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Ricky is the founder of SaaSwrites. A SaaS founder himself, Ricky found it difficult to grow and market his product after building it. While networking on Twitter with founders, he realized there was a big gap in a platform that can truly help SaaS founders and makers with Marketing. He started SaaSwrites to bring the best marketing and growth resources. Ricky is an expert in SaaS Marketing offering SaaS channel strategy consulting services to SaaS companies. He also writes about SaaS marketing tools that help people with marketing. Ricky is also the founder of a B2B SaaS product - Beejek (a digital receipt platform for retail stores) Say Hi to Ricky @rickywrites on Twitter.
Table of Contents
- How referrals and word of mouth can help your SaaS with growth
- Product-led growth for SaaS
- Word of mouth (WOM) for SaaS growth
- Referrals for SaaS growth
- Growth starts with onboarding
- 12 SaaS referral program case-studies that worked:
- 1. PayPal
- 2. Tesla
- 3. DropBox
- 4. Airbnb
- 5. Amazon Prime
- 6. Google
- 7. Refinable
- 8. The Room Where It Happens
- 9. Parade
- 10. Italic
- 11. T-Mobile
- 12. Harry's

How referrals and word of mouth can help your SaaS with growth
- Product-led growth: Your product is built for sharing.
- Word of mouth: Users proactively recommend your product to friends.
- Referrals: You create an incentivized reward program.
Product-led growth for SaaS
- Transact or collaborate w/ others (PayPal, Dropbox, Zoom, Slack). These products are only effective when others use them with you.
- Create content intended to be shared w/ others (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Cameo)
Word of mouth (WOM) for SaaS growth
- Removes obstacles or pain from people's lives.
- Gives people dopamine hits of delight or entertainment.
Referrals for SaaS growth
- When to offer an incentive (easyβright after users experience the most delight from your product).
- Which incentive users actually value.
- Physical goods: Offer the product for free once someone refers 5 other customers.
- Subscription services: Offer the service for free for, say, 3 months. Not just one month.
- Reduce lag time between a user signing up β> referring someone
- Increase the number of referrals made/user
- Increase the percentage of new users who accept a referral invite
Growth starts with onboarding
- Referrer's perspective: They're prompted to invite friends while signing up.
- Referee's perspective: Onboarding is the first step you experience after clicking an invite link & signing up.
- Lends itself inherently to growth (users get more value from the product when others use it with them).
- People can't stop talking about.
12 SaaS referral program case-studies that worked:
- PayPal used one to acquire 100m users.
- DropBox used it to grow 3900% in 15 months.
- Airbnb generated 900% YoY growth for 1st-time bookings.
1. PayPal
2. Tesla
- They gave $1000 to Tesla owners whose referrals resulted in the purchase of a Model S.
- The friend would also get $1000
- Get 5 referrals and youβll get an invite to the Gigafactory grand opening party.
- Get 10 referrals and youβll get the right to purchase a special βfounder seriesβ Model X
3. DropBox
- You sign-up and receive free storage in the cloud.
- Refer a friend and you get 500MB of free storage.
- Your friend gets 500MB of free storage
- 100k Users in Sept 2008 -> 4m users by Dec 2009
- 3900% growth in 15 months
- 2x its user base every 3 months for 15 months
4. Airbnb
- Refer a friend, and youβll receive $25 when they take a trip
- Refer a friend, and youβll receive $75 when they rent out their place
- Direct invites via email
- Importing contacts
- Header to their site
5. Amazon Prime
- Spent 2x as much as non-Prime members
- They also order more frequently than non-prime members
6. Google
- For every user who signed up through your referral link, you would get $20.
- You can do this until you reach $2000.
7. Refinable
8. The Room Where It Happens
9. Parade
10. Italic
11. T-Mobile
12. Harry's
Written by
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Ricky is the founder of SaaSwrites. A SaaS founder himself, Ricky found it difficult to grow and market his product after building it. While networking on Twitter with founders, he realized there was a big gap in a platform that can truly help SaaS founders and makers with Marketing. He started SaaSwrites to bring the best marketing and growth resources. Ricky is an expert in SaaS Marketing offering SaaS channel strategy consulting services to SaaS companies. He also writes about SaaS marketing tools that help people with marketing. Ricky is also the founder of a B2B SaaS product - Beejek (a digital receipt platform for retail stores) Say Hi to Ricky @rickywrites on Twitter.