User Acquisition – Referral Program

Overview

TNEX is the first digital bank in Vietnam, providing banking and financial solutions to more than 2 million users. The Referral Program was TNEX’s key campaign in scaling user growth by giving incentives for advocates per referral.
The previous program acquired a large number of users who churned right after they got the money rewards. There was also a big risk of fraudulent customers taking advantage of the automatic reward system. The stakeholders expected a new strategy moving forward for the Referral campaign:

• Increase the quality of acquired users
• Improve retention of referral cohort
• Eliminate fraud cases

My responsibilities

• Restructure Referral program, removing friction in onboarding.
• Implement data-driven growth experimentation to optimize performance.
• Create marketing automation flow: In-app push message & email.
• Collaborate with product team to design Referral features: User flow & UX copywriting.

How I did

The original referral program was a success with user acquisition. The conditions were easy to understand: inviting a friend and both will get 20,000 VND automatically into their cash-back account. However, the problem with that program was the lack of focus on the quality of users. They churned out immediately after getting incentives, without any in-app engagement or revenue-generating transactions. A great number of new users coming from Referral campaign had low LTV, contrary to the theoretical assumption that referred users would patronize with the advocacy from the referrer.

Given the problems to be solved, I started unveiling the root of the problem by asking major questions:

• What is the real motivation of the newly invited users? Do they care solely about incentives, or do they also consider the app’s benefits introduced by referrers?
• How does the referral really go under their conversation? Which messages or competitive advantages of the app do referrers use to persuade the referee to install our app? How long does the referral process last?
• What are the reasons for the churn? Is it because of their initial aim of only getting the money, or is it because our post-onboarding experience is not optimized to make them stick?

I conducted qualitative research by sending out surveys to our referral customers. It revealed that the referees were not comprehensively introduced to TNEX as a digital bank. The referrer only sent a referral link with the message “Install to get 20k”. After onboarding, new users were left hanging without further assistance, telling them what to do next. This abrupt and discontinuous journey built up the perception of TNEX as a “way” to earn some extra money, rather than a digital bank application to use for financial purposes.

This insight navigated the direction for this reform:

• Design post-onboarding activation
• Create customized invite links to better track organic acquisition (versus paid acquisition)
• Improve communication during onboarding and post onboarding.

	Old campaign	New campaign
Scheme	Condition: Install app, eKYC, Incentive: 20.000VND	Condition: Install app, eKYC, try in-app services in the form of a mission, and invite the next friend Incentive: 150.000VND
Message	“Install app to get 20.000VND. Install app and apply my referral code [phone number]”	“Create a bank account with TNEX and try its services. We both get 150.000 VND. Use my invite link [here]”
Operation	Automatic reward payment	Automatic reward payment with fraud scanning
Communnication	Simple automated in-app message	Multi channel automated messaging: in-app notification, push and email

Optimization

I conducted major product-led experiments and dozens of tests for marketing messages and creatives to maximize acquisition numbers, foster post-onboarding activation and reduce acquisition cost simultaneously.

One of the tweaks that yielded significant results is the addition of a mission tracking panel, which assisted new users in tracking their mission progress. This change led to a double increase in the number of new onboarding users making financial transactions and sustaining their activities in the app (group saving, health tracking).

Marketing Automation

To maintain seamless communication with users joining the referral program, I collaborated with the digital marketing team and the development team to set up marketing automation workflows for multi-channel messaging using AWS Pinpoint.

UX Design & Copywriting

In collaboration with UX team, I also redesigned the user flow for referral, streamlining the steps and refining the wordings to simplify the process for users.

1. Referral Flow

2. Onboarding Flow

Results

• Referral Program acquired 10,000 users monthly, accounting for up to 30% of user acquisition.
• Increased % of new active customers from 0.2% to 45%.
• 12-month retention doubled from 2,7% to 10,5% in 3 months.
• Cohort analysis showed customers entering the new referral scheme had a lower churn rate and were more likely to introduce friends.
• Secured up to 50M VND prospectively lost because of fraudulent users.