a chance to win
  • The original subscriber receives an email with their reward

You’ll face two choices once you go to fire up a campaign on Upviral:

The second option requires you to play around with code, so we suggest you avoid that unless you have experience.


Once you choose to run the campaign on Upviral, you can choose the templates you want and customize them to your brand.


Here are the customization options you’ll get on Upviral.

  • Landing page

You can change every detail of the landing page and email copy. The whole experience reminds us of what you get with ClickFunnels.


The drag and drop features make this process much easier — but these kinds of interfaces are pretty standard on all page building tools.

  • Thank-you page

Once you have your landing page all set up, then you’ll move on to the thank you page and follow the same process.

  • Social sharing

Next, you’ll want to customize how your offers appear on social media when someone shares them.


This is powerful because you can stay true to your branding — people share what you want, how you want it.


You’re in total control of the post title, description, images, etc.

  • Adding giveaways

Once you’ve created your funnel and customized everything to your liking, you’ll want to start adding some rewards for people to receive.


You can add unlimited rewards with multiple options for people who may not be interested in one specific offer.


To set up a giveaway, simply fill out the form and upload the reward.


We suggest you include the number of points required to receive the prize and instructions on how to earn them in this form as well.

  • Automation

Most of the hard work is out of the way now.


Now you can start creating the content you’re going to use to motivate your subscribers to get involved, such as:

  • The email they’ll receive when they sign up
  • The message when they earn points
  • The announcement when they earn a reward

Upviral takes care of everything as long as you plug in your chosen email triggers, steps, and automation.


You can also send personalized emails every time they earn points towards their rewards — this really helps with engagement.

4. Upviral's pricing

Upviral's pricing plans

Upviral's pricing plans

On the whole, Upviral doesn’t have stand-out features aside from the referral links you can send with your emails.


Given the lack of extensive features, no built-in CRM, and limited customization options, the price of Upviral shouldn’t be too steep.


Their plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 30% discount if you’re billed annually.


There's no free plan offered by Upviral — but there is a 14-day trial for $1.


Here’s what you get with each of Upviral’s plans.

4.1. Starter plan

This plan will cost you $79/month or $59/month if billed annually, and you'll get access to the following:

  • Unlimited campaigns
  • 10,000 leads
  • One brand
  • Fraud detection
  • Email support

4.2. Business plan

This plan is $119/month or $89/month if billed annually.


The following is included on this plan:

  • Unlimited campaigns
  • 25,000 leads
  • Three brands
  • No Upviral branding
  • GEO targeting
  • A/B testing
  • API + Zapier

4.3. Premium plan

For $299/month (or $219/month if billed annually), you get access to:

  • All business features
  • Unlimited campaigns
  • 100,000 leads
  • Ten brands
  • Premium support

Upviral’s prices are now far out of range from similar tools.

email marketing tools

Remember, Upviral appears affordable, but you’ll need to use and pay for a host of other tools to actually make use of referral marketing as part of your scheme.

5. Upviral's support

Upviral's live webinars

Upviral's live webinars

Upviral has an extensive knowledge base available to users which explains everything you need to know about the tool.


In the support area, users can also open a support ticket and contact a real person to handle their concerns.


There are onboarding videos and informational sections that help you when you’re getting started with Upviral.


A new addition to Upviral’s support offering is their “Co-Pilot Show”, where you can watch a live webinar with one of their leading market experts.

6. Pros and cons of Upviral

Is Upviral for you? Do you think this tool could make a difference in your business?


Let’s check out some of the pros and cons:

Pros

  • Run contests and giveaway campaigns
  • Use referral marketing
  • Embed social sharing buttons
  • Integrate with your existing marketing tools

Cons

  • No web hosting and creation, sales funnels, or product sales
  • No affiliate program support
  • Pricey for its limited capabilities
  • More tools needed to flesh out your digital marketing suite

Upviral is a marketing software that works great for giveaways and contests.


The most crucial factor that will determine your success with Upviral is the quality of your services and offerings.


If you don’t have an enticing offer, it doesn’t matter how great your marketing is because no one will want what you have.

7. Systeme.io: A better alternative

systeme.io’s logo

systeme.io’s logo

Systeme.io is the best all-in-one marketing software to help you launch your business and grow your list.


You can save time and money by using one single tool to do everything you need.


Upviral’s biggest weakness is that it's only geared to do one thing — referral marketing.


Creating a referral program might help you grow your list, but that’s a tiny part of running a business.


All of Upviral’s shortcomings are answered and exceeded when you use a tool like systeme.io.


Systeme.io is recommended if you want to:

  • Create an advanced sales funnel with multiple steps
  • Build and host an email list from the ground up
  • Build your website and pages with or without templates
  • Send newsletters, follow up emails, and automate your email marketing processes
  • Build an online course from scratch, and promote it to your audience
  • Create an ecommerce store with built-in checkout and payment options
  • Use a simple tool to help launch your blog and grow a list of subscribers
  • Create an affiliate program to help promote your offers and generate referrals

And the best part?


Systeme.io costs far less than Upviral and includes far more useful features.

8. Systeme.io's pricing

systeme.io’s pricing plans

systeme.io’s pricing plans

All of systeme.io’s plans come standard with the following unlimited features:

  • Emails
  • Blog posts
  • File storage
  • Membership site members
  • Stripe and Paypal integration
  • Affiliate program support
  • 24/7 customer support

These amazing features are included in our Freemium plan — no credit card details are needed when you sign up because when we say free we mean free — forever.


Systeme.io has also introduced an annual billing option that saves you 30% on your fees — just another way we outshine the competition.


Because systeme.io is all about helping you grow your business, even if you’re just starting, our pricing options are completely scalable.


Let’s take a look at what’s included in each plan.

8.1. Freemium plan

This plan is ideal for small business owners, or if you’re just starting and have less than 1,000 subscribers.


This plan costs $0/month and includes:

  • 3 sales funnels and 10 steps
  • 1 blog and membership site
  • 1 workflow and automation
  • 1 email campaign and tag
  • An order bump, a 1-click upsell, and an A/B test

8.2. Startup plan

This plan is perfect for entrepreneurs or business owners with a mailing list of 5,000 subscribers or less.


This plan costs $27/month and includes everything on the Freemium plan plus:

  • 10 sales funnels
  • 5 membership sites
  • A custom domain
  • Marketing automation
  • Support for your affiliate program
  • 10 A/B tests

8.3. Webinar plan

Systeme.io’s Webinar plan caters to medium-sized business owners with a larger mailing list of up to 10,000.


It’s also a great option if hosting webinars is your thing.


This plan costs $47/month and includes everything on the Startup Plan plus:

  • 50 sales funnels
  • 20 membership sites
  • 10 custom domains
  • <24h support response time
  • 50 Evergreen webinar coupons and codes
  • 50 A/B tests

8.4. Enterprise plan

This plan is made for large, established business owners with masses of subscribers.


If you want no limits on how to use the platform, then this is the one for you.


This plan costs $97/month and includes everything on the Webinar plan plus:

  • Unlimited sales funnels, membership sites, and custom domains
  • Unlimited Evergreen webinar coupons and codes
  • Unlimited A/B tests
  • An hour of 1-to-1 coaching

8.5. Why choose systeme.io over Upviral?

systeme.io’s features

systeme.io’s features

The main reason people leave tools like ClickFunnels, Leadpages, and Upviral is their lack of simplicity and comprehensiveness.


Systeme.io is a platform that keeps small business owners and entrepreneurs in mind — and it’s really easy to use.


Upviral can't compare to systeme.io — see for yourself what makes us the obvious choice:

Upviral Vs Systeme.io

9. Conclusion

Never Settle

You understand the importance of having a simple and effective email marketing platform on your side — it’s essential to any online business.


Why would you settle for less when you know it's possible to have it all?


While Upviral does a good job of referral marketing, it’s not enough to support the rest of your business needs.


Avoid paying high prices for multiple tools with unreliable integrations by partnering with systeme.io instead — a fully loaded tool built for growing your business and supporting you at every level.


If you want to learn more about systeme.io, check out our website.


Feel free to reach out to a team member here if you have any questions.

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