For at least four years now, I’ve been receiving emails from Netflix encouraging me to get my friends and relatives to sign up for Netflix.

Each email I get offers them a deal of some sort to join. Maybe a free rental, a free month or some sort of price break. But with all the great things they offer the person you get to sign up, they’re forgetting a key piece of the referral program.

What’s in it for me?

In all these years of seeing all of their different referral offers – through direct mail and in my email box, not once has any of these solicitations offered me something for signing up my friends. They’ve not once given me any incentive to take the time to tell my friends or get them to interact with Netflix in any way.

Providing your existing customer with an incentive to tell others about your product or service is a, if not THE, key element in a referral program. I can’t think of another referral offer I’ve ever received that did not include a reward for me, and not just the person I referred.

It’s been a bad year for Netflix on the marketing side, but I think it actually began well before 2011.

– My name is Jon Friesch, and I think marketing is more than just data and analytics.