For most lean ecommerce teams, paid ads are getting painfully expensive, and traditional referral tools often create more work than results.

That’s exactly the challenge that Latico Leathers faced. They had a loyal customer base ready to refer, but their existing referral program felt clunky, manual, and barely created an impact on their growth.

Instead of giving up on referrals, the brand switched to a tool that could actually scale with their team. With Social Snowball, the brand could automate the heavy lifting and integrate referrals into their post-purchase journey, turning word-of-mouth into a true growth channel:

• $18,000+ in referral revenue generated within months
• 17.3x ROI from the program
• Blended CAC lowered by using referrals as a new acquisition channel

“The post-purchase email flow incorporating Social Snowball reminders has really helped drive revenue, and the integration with Knocommerce’s post-purchase survey has helped increase our activation rate noticeably.”

Ben Schreiber, Head of Ecommerce @ Latico Leathers

About the brand

Latico Leathers is a family-run, boutique leather goods brand founded in 1984. Known for its artisanal craftsmanship and boho-chic aesthetic, the brand specializes in handcrafted leather handbags, wallets, and accessories made for free-spirited individuals.

With a focus on quality, function, and timeless design, Latico Leathers has cultivated a loyal fan base and a strong reputation for premium leather craftsmanship across the U.S.

Challenges: Manual-heavy tools and rising ad costs were stalling growth

Latico Leathers had all the ingredients for a successful referral program—loyal fans, high repeat purchase rates, and strong product love. But their first attempt at scaling word-of-mouth fell flat. Here’s why.

Paid ads were getting expensive and unsustainable

Like many DTC brands, the brand was feeling the squeeze of rising ad costs. Their Head of Ecommerce, Ben Schreiber, knew they couldn’t keep relying on paid channels alone to drive growth. The blended CAC was creeping up, and the brand needed a more cost-efficient acquisition channel.

“The cost of paid ads increasing has affected our brand, just like every other brand with a big DTC channel. We’ve had to focus more on retention, SEO, CRO, and of course, referrals.”

Their existing referral tool made things worse, not better

Ben Schreiber initially tried launching a referral program with Referral Candy, but it quickly became more of a burden than a boost. The tool wasn’t intuitive, required constant manual work, and felt like it needed a dedicated person just to run it.

“It just wasn’t user-friendly. You had to have someone working on it every day, and as a small team with a million things to do, that wasn’t realistic.”

What should’ve been a low-effort growth channel ended up draining time and returning little revenue.

No clear incentives for customers to actually refer

Even though the brand had a passionate customer base, their original referral setup didn’t give customers a strong reason to share. Without timely prompts or rewards that felt worth it, referrals stayed organic and unpredictable.

“With our team’s limited bandwidth, we couldn’t afford to manually chase referrals or manage a complex program. But without a system in place, we were leaving money on the table.”

Solution: Turning word-of-mouth into a scalable revenue channel

Latico Leathers didn’t need more traffic. What they needed was a way to convert happy customers into referrers, at scale, without draining their small team’s time.

Here’s how they used Social Snowball to turn referrals into a reliable, automated acquisition channel.

Step 1: Replace manual systems with hands-off automation

Their initial referral setup with Referral Candy demanded daily attention—managing users, tracking links, and sending rewards. For a small team, it wasn’t sustainable.

With Social Snowball, the entire flow became plug-and-play. Customers were automatically enrolled post-purchase, rewarded without any manual tracking, and nudged to refer through synced marketing touchpoints.

“The level of hands-off automation Social Snowball brings—especially once integrated with Klaviyo and our thank you page—allowed our referral program to truly take off.”

Step 2: Integrate referrals directly into the customer journey

Rather than treat referrals like a separate campaign, the brand placed them directly into touchpoints when customers were most likely to share, which was right after purchase.

Here’s how they did it:

• Email prompts: They embedded Social Snowball CTAs into Klaviyo’s post-purchase email flows.
• On-site placement: They added referral messaging to their thank-you pages using Social Snowball.
• Survey touchpoints: With KnoCommerce, they collected insights during post-purchase surveys and simultaneously activated new referrers.

“The post-purchase email flow incorporating Social Snowball reminders has really helped drive revenue, and the integration with KnoCommerce’s survey has helped increase our activation rate noticeably.”

By meeting customers when excitement was highest, the brand significantly boosted referral participation without adding extra pressure to their team.

Step 3: Keep it simple with fixed, attractive incentives

Latico Leathers didn’t overcomplicate their processes. Instead of a complicated commission structure or tiered rewards, they chose straightforward, fixed-value incentives that felt generous enough to motivate action.

This made sharing easy and aligned well with their average order value (AOV), ensuring profitability even with payouts.

“Our AOV is on the high side, so we were able to offer a generous commission incentive while still generating revenue above a 15x ROI.”

Step 4: Let tech handle the follow-through

Once a referral was made, everything else (from tracking to rewarding) was handled by Social Snowball. This was the missing piece that allowed the brand’s referral engine to scale like their paid channels, but without the rising CAC.

Results: $18K+ in referral revenue and a 17.3x ROI with zero manual overhead

After switching to Social Snowball, Latico Leathers turned their referral program from an underperforming side project into a high-ROI, low-effort revenue stream.

Here’s what they achieved within just a few months:

• $18,000+ in net-new referral revenue
• 17.3x ROI on program costs
• Lower blended CAC with no added team bandwidth

“We’ve generated an additional $18,000 so far—and that’s $18,000 we would’ve left on the table if we didn’t make the switch.”

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Ready to turn your loyal customers into your best marketers?

Without the right systems in place, most ecommerce brands struggle to turn organic word-of-mouth into measurable revenue. Manual referral tools create friction, incentives are often misaligned, and the result is a program that never really takes off.

But with the right tech stack, referrals can become one of your most efficient and profitable acquisition channels. By automating referral enrollment and plugging it into post-purchase flows, brands like Latico Leathers are capturing real revenue from their existing customer base, without adding manual work or offering discounts.

In just a few months, the brand generated over $18,000 in referral revenue at a 17.3x ROI using Social Snowball.

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