We cannot reinforce enough the importance and the value that can come from importing your existing network through your address book to connect with the people that you know when looking to generate referrals. Here's why:

1. Referrals come from the people you know:

   Put simply, word-of-mouth referrals will likely come from the people who already know you and trust you. If you connect with the people you know, it makes it easy for you to be referred to others through Alignable.

2. Connecting with businesses by importing your address book is free.

   What does this mean? On Alignable, each member, depending on their plan tier, will receive a certain amount of connection credits that can be used to send connection requests to other businesses, simply sending a connection request to someone you know will use up your monthly connection credits. However, by importing your address book, you can easily connect with the businesses you know without using a single connection credit.

   When you import your address book we will show you the businesses you know who are already on Alignable that you can send connection requests to. After that, we'll show you the businesses who are not on Alignable that you can choose to invite to join Alignable and your network.

   

3. The businesses you know are the ones that can write you really great recommendations for others to see.

   After connecting with the businesses that you know, you can ask them to recommend you. And when you collect 5 recommendations, you will receive a highly recommended badge on your profile. Ideally, these businesses who already know and trust you will be able to provide the most genuine and valuable recommendations to your profile in turn boosting your reputation!

   

4. Helps you and your business stay top of mind among your network:

   When you connect with the businesses you know and are continuously sharing with them what's going on with your business, you allow your business to stay top-of-mind among your network. This helps you because if someone within your network needs, or happens to know someone who needs your services, you are likely going to be the person they recommend.

   Consistently adding the events and promotions that your business is having on a monthly basis can not only help your network stay aware of what you are doing but if they see opportunities to reach the same ideal customer through co-promotion, they can partner with you in such promotions. When you share these content updates with your network, your connections have the ability to engage with said content and share it with their own network. It is a constant cycle 

   

5. Helps you find the people you can get introduced to:

   Additionally, connecting with the businesses that you know can help you unlock more paths to your ideal customer through mutual connections. If you import your address book, and you connect with the people you know, we can instantly show you the businesses you could get introduced to through mutual connections.