Strong Community Programs are built on these four pillars:
- Product (Worth sharing)
- Education (Resources and Human Support)
- Rewards (To motivate partners and still turn a profit for the company)
- Community (A genuine, non-transactional program that pours into the customers)
Introducing: The PERC Framework
Any brand serious about connecting with and retaining its creator users is serious about building its referral programs using this framework.
Flodesk gets this, and I’ll show you exactly how they implemented the PERC framework:
P: Product
In the world of email marketing for small businesses, Flodesk is it.
Despite being a newcomer in the saturated email industry, the product stands out in two major ways: Design and Pricing.
- Design: Even as a beginner with no coding experience, you can design beautiful emails with their easy-to-use templates. They’re like Canva, but for email marketing.
- Pricing: Unlike every other provider, the cost is the same whether you have 1,000 subscribers or 100,000.
As a creator and small business owner, knowing I can create beautiful emails without coding and pay the same $38 is enough reason to share Flodesk with anyone who cares to listen. But they don’t stop there. Enter Product Education.
E: Education
Flodesk has one of the most resourceful content libraries I’ve ever seen. They provide hundreds of articles, videos, templates, and courses (they even have Flodesk University) that make using the product, and subsequently sharing it with others, easy.
Flodesk Partners receive access to a treasure trove of resources, including:
- Resources, images, and graphics
- Access to a Product Education Manager you can request at any time to speak to your community.
- Success stories, partner stories, and more to keep you motivated and inspired with new ideas
Even if you didn’t want to, the success stories keep you inspired. And when you get tired, the next point keeps you going. Enter rewards.
🔥 Hot Take: Email is one of the most important channels for lifecycle marketing because it allows you to create personalized experiences that drive loyalty and revenue growth. First-party data, i.e. your own contact database, will become increasingly valuable as brands focus on building communities.
R: Reward
Affiliate rewards are ingrained into Flodesk as a product. Every member is automatically an affiliate and gets paid $19 per win. The partner program takes it further with 50% commission on every customer you refer for one year.
A dashboard to track your referrals and earnings using PartnerStack. This is in addition to access to exclusive resources, community benefits, and opportunities to collaborate with their team.
The Product, Education and Reward combination already makes the Flodesk partner program effective, but it would be incomplete without the very foundation it was built on.
Enter community.
C: Community
In an industry where most loyalty/community programs are transactional and not building relationships, Flodesk stands out.
I’ve been a Flodesk user since 2022 and their partner since 2025, and here’s what I can tell you. They value customers. Not just by writing “customer-first” in their playbook, but by proactive, intentional steps they’ve taken to engage their users.
From creators and designers to small business leaders, Flodesk cultivates a sense of belonging and empowers its users to connect with each other and the brand.
In turn, the audience shares Flodesk with their own communities. It’s a flywheel, one built on a foundation of mutual respect.
The Flodesk Partner program meets the PERC Framework—they have a great product, provide exhaustive resources, give a motivating reward, and are built on a strong community.
But more than these, Flodesk gets their customers and wants them to succeed. Everything else stems from this philosophy. The partner program is no exception.
Enjoyed reading this? Let me know. Also, if you’d like me to review your favorite B2B SaaS brand’s retention program based on my PERC Framework, let me know in the comments.
Folasade Daini
Hey! I'm Fola. Brands like Kajabi, Claude and Flodesk hire me to create cool content for them.