Track client referrals
Tracking client referrals is a good business practice to develop thank you programs for clients recommending your practice and to measure advertising budget effectiveness. Since referral tracking is based on client ID, media and other marketing methods and non-specific ‘referring clients’ require setup as clients.
Before you start
- Security
- Classifications Setup and Defaults
- Referral reports
Important!
- Before setting Referred By as a required data field when creating or updating clients:
- Ensure the marketing and nonspecific ‘referring client’ records are created.
- Instruct your team to use them appropriately for valid reporting.
Set up client referral tracking
Basic steps to set up your client referral tracking:
- Client classification designated for marketing
- Create marketing ‘clients’ with IDs and last names that are grouped together
- Set Referred By as a required field
- Communicate with your team on how to apply the correct client referral information to new and existing clients.
Client classification
- Navigate to Controls > Classifications > Client
- Create a new or update an existing classification.
- Clear Client alert, Send reminders and Send statements
- Click OK.
Create marketing clients
- Navigate to Toolbar > Client button > New
- Enter the appropriate client ID and press Tab.
Tip: Use a prefix of R or similar so IDs are grouped together for referral/marketing clients Example: R1, R2 or RFB (Facebook) - Change status to Inactive.
- Enter the Last name as Referral (referral source) so all referral source names are grouped together. Example: Referral Facebook, Referral Instagram, Referral Pet Fair sponsorship, Referral Updating existing client, Referral No info given
- Click OK and repeat for each referral source client.
Set as required field
- Navigate to Controls > Defaults > Practice and Workstation > Required Data
- Select Referred by in Client data box.
Entering and tracking referrals
- When adding a new client or updating an existing client without referral information, go to the Referrals tab.
- Enter the Referred by Client ID or F2 to search and select. Search ‘referral’ for the last name or R in the client ID field.
- Use the Referral Report for a specified date range to view collected information: Reports > Client > Referral report
Additional Information
Client classification
- Designating a specific client classification for referrals helps to:
- Filter these unique accounts from reports
- Exclude from tools such as Purge Data
New client tracking
- Adding client accounts for tracking purposes will increase new client numbers (based on creating new client IDs) for the time period the accounts are created.
- Setting these accounts as inactive will reduce the impact to active client counts and exclude them when filtering reports for active clients.
Related Reports
- Referral report
