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👉 User referral is only one small aspect of PLG (Product-Led Growth).
👉 Referrals on most B2C products are, at best, nice to have and, at worst, interrupt the core experience. In both cases, they are not always game changers for growth.
👉 User endorsements of your product often happen outside of your product and are triggered by how much value you provide, not how often you ask them to share.
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"Referrals increased from 7.5% to 19%, but the overall numbers were too small to make a difference"
We replaced our paywalls with a referral screen for our cohort of free active users after 14 days. Then, as users tried to engage with a Premium feature, we offered them a Premium week for free for a successful friend referral.
The new screen did a great job. It increased referrals from 7.5% to 19% without harming engagement, retention, or monetization. Our viral coefficient went up by 250%.
This was a big win, in theory. In practice, the actual numbers were too small to make a difference in the overall MAU (Monthly Active Users) pool.
I’ve seen similar things happen across different products.
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👉 Referral flows, most of the time, are nice to have but are not your secret growth weapon.
👉 Unless your product is incredibly sticky, innovative, or inherently viral by nature, optimizing for user acquisition via user referral alone will not move the needle in a significant way.
👉 Some products aren’t inherently viral, and relying on users referring other users may not be the best approach for many.
👉 Growth loop can be used as an additional tactic for growth, but it’s not the only tactic.
👉 Focusing on creating a strong product first with solid activation, retention, and revenue metrics will generate growth.
👉 Focusing on building a strong brand with a solid reputation will generate growth - even if this it's offline word of mouth and it's not quite so trackable.
👉 You can add shares and referral flows to your product but don’t expect jaw-dropping results from them unless you already have strong engagement and retention metrics.
👉 If you have to choose between prioritizing improving your current user experience or building referral flow, prioritize the experience. A better experience leads to off-product referral.
👉 If your sharing flow interrupts the core experience, take a step back and evaluate if it is worth it.
👉 Referral often happens outside the product unless there is a clear incentive for people to do it inside your product. Finding out what that ideal incentive is is key.
👉 Referral happens on people's own time, when it makes sense in their life, not when it makes sense on your product. Having an easily accessible place to do so outside of your main flows is key.
Referrals won't change your trajectory on their own.
Create a strong product first, then make it easy for people to share when they want to do so.
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Hello, you, reading this. Aperture is a growth agency that specialises in creative advertising and product optimisation. That means we can develop your creative strategy, run your ads, and optimise your product.
Some of the companies we've worked with are Memrise, TomTom, The Smurfs, Juno, and Mindful Mamas.
Led by Hannah Parvaz (App Marketer of the Year, 4x Head of Growth), Aperture is a team of experts assembled from the best companies such as Bumble, DICE, Busuu, Luno, Bauer Media to bring in-house knowledge to your team and help you find your focus.
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✍️ By Léa Samrani. Léa is a Product Growth Consultant at Aperture that specialises in subscription apps and product led growth. She has over a decade of experience growing top-grossing apps, such as Bumble, Badoo, Busuu and Uptime. Find her on LinkedIn here.
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