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In this case study, we review how Peach was able to build a waitlist referral program that generated 4000 waitlist subscribers in 30 days and how you can do the same!
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Waitlist Program Overview
Peach is part of a growing trend of fintech companies that are disrupting the traditional banking industry by leveraging technology to offer innovative and customized solutions that are more accessible, affordable, and user-friendly to consumers.
The philosophy behind Peach is to provide a platform that empowers users to take control of their finances, build credit, and pay down debt, while also offering incentives to make the process more rewarding. By integrating a limited-time, 8-week, waitlist referral program for the Peach debit card targeting Gen Z and millennials, Peach is able to effectively build buzz, increase user acquisition, reduce costs, encourage engagement, and build trust.
“We've run several campaigns to learn what messaging works and does not. ReferralHero made it extremely simple for us to spin up multiple campaigns on top of a webflow page and test them against each other until we found a winning formula.”
Mahir Kalra, Co-Founder & CEO @ Peach | Techstars '22
Waitlist Program Rewards
Peach offers monetary compensation to referring users. For every referred friend that gets a Peach card, Peach will pre-fund the referring user’s card with $5 for their first 10 invites! The one-sided referral incentive structure helps Peach keep costs down.
Rewards will automatically be applied once the Peach debit card goes live for all their existing referrals. Users are encouraged to claim their referral link and share away! Furthermore, the student with the most shares on the waitlist will earn an additional $500 that will also automatically be pre-funded into their Peach card.
Waitlist Program Participant Flow
Peach understands that a referral program flow that is easy and rewarding is vital to the effectiveness of the waitlist program. They set up a dedicated referral landing page, focusing on providing all the relevant program information and reducing signup form friction, to help create a positive user experience which helps drive participation growth and engagement for the business.
Step 1
Existing users are invited to join the waitlist and emailed a clear mechanism -an easy-to-use unique sharing link, to share with friends and family.
Step 2
Referrals click on the links shared with them and visit the dedicated referral landing page. The program messaging on the page is clear and concise which highlights the benefits of the service, the rewards for referring, and the steps required to participate.
Step 3
Referrals are able to sign up quickly and easily, with a clear CTA instruction -‘Join Waitlist’ and a streamlined process -entering their best email.
Step 4
Referrals are immediately shown the Sharing Screen which contains their own unique referral link, their current waitlist position, and various social share icons to encourage them to start sharing.
Step 5
Referrals invite other people to sign up by sharing their unique referral link via Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, or email.
Here is how the referral link is shared via Twitter.
Peach will be onboarding people depending on their spot on the waitlist when the Peach debit card goes live. Users are encouraged to bump themselves up the waitlist by sharing Peach with friends and earning money in the process.
Step 6
People are referred back to the same landing page and prompted to enter the waitlist and repeat the process. Creating a viral referral loop.
Step 7
The referrer gets credit every time a friend signs up, increasing their referral count by one. The more friends they refer the higher on the list they’ll go.
Waitlist Program Launch
Peach’s program launch strategy included running Facebook ads and leveraging their pre-existing email list.
“We seeded our campaign via Facebook ads and then let the referral engine powered by Referral Hero supercharge it.”
Mahir Kalra, Co-Founder & CEO @ Peach | Techstars '22
In addition, Peach had an existing email list of about 900 contacts and invited these users to join and share the waitlist program.
Users received the following Welcome email which contained their unique referral link and were invited to share the link with friends to earn rewards. Peach’s email campaign was highly converting as it includes all the critical elements of the waitlist program:
- Be clear about what you are offering in the email as referral incentives are one of the most important components of asking for referrals. By prominently displaying it in the email, it helps Peach’s users decide if it is worth their time and effort to refer to the brand and product.
- Ensure that the email is designed in such a way that the main message is read even if the users are just scanning through the email. The custom email templates Peach uses play a pivotal role in attracting the users’ attention and nudging them to act.
- Start the email with a clear message of what your product can do to help your customers: “Thanks for signing up for Peach - we're stoked to help you build credit and pay down your debt”. Referrals are all about genuine relationships. Peach cleverly sums up in just one line what benefits the referrals will reap when the users refer their brand.
Waitlist Program Ongoing Promotion
ReferralHero Email Automations
Peach uses the following scheduled series of ReferralHero automation emails to continue to nurture current users with the purpose of encouraging engagement.
ReferralHero automation emails are built-in, behavior-triggered automated emails to communicate with participants. Peach uses merge tags for the referral link, the total number of referrals, and the waitlist position, to personalize the email experience.
i. Follow-up email
This email is sent 24 hours after the user signs up. It’s used to foster user engagement and remind them to share their referral link.
ii. First Referral Email
This is sent to the users when they refer their first friend.
iii. Referral Email
This is sent to the users for their subsequent referrals.
Mailchimp Referral Program Integration
Peach uses the ReferralHero native integration to send referral data to Mailchimp, their email marketing platform. This integration ensures that Peach is able to effectively communicate with the program participants and keep them engaged throughout the referral process and beyond. By seamlessly transferring referral data to Mailchimp, Peach is able to create targeted email campaigns that are personalized to each participant's referral activity.
This ongoing communication not only keeps participants engaged but also reinforces the value of the referral program and encourages continued participation. Ultimately, the integration between ReferralHero and Mailchimp plays a critical role in Peach's ability to maximize the impact of their waitlist referral program and drive business growth.
Waitlist Program Results
Within the first 7 days, Peach generated 600 referred users and saw a referral growth rate of 30%!
On the day of the email announcement on Sept 24, 2022
- Number of subscribers: 947
- Number of referrals: 0
Results after one week on Oct 1, 2022
- Number of subscribers: 2,742
- Number of referrals: 659
- Referral rate: 5.18% (142 subscribers have referred more than 1 person/total 2,742 subscribers)
- Referral growth: 31.64% (659/(2742-659))
Results after one month on Oct 24, 2022
- Number of subscribers: 4,314
- Number of referrals: 1,015
- Referral rate: 4.57%
- Referral growth: 30.77%
Results after two months on Nov 24, 2022
- Number of subscribers: 4,555
- Number of referrals: 1,225
- Referral rate: 4.9%
- Referral growth: 36.8%
“Our initial CAC was $1 for a waitlist signup. With the referral program, we had it down to $0.70 per signup. As we were building a waitlist and had not launched yet it's hard to estimate the true LTV since we don't know what the conversion would be. However, the product we were offering is a $5/mo subscription service and we were estimating 5-10% of the waitlist would convert to paying customers.”
Mahir Kalra, Co-Founder & CEO @ Peach | Techstars '22
Their referral links were also shared more than 2.6K times, driving more product and brand awareness.
In conclusion, Peach's innovative use of a waitlist referral program has proven to be a highly effective strategy for generating new leads. By using this incentivized word-of-mouth system, Peach’s waitlist referral program was responsible for generating 40% of their new leads over this 8-week period.
“We had a ton of learnings around what works and what does not. We are already applying these in a new referral strategy that we are building within our core Peach app that helps folks with managing their loan repayment timelines.”
Mahir Kalra, Co-Founder & CEO @ Peach | Techstars '22
Peach’s success is a testament to the power of incentivized word-of-mouth marketing.
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In just 14 days, we help you build the same waitlist, contest, or referral program used to launch and scale Airbnb, Uber, PayPal, and 1000s of other businesses. Start your ReferralHero free trial today.
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