When it comes to sustainable growth, Net Promoter Score and Member Get Member are often treated as two separate worlds: on the one hand the satisfaction metric, on the other the promotional mechanics. In reality, if we look at them with a strategic marketing lens, NPS and MGM are two sides of the same coin: they measure and activate only one thing, the advocacy potential of customers.
The Net Promoter Score was born as a listening tool. It asks the customer how much they would recommend the brand to a friend and, by translating the answer into a score, allows them to understand how involved and satisfied the customer base really is. It is a diagnostic tool: it tells you if the ground is fertile, where you are losing trust and where instead you have promoters ready to spend their relational capital on you. However, NPS alone does not bring new customers, in the same way that a blood test does not make you well: it only tells you what is happening.
Member Get Member does the exact opposite: it doesn't measure, it activates. It transforms the propensity for word of mouth into a concrete acquisition lever, structuring a mechanism in which customers invite other customers in exchange for a perceived value. It is an operational tool, designed to generate leads and conversions, but its success depends directly on the quality of the relationship built first. If the NPS is the thermometer of trust, the MGM is the engine that uses that heat to generate growth.
The most important similarity between the two activities is the protagonist: the customer. In both cases it is he who determines the result, with a review summarized in a number in the case of the NPS, with an explicit invitation in the case of the Member Get Member. In both cases the main lever is not the media budget but credibility, because nothing converts better than advice perceived as authentic. For this reason, when these initiatives are designed well, the KPIs are often higher than in pure advertising campaigns: click rates, registration percentage, lead quality and retention rate are normally higher, while the acquisition cost is lower.
The differences emerge above all in the objectives and measurement logic. NPS works in the medium-long term, helping to understand whether the overall brand experience is in line with expectations and where to intervene to reduce friction and frustration. The reference KPIs are evolutionary: monthly or quarterly trends, correlations with churn, average tickets, upsells. The Member Get Member, on the other hand, thrives on more direct and immediate numbers: number of invitations sent, code activation rate, conversions generated, value of the new customer acquired compared to the cost of the incentive. One says how recommendable you are, the other shows how many recommendations you can turn into revenue.
When well orchestrated, both activities tend to have higher KPIs for very real reasons. First of all for a question of target: in MGM the message reaches people who often share profiles, interests and needs with those who invite them, so the perceived relevance is naturally higher than in an advert shown to a generic audience. In the case of NPS, a good score is often correlated with a greater willingness to remain a customer, to spend more and to participate in commercial initiatives, increasing value over time and automatically improving metrics such as retention and CLV.
Then there is the issue of trust. The NPS, if managed correctly, is not just a survey, but an implicit pact: I ask you what you think of me and I am committed to improving. When the customer sees that feedback leads to real changes, the propensity to become an advocate increases. The Member Get Member exploits exactly this capital: if I trust a brand, I put it on the line in front of the people I know. This dynamic makes incoming contact much warmer, with shorter decision cycles and a conversion rate that a display campaign will hardly be able to match.
Finally there is an often underestimated element: the quality of the organisation. A poorly done NPS, with endless questions, bad timing and zero follow-up, becomes a nuisance. A confusing MGM, with unclear incentives, complicated rules and slow processes, burns trust instead of generating it. On the contrary, when the flow is simple, the timing is correct, the benefit is clear and the brand delivers what it promises, the result is a virtuous cycle. Promoters, identified by the NPS, power the Member Get program
Member and new customers positively acquired in turn increase the pool of future promoters.
In summary, NPS and Member Get Member are not alternative tools, but a strategic combination. The first measures advocacy potential, the second monetizes it. Where companies manage to make them work together, with vision and discipline, the KPIs do not improve
