MOBILE REFERRALS
Powering a mobile referral program
Monetize existing users, promote acquisition, drive re-engagement, and organically generate social proof
What is a mobile referral program?
Share links from your app to drive installs and reward users for sharing.
A referral program involves rewarding users for promoting a product or feature to others. The referral is usually by text, email, or social messaging, and the “referring user” generally receives a reward for actions like signing up, downloading an app, or buying a product.
For example, Robinhood offers one free share of stock to both the referring user and the referred user when they place their first order.
Referral programs cover several different use cases
A friend-to-friend (i.e. one-to-one) referral program
Referring users earn a bonus once the referred user downloads the app.
An influencer-driven (i.e. one-to-many) referral program
Influencers (big or small) have the ability to maximize your reach by sharing your app across their platforms.
Brand-driven campaigns
Brands can drive growth by incentivizing users with an exclusive bonus for downloading and using the app.
Why create a referral program?
Creating a referral program aligns your users’ motivations with your business incentives while providing valuable insights.
Drive app adoption
Multiply your installs by incentivizing users to both refer other users to install your app and then immediately promote additional installs.
Increase user engagement
Accelerate app adoption and usage with referral programs that keep your acquired users engaged and active on your platform.
Deliver seamless user experiences
The modern mobile user expects mobile links to take them frictionlessly into apps, preserving the context from their initial link click, just like on desktop web.
Incentivize users to increase conversions
Branch data uncovered that incentivized referrals drive a conversion rate of ~70%. Offering a double-sided incentive for referring users who complete the share is another tactic to drive conversion rates.
Increase revenue 2x
A Branch study found that users who are referred by others are twice as valuable on average as other channels — with an average of around 200%-300% of the conversion rate and revenue per user (RPU) of other channels.
Where Branch fits in
Building a referral program on your own is difficult, and virality is a challenging feature to build, optimize, and measure. We are a powerful mobile attribution and linking tool that accurately enables and measures cross-platform referrals.
Best-in-class linking
Get the accurate link matching necessary to drive a successful referral program, so that referred users are taken to the promotion or content they expect upon install. We can ensure a 100% match for referral links — even through install — with NativeLink.
Reliable attribution
Identify and properly track clicks, installs, opens, and re-engagement to understand the performance of your mobile referrals. Branch allows you to connect the dots to see which users are referring users, and which shared content is driving the highest number of installs and re-engagements.
Cross-channel analytics
Use our dashboard to compare the referral program’s performance to other features and user acquisition channels, measure demographic trends, and your app’s k-factor. Group links by referrer to understand who your most valuable users are for boosting your virality.
Using Branch’s Referrals, The League achieved 2x engagement for referrals, 30% more referral installs, and 31% more referral conversions.
When done right, social media linking can be a powerful tool if you can create value for your target audience. By following the best practices we outline for you in this article, you can ensure your social media posts are compelling – and get the desired results.
Aiming to go viral?
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