How to Re-Engage Existing Mobile App Users Using Referrals

Referrals are an excellent growth driver to bring in valuable, engaged users with very low financial investment. A successful referral program can have a domino effect on your customer retention and acquisition strategy: when your existing customers re-engage with your brand and invite their network to download your mobile app, it accelerates your app adoption and usage. 

While the concept of rewarding existing customers for referrals isn’t something new, brands have recently been seeing immense growth with this strategy. One of the crucial factors which determine the success of a referral program is how well you are able to link one platform to the other: users should be able to easily share their referral link via a variety of platforms like social media, email, or text and invite their network to download the app. 

Similarly, the person who receives a referral link from your existing customer should be routed to the most appropriate destination: if the user already has the app installed on their device, the link should directly take them to the app and prompt them to register. If the referred user does not have the app, they should be routed to the appropriate app store to download the app. 

Here’s how EazyDiner, India’s largest restaurant, and table booking app, leverages Branch’s mobile linking platform (MLP) to build a seamless referral program. This allows them to reward users for engagement, and potentially drive new customers to join the mobile app. 

Existing users can invite friends and family to join the EazyDiner app by sharing a trackable referral link via social media, email, or text message, which redirects the invited user to the relevant app store so that they can download the app and sign-up. Once the invited user has completed the sign-up process, both the referrer and the referee receive a Rs.300 dining voucher which can be redeemed when the user pays their bill via the app. 

Watch it in action:

Branch-powered referral programs can recognize a user across both the web and app, retrieve the link that was clicked last, and carry the link data into the app when the user opens the app for the first time and signs up. This helps marketers deliver a delightful user experience and accurately track each click, install, and conversion. 

Overall, Branch makes it easy not only for the user to navigate through the referral program and enjoy their incentives, but also ensures marketers can truly measure the performance of their referral programs.  

Ready to get started? Learn how to build a deep linked app referral program with Branch, where users have a delightful experience and brands can accurately track each conversion. 

Branch provides the industry’s leading mobile linking and measurement platforms, offering solutions that unify user experience and attribution across devices and channels. Branch has been selected by over 100,000 apps since 2014 including Adobe, BuzzFeed, Yelp, and many more, improving experiences for more than 3 billion monthly users across the globe. Learn more about Branch or contact sales today.

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