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Smart Invites Best Practices

The referral mechanism that allows users to invite their friends to the app has to be intuitive, quick, easy to find and easy to use. You also need to ensure that the invite process becomes a habit for your users, so there is always a reason for them to share your app (or in-app content) with their family and friends.

The reason could be sheer greed for daily rewards, something valuable to share or the immense love for your product.

We have compiled a list of best practices based on experience and analysis of successful and not so successful integrations with GetSocial tech. Use them to maximize the number of invitations sent.

Create an Intuitive Sharing and Invite Process

Well Positioned Share Button

Doomsday Clicker asks players to share how they destroyed the world

DOs:

  • Put the invite/share option in a prominent place (e.g., in app’s top-level menu or landing page) to ensure the invite process can be initiated within 2 clicks.
  • Similarly, the share option should be placed along the app’s sharable content, making it easy to share your app’s content.
  • Include the invite process in your app’s tutorial (i.e. during the onboarding process).

DON’Ts:

  • Hide invite/share options deep into app’s navigation, making it difficult for your users to find.
  • Restrict sharing and invite only to authenticated users. With GetSocial Smart Invites both authenticated and unauthenticated users can send invites.

Customize UI and Invite Channels

DOs:

  • Put the most popular invite channels on the top of the list. Reordering is possible from the GetSocial Dashboard.
  • Customize the look and feel of the invite UI to match the look and feel of the app.
  • Sharing and invite icons should be intuitive. E.g., , , .
  • Wording of Invite and share CTA (call-to-action) should be clear, e.g., “Invite friends”, “Share with friends”, “Refer and Earn” etc.

DON’Ts:

  • Use the native share sheet as default. The default share sheet (iOS and Android) shows all potential delivery channels, which is too many. Also most of them are not relevant for sharing (reminder app, google drive, dropbox, evernote, etc.). On the other hand, GetSocial natively integrates with the popular chat and social apps, which limits the choice making it simpler and quicker for users to share.

Customize Invite and Sharing Content

DOs:

  • Sharing and invite text should be relevant to the content being shared. Also consider localizing the invite text to the supported languages.
  • Personalize invites sent from your app with an image relevant to the app or the shared content. See here which Invite channels support sending custom images.
  • Utilize deep linking to bring new users directly to relevant content and personalize their onboarding experience. Guides for Android, iOS, Unity.
  • Customize the invite URL using custom domain. Check the configuration guide.

Reward Users for Sharing and Successful Invites

Provide Rewards

DOs:

  • Reward users for (every) successful install that is a result of their invite.
  • Highlight the reward they will get, e.g., “Refer 5 friends to get 100 gold” or “Refer a friend and get 1 month of premium for free”

DON’Ts:

  • Reward users for sending invites. Not all invite channels provide confirmation for successful invite sent, and therefore such reward processes are susceptible to fraud.

Extra Resources

  • Interview with GetSocial CEO, Jeroen Bouwman about “Using the power of social in your game”.
  • Recording of talk “Designing for Virality: Turning Users Into Influencers” at Casual Connect by from GetSocial CEO, Jeroen Bouwman:

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