SoFi
A personal finance app offering banking, loans, and investing.
SoFi replaced a referral flow that showed nothing until a reward arrived with a real-time tracker of each friend's sign-up progress and clear potential earnings. Referrals grew 20x in 3 months, from 2% to 40% of all new sign-ups. The lesson: if referrers can't see status or payoff, they stall, so show progress and earnings, and treat a low referral share as a design problem to test.
- Nothing shown until reward arrived
- No feedback in between
- Referrals were 2% of sign-ups
- Each friend's sign-up progress shown
- Potential earnings shown throughout
- Referrers followed up with stalled friends
- Referrals were 40% of sign-ups
Referrals grew 20x in 3 months
From SoFi referral flow redesign
What was said about SoFi
SoFi turned referrals into a major channel with a real-time sign-up tracker. SoFi replaced a flow that showed nothing until the reward arrived with a tracker of each invited friend's sign-up progress and the potential earnings. Referrals grew 20x in 3 months, from 2% to 40% of all new user sign-ups.
The old design only told users a referral succeeded when the reward landed, so there was no feedback in between and referral stayed marginal. The new flow let referrers see where each friend stood in the funnel, which gave them a reason to follow up with friends who stalled. Showing the reward at stake throughout the flow added motivation to push friends to finish. SoFi treated the 2% share as a design problem to test, not a fixed limit, and fixed the experience rather than only the incentive.
Version A and version B as SoFi tested them.
Real-time referral tracking: SoFi's A/B test
Replaced a referral flow that showed nothing until a reward arrived with a real-time tracker of each friend's sign-up progress and clear potential earnings. Referrals grew 20x in 3 months, from 2% to 40% of all new user sign-ups.
SoFi turned referrals into a major channel with a real-time sign-up tracker. SoFi replaced a flow that showed nothing until the reward arrived with a tracker of each invited friend's sign-up progress and the potential earnings. Referrals grew 20x in 3 months, from 2% to 40% of all new user sign-ups.
The old design only told users a referral succeeded when the reward landed, so there was no feedback in between and referral stayed marginal. The new flow let referrers see where each friend stood in the funnel, which gave them a reason to follow up with friends who stalled. Showing the reward at stake throughout the flow added motivation to push friends to finish. SoFi treated the 2% share as a design problem to test, not a fixed limit, and fixed the experience rather than only the incentive.
Version A and version B as SoFi tested them.
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