Okay. So another tactic I want to talk about is the so-called refer a friend or social referrals. And this 1
is based on a case study of an app called Robinhood. 2
So Robinhood is an app that theoretically allows you to have commission free trading. 3
So when they launched in Beta they had a sort of pre-release version where they told people you can have 4
early access to this app to give it a spin or try it out. 5
And the way that they built their email list was quite unique. 6
What they said was that once you've given your details you'll email e.t.c. saying that I'm interested 7
in getting early access to this app, 8
they show you this page where it gives you an idea of where in the queue you are 9
in order to get this app download. So there's 400,000 people ahead of you 10
and 28 people behind you. 11
And that makes it really easy for you to visualize this gigantic 12
queue. As far as I know these numbers are real. 13
And so firstly there's a massive amount of social proof. My god! Almost half a million people want 14
to download this app. 15
And I like way at the back of the queue. When am I ever going to be able to get there to get this amazing 16
fantastical app? 17
Well they tell you the idea is that if you're interested in priority access then you can refer your 18
friends. The more friends that join the queue the sooner you get access. 19
So essentially this is like that exclusive club where if you're able to bring a bunch of hot girls you 20
can skip the queue and get into the club ahead of all the people who are queuing. 21
So they give you a whole bunch of ways that you can share your unique link and they track how many people 22
have joined because of you 23
and then you will see yourself moving ahead of the queue. 24
Now this is a very intelligent way of going about email collection because first you demonstrate social 25
proof i.e. there's a massive amount people who want this thing that you want so they don't feel stupid 26
for just giving you that email. 27
And it will make them want access to your app even more. 28
The second thing is that you encourage people to take action in the moment because we are now also used 29
to fast food, fast cars, 30
we want everything immediately. And this whole idea capitalizes on that need for immediate gratification. 31
Because as soon as you tell somebody you can't have something, what are they going to want? 32
They're going to want it even more and they're going to want it right now. 33
And you can use that psychology in your advantage by getting them to do something, to perform an action. 34
In this case it's tweeting about it, sharing about it, essentially getting a network effect. And the number 35
of times when we've seen network effects in either you know downloads of our product or pledges to Kickstarter 36
or whatever, it's always you know this massive J-curve. And it's like you know if one person shares it 37
to five people and five people share to another five people, you see this exponential growth 38
that you just can't get by targeting everybody individually. 39
Your social circle is only so big and 40
you only have so much budget to put on advertising. 41
So leveraging the social network effect is immensely powerful. 42
Now if you want to implement this for your own app there's actually a product called Maître which helps 43
you implement this kind of social queuing. 44
And since Robinhood I've seen a number of products that have done this quite effectively. 45
So especially when you're in the build up phase, when you're not ready to release your app to release 46
your product, this can be a really really good way of getting those initial users.