"Are you positive these referral tools can't track a sale?" I asked Jon that twice. Here's why. We want a referral leaderboard to help get Social Media Marketing World to 3,000 people. Jon ran deep research with Claude and Gemini, plus a playbook Rob Ainbinder sent me on Messenger. It came back as two options. Option A: reward sign-ups. Somebody shares an invite, a friend enters a free contest, one point. That's what the leaderboard tools do. Option B: reward ticket sales. Somebody shares an invite, a friend actually buys a ticket. That's what we've always done. Jon: "You get a point per referral. It doesn't matter whether the person signs up or not." Jessica: "Some of those platforms feel sketchy and spammy. It feels a little off from our branding." Jon's hybrid fix: at checkout we ask one question. "Who's your Player 1?" Then we know who referred them. Jessica thinks that's the best option on the table. But I'm not ready to give up on the tools. If one of them can drop a piece of code on our site and count an actual purchase, everything gets simpler. Jon's honest answer: "I'm not positive." So that's his assignment. Rule it out, fast. Because the one thing we all agree on: it's got to be easy, or nobody will use it. If you ran this leaderboard, would you reward sign-ups or ticket sales? Reply with one word: sign-ups or sales. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #ReferralMarketing# #EventMarketing#

"I don't think it's enough for us to get to 3,000 alone." That's what Jessica told me about our new invite. We built it so the people already coming to Social Media Marketing World can invite their Player 2. It's fun. People will use it. But Jon said the next part is the incentive. Something you can't buy. You only get it if you refer somebody. And that's where it got hard. Jessica: "The hardest part is tracking who referred who. What if somebody already bought a ticket that their friend referred?" I told the team whatever we do has to be simple. Jon had an answer: "We have our referral affiliate program. We can track it through the affiliate referral." But Chad Petersen's idea was to reward people with things, not money. Jon agreed: "We have a system in place that has the infrastructure to track everything, but we're using it for something else." My instinct says the tools are out there. So Jon's running deep research with Claude and Gemini to find a way to track it. If you've ever run a referral program, you know the reward is the easy part. How would you track who invited who? Start your comment with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #EventMarketing# #ReferralMarketing#