Referral programs can work magic to drive organic growth and high quality users.
Now Branch makes it easier than ever to build a high quality, fully tracked referral program. You can see the exact k-Factor, measure conversion from referred install, and even list out which of your users are the top referrers . Best of all, our linking service is available to you at no cost.
We just put together a document for both our iOS and Android native libraries to tell you exactly how to get it done with Branch.
How app referral systems increase user growth
Here are a few apps that are killing it with a referral system implemented with Branch:
The League, an online dating app, saw their user base grow 30% by adding a referral program. Even better than that, users who came from referrals were 2 times more likely to still be using the app a month after they first downloaded. Double 1 month retention!
Vango, an art ecommerce app, saw similar growth to The League. Even better than that, the conversion to sign up in the app doubled from 26% to 59% when a user came from a Branch referral link.
HotelTonight, a hotel booking app, sees a 30% conversion to buy a hotel if the user installed from a Branch link.
Personalized onboarding
Personalization makes any app experience better and drives more engaged and delighted users. Using Branch, on that first download, we let you know which friend had just invited to join app so that you can deliver a custom welcome just like this one in Gogobot.
What Branch deep links can do for you
Branch makes it really easy to get your feature off the ground by providing any or all of the following services.
– Let you build a personalized welcome
You can build a personalized welcome for new users, since Branch tells you where they came from.
– User attribution through mobile referrer tracking
In short, we tell you when an existing user who you empower with a Branch link, drives a new install.
– (optional) Custom rewarding rules tied to events (install, signup, purchase, etc) in app
We allow you to tie reward events to special
– (optional) User reward tracking/storage (integer balance)
We leave the actual user facing rewarding to you, but we store how many credits have been earned through our reward rules. This makes it easy so that you can just check the balance of credits in the app from us, give the user some reward, then clear the credit balance on our server.
– (optional) Credit transaction history
At any time, via API or SDK, you can retrieve the full credit history of the user
– (optional) Coupon codes for each user
You can use our system to generate referral codes and redeem them through our system. We track which user owns the code and gets rewarded when a new user redeems it.
High-level Examples
You can use just the URLs to track who was the referrer or you can use the entire credit storage and referral code solution as well.
Example just-the-links implementation:
- Create Branch links for each user in the app bundle user ID into the dictionary
- Any user who installs from this link can access the original, inviting user ID
- You can handle rewarding
Example enhanced-existing-referral-code implementation:
- Create Branch links for each user in the app bundle in legacy referral code for that user
- Any user who installs from this link can access the original, inviting user’s referral code
- Automatically pre-fill referral code into the field for the user
- You can handle rewarding
Example full-credit-storage implementation:
- Create Branch links for each user in the app
- Setup a reward rule to give 2000 credits to any referred user who installs from a Branch link
- Setup a reward rule to give 4000 credits to the referring user
- Retrieve credit balance from Branch server
- Apply credits to user’s order
- Redeem the credits from the Branch server
You can get started today building out your referral program on any of the top mobile platforms. Just see the guides for iOS and Android and of course, shoot us a note if you have any questions.