

However, the variations will be negligible as long as you are looking to compare the performance of a referral program with some history instead of one in its first months of use.

The Dropbox presentation mentioned that they optimized the program over time so we know this isn't true. Second, we also assumed that the conversion rate of the referral program remained constant. This makes sense if you think that as the active user base got larger, there would be more people making referrals, and thus more signups occurring due to referrals. To estimate what these rates were during the 15 months covered in the presentation, we will have to make several assumptions.įirst, we will assume that Dropbox grew exponentially and not linearly.

However, this is not to say that the referral program wouldn't have been successful. If those numbers were 10 users to 400 users in 15 months we probably wouldn't be talking about this referral program right now. The magnitude of the numbers above is impressive. 35% of daily signups from referral program.The numbers shared in the presentation with respect to the customer referral program are: Slides 28 - 32 talk specifically about the referral program but the whole presentation is a interesting read. If you haven't seen the presentation by Dropbox on their explosive growth I would highly recommend you view it by clicking here. Before you can imitate their success it's important to break these numbers down to understand exactly what 3900% growth looks like per month with respect to the customer referral program. While these numbers are impressive, they don't tell the whole story. It's often used to showcase just how powerful of a growth engine refer-a-friend programs can be, and also how important optimization work by people like Sean Ellis is.Īll of the above is true especially with their dazzling growth numbers of 100k registered users to 4M registered users in just 15 months. The Dropbox customer referral program is probably one of the most famous examples of a customer referral program on the internet today.
