2020 was one heck of a ride.
It’s amazing how many bad things can happen in a span of 12 months, and yet here we are, stronger than ever.
I must say, I’m really proud of us all.
Speaking of pride, I think that- considering the situation, 2020 was a good year for Viral Loops.
We manage to make huge improvements, not only in our product but also in the way we work, the way we cooperate, and how we communicate with our clients.
Apart from an intro for a massive product update, these lines are an opportunity for me to pass on something from our entire team:
We are really thankful for you.
Whether you’re a customer or subscriber, thank you!
Let’s see what’s new for Viral Loops users from January 2021 and on.
Google Sign-in
We just updated our sign-in and sign-up pages and added a shiny new option to log in with Google (or create a new account).
Check it out, login to your account.
Remove Branding
We’ve done some changes to make it easier to hide the Viral Loops branding from your campaign widgets and pages.
The setting to remove the Viral Loops Branding has now been moved to your User Settings Page.
If you are on an appropriate plan (Power plan or higher), you can disable the Viral Loops Branding, and the setting is applied across all your campaigns.
The Newsletter Referral 💌 🚀
We just launched the Newsletter Referral for writers and publishers that want to grow their audience with minimal effort so they can spend less time marketing and more time WRITING.
With this new template, you can give your existing audience the tools to spread the word and bring more subscribers to your list.
Easy as 1-2-3
The Email Widget can be embedded in your newsletter emails and enables each subscriber to share their personal link and refer others.
Embed the new Email Widget in your newsletter emails 🎁
Connects with your newsletter ↔️
The Newsletter Referral connects with the top newsletter platforms.
- Mailchimp
- AWeber
- Substack
- Revue
- ActiveCampaign
Which one will you use?
⚡️ Looking for something else?
There is a Zapier integration as well, and we’re adding more integrations based on demand.
Go to our survey and vote for your favorite platform.
Look ma’, no code. 🤩
You really don’t have to edit any website code to start using the Newsletter Referral. The template comes with two ready-made landing pages that you can customize and launch in minutes. You can even use your own URL!
Current subscribers go to the Sharing Page to get their personal link (or copy it from the Email Widget!).
New (referred) subscribers can join the newsletter from a dedicated sign-up page, the Subscriber Page.
⚡️ Want more power?
Stay tuned — custom integrations are coming soon, allowing you to install the campaign widgets on any website.
Get started 🏁
You can start growing your newsletter business with referrals right away.
Log-in to your Viral Loops account, pick the Newsletter Referral template and create a campaign.
These platforms are available right now:
- Mailchimp
- ActiveCampaign
- AWeber
- Substack
- Revue
We are planning to add more platforms in the future. Make sure to cast your vote so that we let you know when they’re available.
In the Campaign Wizard, you can customize the Email Widget and the landing pages of your campaign.
The wizard will guide you throughout the whole process. 🧙♂️
Connect your email platform to get any new subscribers to your list automatically and import existing subscribers to Viral Loops to give them a personal link so they can become your ambassadors! 🚀
If you want to dig deeper, check out our documentation for The Newsletter Referral.
Redesigned our WordPress plugin
We updated the Viral Loops plugin for WordPress. The latest version helps you add a campaign on your WordPress website as easy as dragging and dropping the Viral Loops block on the page.
The plugin works with all the modern page editors that you use and love:
- Gutenberg (WordPress default)
- Elementor
- Divi
- WP Bakery
In these editors, you can add the **Viral Loops block** in the page to install any of the widgets of your campaign.
If you are already using the plugin, an update will be available in your WordPress admin. If not, you can find the plugin in the plugins directory and install it.
💡 The plugin supports all Viral Loops templates except the Altruistic Referral and Viral Loops for Shopify.
New merge tags for the Startup Pre-launch and the Leaderboard Giveaway
For campaigns created with the Startup Pre-launch and the Leaderboard Giveaway, we added some new merge tags available in the CRM integrations: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, Klaviyo.
RANK: The current rank in the waitlist or leaderboard.
DAYSLEFT: Days left until the expiration of the campaign, as set in the Campaign Wizard.
These merge tags are updated to the new contact in your CRM the first time the contact is added by the integration.
However, they are not kept in sync as the campaign waitlist or leaderboard changes.
They can be used in emails like a Welcome email to inform the participants about their initial rank.
As people keep joining the campaign and referring their friends, these values will change so, to be used again, they have to be updated manually.
To do that, go to your Campaign Dashboard in Viral Loops, get a CSV export and upload it to your CRM.
This will update all your contacts that are included in the CSV with the values of all the available merge tags.
Improved Double Opt-in
We improved the Double Opt-in feature, and it is now possible to have it enabled only for referred participants, people that are joining the campaign after being referred.
That way, you can have the benefits of double opt-in (clean verified contacts and minimal fraud) without impeding the subscription flow for your organic subscribers, those that were not referred to sign-up.
Of course, if double opt-in is a requirement to operate, you can still enable it for all your participants.
Improved Fraud detection
We improved our fraud detection algorithms to capture even more cases of potentially fraudulent participants and keep the fraud levels in your campaign low.
Integration with ActiveCampaign
We just added one more integration with one of your (and our) favorite marketing automation platforms.
The ActiveCampaign integration allows you to send all your new Viral Loops Participants to a selected list in ActiveCampaign. No need to use Zapier for that anymore.
You can enable the integration as usual from the Integrations step of the Campaign Wizard, and you will need the ActiveCampaign URL and API key to do that.
These can be found in ActiveCampaign, in Settings —> Developer.
Choose the list where you want to send the new participants, and you’re ready! Any new participant in your Viral Loops campaign will be automatically sent to your list, and you can do email marketing to them as you normally would.
Improved Referral count for Klaviyo
We improved the integration with Klaviyo so that the referral count of the participant (how many friends they have referred) is also getting synced to Klaviyo.
That way, you can create automations in Klaviyo that trigger when your contacts reach a certain number of referrals.
New merge tags available in the CRM integrations
We have created two new merge tags available in the CRM integrations: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, Klaviyo.
CHECKREFERRALS: Available in all templates, this merge tag contains a special link to the landing page of the campaign so that the participant that clicks it will be automatically identified and see how many referrals they have or rewards they have won. For example, like this link: https://pages.viral-loops.com/milestone-42?userCode=ryTE_wgUz
This is not a link for sharing. It is a personal link for the participant that shows them their own referral count, milestones reached, etc.
XREFERRALS: Exclusive to the Milestone Referral, this new merge tag shows for each contact how many referrals are needed until they reach the next milestone: X number of referrals away from the next milestone. You can include that merge tag in your emails and write something like: “You are 5 referrals away from the next milestone!”
A note for older campaigns
If your campaign was created before September 25th, you need to reconnect your integration to get these new merge tags.
To do that, edit the integration from the Integrations step of the Campaign Wizard, disconnect and reconnect it.
After you do that, new participants will get the new merge tags. Participants that joined before that will not have values for these merge tags, though.
To fix that, go to your Campaign Dashboard in Viral Loops, get a CSV export and upload it to your CRM.
This will update all your contacts that are included in the CSV with the values of the new merge tags.
Custom URLs for Viral Loops Pages
When you are launching your campaign with Viral Loops Pages, you have the option to publish the page on your own custom domain. Until recently, you were limited to using a subdomain of your own domain as well as a path at the end, like so: *https://refer.example.com/my-campaign*
Which, let’s face it, doesn’t win any awards for best domain ever. So we fixed it.
You now have the freedom to use any URL format that you want, like, for example, initech.com (don’t try that one, it’s taken).
Suggestion ⚠️:
If your website is already hosted on your root domain, e.g., initech.com, we recommend that you use a subdomain to avoid creating conflict with your existing page.
Like so: refer.initech.com
In any case, to make it work, you only need to add a CNAME record for your domain and have it point to pages.viral-loops.com. If that sounds too much, your domain administrator will definitely be able to help. We have updated the relevant documentation article so you can find all the instructions you need: How to use your custom domain with a Viral Loops Page.
New Guides 📚
AWeber is one of the oldest and most powerful email services out there. The Newsletter Referral integrates with AWeber, so we created a guide to help you get started.
Check this: How to build a newsletter referral program with AWeber
(includes a video walkthrough, which is H-O-T 🔥)
We studied the top newsletter referral campaigns, and we bring you the best insights in an actionable guide.
Check it out: Newsletter Referral Programs: An Actionable Guide