 Hey everyone and thank you for joining me today to unlock exponential growth through referral programs and If everyone is ready Let's start So my name is Asya and I'm a senior product manager advice I am responsible for accelerating organic growth through word-of-mouth recommendations owning more than 70% of new users each month in my previous experience I was leading ad tech startups from MVP to scaling stage at Yandex one of the largest word Search engine companies and before that I played a key role at leading several FinTech startups for UK and US market So why we speak about growth today? Achieving growth is one of the key goals of any product manager today No matter what you own small feature the whole product operations Infrastructure you constantly ask the question. How what you do is bringing more customers or more profit So today I will show you what role growth plays in product success Then I will share with you the best practices how to approach growth through recommendations Then I will show you the vital role referrals are playing in a healthy growth model and Then we will learn how to build an ideal referral program So first let's talk about wise a Regionally founded as transfer wise to make money movement between countries cheap and fast Now wise is offering full international account allowing you to manage Transfer spend in West money in any currency at market rates to reflect our growth We were rebranded from transfer wise to wise So wise is one of the companies that is known for its phenomenal growth that was achieved through word of mouth recommendations for example just in 2023 we get 4.5 million new customers 3 million came through recommendations Incredible right? This is a dream come true for any company out there So today I want to share with you some strategies used to achieve that First and this is what our funders in CPO talk a lot great products drive word of mouth If you gave your customer 10 x experience to what they had before They will for sure recommend your product While it's true a poor product or low retention can be saved by any growth strategy a Great product alone isn't a solution to everything Nowadays there are many many great products that fail in the times when competition is higher and higher every day Poor growth and user acquisition is one of the main reasons why products fail For example, let's look at snapchat. They had a great product quite revolutionary for their time They lost it a growth for to Instagram Or let's look at Facebook. They had a great product for their time and they had already quite good growth But they achieved Exponential growth and got to a giant there are today only when growth team started to work on the product So nowadays great product alone does not ensure success anymore Building a sustainable growth model is essential for your long-term success When working with growth the first fundamental that you need to understand that growth Should not be approached as a funnel. So how funnel works you acquire customer and then you push them along the funnel To grow you constantly need to push more and more customers into the funnel Basically, eventually your marketing budget will skyrocket and you will be in acquisition war with your competitors Because your growth is always will be limited to the funnel But if you approach growth as a loop it changes everything Customers inviting more customers that would invite even more customers Creating a loop that becomes bigger and bigger with each cycle You acquire one customer. They bring you two That brings you four that brings you 16. This is how exponential growth is achieved Instead of counting conversions in a funnel from one step to another You need to focus on building a loop that will grow bigger and bigger with each cycle From that becomes very obvious that people recommended your product is the key element to achieve exponential growth Successful recommendations are built on three key categories Organic and altruistic recommendations network effects and incentivized recommendations So let's talk about them a bit more altruistic recommendations is when people just talk about your product because they like it This is where having the great products really help Then organic recommendations is when people notify other people about the product just by using it So for example, you are not a Spotify user, but your friend shares a song with you from Spotify Or you are not a vice user, but your friends transfers you money through vice and you receive a notification That way you get to know about the product and you know your friends prefer to use it And the magic here there were no marketing budgets spend on that Then comes network effects is when you invite other people to the product just to enjoy benefits of using it together The easiest example is social media the more people join the more benefits for everyone Or you start to use PayPal because people you transact with are using PayPal And and it makes sending money to each other easier Or you start to use Monzo or Revolute to split restaurant bills with your friends And after comes incentivize recommendations that known as referral programs It when you give your customers reward or discount or exclusive benefit to encourage them to actively invite friends into your product So we learn that growth is a loop that mainly driven by recommendation So there is no surprise here that recommendation is also a loop All these three key categories need to be constantly linked together and function as interconnected Loop that grows with each cycle Let's have an example Imaginary Spotify, you're still not a Spotify user Organic recommendation happens your friend shares with you a song from Spotify You like his taste in music you decide to join Spotify to check it out When you join you start to experience network effects together following each other playlist adding each other songs At this point we incentivize you with referral program to invite more friends Of course, you're of course, you already love the product You already love to use it with friends. So you will invite more friends They will start to share songs on social media creating organic recommendations and bringing even more friends All together you start to experience network effects of exploring each other music taste also following Playlists and adding songs at this point we again incentivize you with referrals to invite more friends and the loop growth So what we can see there that recommendations are very interconnected loop that grows with every cycle And this growth is fueled by referrals So referrals Is actually what fueling your growth and making a loop bigger and in a healthy product referrals and word of mouth Should be your main acquisition channels So most of the products that you use today will have a referral program It probably will be abandoned hidden under account never optimized for its full potential A good referral system in an early stage product will bring you 40 to 50 percent of users in later stages 20 to 30 percent So if now your numbers are lower, there is a very clear opportunity for you to grow So How to build a referral program? There is no surprise here, but the referral also function as a loop So let's have an example. Your customers love your product You incentivize them to invite more friends. They invite friends. They receive a reward for that They feel appreciated and rewarded for their advocacy. They are much more likely to invite more friends. The loop grows They're friends that got invited receive a Receive an incentive to adopt the product They love the whole recommendation experience. They love having a discount to try the product out They will for sure are much much more likely to recommend product to another people and use referrals for that Loop grows we see that referrals function as a loop growing with every cycle Bringing more and more people in and the growth of the loop is powered by incentive So there are four simple questions to craft an ideal referral program And the first one is home a target customers So people invite look alike people Meaning that you always need to target only the customers you want to grow Having one referral program for everyone will just simply incentivize low-intent users bringing you even more low-intent users So you always need to target with referrals your target customers Then you need to find out why they're recommending your product and for what and this would define an incentive The key thing to understand here that you actually have two customers two customer groups people who recommend your product and people who receive a recommendation Both of these customer groups have a different goals meaning that they would have a different incentive The best approach here is to run customer interviews with them to clearly understand their motivation and choose the right incentive So first identify what motivates them to recommend your product and what would be the right incentive for them In general the most effective way is cash Which is also fair. They will bring you more new customers that would generate your revenue You You share the part of this revenue with them Also, you can consider in-product discounts that would work the best for premium products where cash is no longer a motivation Then the second group is people who receive a recommendation Find out for what action they were recommended your product And give them an incentive exactly on this action So for example in whites we found out that people were recommended wise for travel And we built a referral program that gave them a free travel card on sign up as a result Our growth in this region skyrocketed by 50 And the last question is when do they recommend my product? Always prompt recommendations at the right moment The best practices to do here is to do it in the first 14 days and after user experience your core product For example in e-commerce. It's the first order for wise. It's when the customer made the first transfer with us Another best practice is to give them a clear direction for recommendation for example For the example that I used before with recommended wise for travel Instead of just saying hey Invite friends or hey recommend wise We say are your friends are about to travel recommend wise This will give them the direct The direct pass for the recommendation and that improves conversion greatly And then the last thing we already talked about it, but remember that recommendations are interconnected loop Meaning that you always need to leverage your network effects and organic shares with referrals So for example your friend sends you transfer via wise you receive a notification We add to this notification and invite to try wise for free That way we maximize the positive effect of organic recommendation by adding referrals to it Because remember referrals are the ones who fuel to make the growth speaker It's that simple. It's four questions It's just a sample of customer interviews. You will easily find answers and your ideal referral program is there So by wrapping up let's think together how what we learn can bring you an impact already tomorrow First growth and recommendations should be built as a loop And referrals are the key element to fuel this growth To build the right referral program, you need to always focus on target customers Choose the right incentive for them and prompt them to recommend at the right moment But seriously what impact you can literally go and deliver tomorrow First if you don't have a referral program, just build one trust me on that Then if you have one and probably you do First check who you're targeting if you're targeting everyone Just stop targeting low intent customers at least it would bring you impact Or check an incentive ensure that it's valuable exactly for your target customers Then always prompt to refer after core action in the first 14 days And the rest check your messaging Check that it gives a clear direction for recommendation. So for example You know that the primary motivation of your customers. It's actually to help your friends save money So instead of simple hey invite friends use the messaging help your friends to save money That's it. It's 10 minutes of engineering time. It can be done tomorrow and it will boost your conversion for sure So that's it. Thank you for joining me today First do not hesitate me to follow on link it in reach out share your feedback share what you try with work or didn't I really love to speak about growth. So I can't wait to hear from you And then yeah, thank you for your time And really look forward to hear from you all Have a good day