The referrals feature for Kudi's collection and savings mobile app
Note: This project was designed, implemented and released prior to Kudi's rebrand as Nomba
Kudi provides affordable
financial services particularly to the unbanked and underbanked
The Kudi Savings mobile app is a product of Kudi's SME banking and merchant services. Nigerians in local communities can make daily savings through an assigned agent who automates their daily thrift collections seamlessly via the mobile app. You can learn more about the product
hereI had the opportunity to design the end-to-end experience of the referrals feature for Kudi's collection and savings mobile app.
My contribution was in research, UX strategy, visual and interaction design What was the problem?
One of the challenges we faced was how to increase our user engagement and retention and attract new users to our platform. This was a business problem and was one of our main OKRs for that quarter.
We needed a good marketing strategy to fix this problem, one that wouldn't break the bank and also keeps our users in mind.
What we want to achieve
Our solution was to build an in-app referral feature to reward our users for referring new customers and sharing our products. This will help us:
- Increase user engagement and retention on our platform
- Attract new users to the app
- Foster customer loyalty and strengthen our relationship with our customers
Strategy
Our main challenge was to increase user engagement and retention on our platform and we were thinking of ways to do that without having to spend too much on marketing. Our strategy is to use word of mouth marketing as a tool for customer acquisition, and so, the idea of building out an in-app referral feature was born. It’s only natural to trust the word of friends who recommend a business more than any ads you see for the same company. Studies have shown that 84% of customers trust recommendations from people they know more than any advertising that comes from a brand.
Referral marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads and multiply our customer base and recommendations from our users also mean free promotion for our product, Integrating an in-app referral feature will effectively put all the referral opportunities right in our customer’s hands, which will in turn make the entire word-of-mouth process much easier, draw more users to our app with every successful referral and ultimately turn our customers into advocates of our product.
Source: Deloitte
Source: Wharton School of Business
Insights
I interviewed 6 agents to gather some insights on their referral behavior. The main questions were on topics such as how often they refer their friends and family to use a product, who they refer the products to, and what types of rewards or incentives would motivate them to refer others to a particular product. Results showed the following:
- They were motivated to refer others to a product for a variety of reasons, including the desire to share something useful with their network, the potential to earn rewards or incentives, and the opportunity to help their friends and family save money.
- They were most motivated by cash rewards, discounts on fees or subscriptions, and the ability to earn higher interest rates or other benefits.
- Those who referred friends or family to a product were also more likely to refer others
Approach
When researching on some referral programs run by different brands, I found there were multiple approaches that are typically used for most products and are somewhat considered as standard practice. These include:
- Referring a friend by sharing a referral link
- Referring a friend by sharing a referral code
- Referring a friend by sharing via social media
- Incentivise users with free subscriptions or discounts
Different approaches to creating an in-app referral program
However, our product is very different and we needed to come up with our own unique approach as well as ensure there was complete transparency throughout the whole process. So instead of sharing a code or a link, our agents will submit details of the referral and our system will send an email to the referral and prompt them to join our platform. For every successful referral that becomes an active user, our agents will earn a commission on their transactions. Agents will be able to track all their referrals and their earnings within the app
Keeping the experience simple
We relied on designing all parts of the experience to be as contextual as possible. If it's not absolutely necessary to show something at a given moment, we would not show it. Customers value an easy and simple process that will help our users understand what to expect and remove any friction along the way.
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The Referral Process
We implemented the referral feature by adding a "Refer a Friend" button on the Agents's profile page, this will take the user to the 'refer and earn' landing page where they see a brief description of the referral program, how it works and the cash incentive. The user can now go ahead to refer a friend by submitting the details of their friends and family members. As mentioned before, my approach to the design was to make it a simple and straightforward process.
Referrals will then get and email invite and will be prompted to download the Kudi app from the google play store to sign up.
Visibility and Transparency of Referral Earnings
To give visibility and transparency to the agents on their referrals, we added the 'My referrals' button to the Agent's profile. This will redirect them to a page where they will see an overview of their total referrals and their earnings as well as a list of all their referrals and their status i.e those who have newly joined the platform, those who are fully registered, those who have become active users and those who are uninterested.
For agents who successfully refer a friend that becomes an active user, they earn a small commission for every transaction made by their referral. Agents can see details on a particular referral by clicking on their name, the details will show a breakdown of the commission gotten from each of the referral's transactions as well as total accumulated earnings.
Outcome
This project was a collaborative effort between the product, marketing and engineering teams and after implementing and releasing the referral feature, we saw a significant increase in user engagement and retention, as well as a boost in the number of new users who downloaded the app.
Our referral feature was particularly effective in attracting new users, mostly because our current users earned cash incentives for every new user they referred. Overall, the referral feature was was a successful addition to the Kudisave app and a win-win for both our users and our business.
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