Overview
In order to acquire new Hodoo English users we decided to build a referral program. Since Hodoo English is an educational product it will be more effective to learn about it from someone they already know. This program is targeted for Korean parents who have kids aged between 7 to 12.
Goals
Product goal: Acquire new users by incentivizing word of mouth recommendations from our existing users.
User goal: Create an experience that optimizes both referring and referred users to make a high-performing referral program.
Our Approach
There are 4 important factors to create a successful referral program.
Intent to share: Would our existing users refer Hodoo English to their friends?
Discovery: How the existing users find the referral program?
Sharing: How can we make it easy to refer?
On-boarding: How can we acquire the referred users successfully?
To get it right we decided to launch a simple and minimal referral program first before building the full referral system. After reaching the first version we kept tracking the users' behavior and conducted user surveys and research.
Research
User Survey
After we launched V1 our team started tracking Google Analytics and found that 45% of users who landed on the referral page clicked to share during the first month. This were very good results but we wanted to know more about why some users who had a chance to share decided not to. We selected those users and conducted a survey.
Key Takeaways
Our users are not very active on social networks and especially many of them don’t have a Facebook account.
Since Hodoo English is an educational product, our users prefer to share it with targeted friends by talking in person or sending them a direct message rather than posting on Facebook for a broad audience.
Some users would like to take time to try the product before referring to their friends.
The referral bonus (1 free month) resonates with our users.
User Interview
To test the V2 concept we recruited 2 parents who were active users to test the referral flows and 2 other parents who didn’t know about Hodoo English to test the invited friend flows. I created the interview guide and prototype and with help from our project manager in Korea I was able to conduct the interviews through Google Hangouts.
Key Takeaways for Referrers:
It’s important the referral page is simple and easy to understand. Since our target users are not very tech savvy, they are afraid if the UI looks complicated or has a lot of text. In addition, users would like to see an overview of the steps they need to take in order to refer someone.
Providing a combination of immediate incentives to encourage a first action and continued incentives to keep referring friends works well.
It would be useful to provide some tracking UI to see the referral status. Our users not only would like to track their reward but also would love to know if their friends' kids start playing Hodoo English to talk about their impressions and opinions.
Takeaways for Invited Friends:
It’s important to let them know we provide a free trial. Parents believe all kids are different so even if they heard good reviews from their friends they would like their kids to try it out first.
It’s also important to indicate the referrer’s name when they sign up or come to our website to help them be sure they are in the right flow.
Final Design & Solutions
Help user to discover the program in the right timing
It's very important to introduce our referral program to the user with the right timing. During the user research, many parents said they would like to try out the program first before referring it to someone. This is because Korean kids are usually very busy with many after-school programs so for parents it's very important to find a program that works for their kids to save their time. When the user purchases the program, on the confirmation page they will see a CTA button saying "Get 1 month free by sharing Hoodoo". Plus, users can always access the CTA button from their user account page. Finally, we notify our existing user with a SMS and email.
Understand user to maximize share referring
To convince the user to refer to our program I considered these 3 factors as important to make them act on.
Page layout
Our target users are Korean parents who have kids aged between 8-12. They are busy parents and don't like anything to consume too much time or being complicated. I made the page very simple with a clear CTA and easy instructions to follow.
Channel
From the user research, many parents prefer channels like Kakao Talk, talking in person and SMS. This is because they prefer to share privately with targeted users rather than posting in their social network. To support the users needs we added SMS channel for this release. We also considered adding Kakao Talk but due to the project timeline, we postponed to the next release.
Incentive
The incentive is one of the important motivators to make a successful referral program. During the user interview, we found out parents would feel more motivated if we offer a combination of immediate incentives and continued incentives. During the interview, we also showed a concept of tracing the referral status, and most of the parents showed a positive reaction.
Process
Based on the data and key findings from the survey and interviews, I started designing the flows and UI. What the V2 program offers is that when an invited friend purchases Hodoo English, both the referring and invited users will get a bonus month of subscription. We provide a unique invite link for each user so friends can sign up from the link or alternatively they can enter their parent ID when they sign up on the Hodoo English website.
