The viral loop you need for your live trivia app
A viral loop is a mechanism built into your product that brings in new users virtually for free. It is the engine behind organic user acquisition, and a good ratio of organic versus paid acquisition efforts is the hallmark of a healthy, sustainable product.
There are a few different categories of viral loops, but today, we’ll be focusing on the referral loop: this is when current users actively recruit new users. The process usually involves a small incentive for both the inviter and the invitee. Let’s take a closer look at some examples.
Dropbox
Perhaps the most famous example of a highly successful referral loop is Dropbox’s invite system. As you can see below, if you invite people to sign up for the service, both you and your friend get 500 MB of free space added to your Dropbox account.
Why do they do it? Because their business model is that of an economy of scale: the more people use Dropbox, the cheaper it gets for the business to provide their service. Cloud storage is already a commodity and can be quite cheap on a massive scale. So, what feels like great value to the user is actually very inexpensive for the business, and most definitely cheaper than acquiring the user through a paid channel. By giving new customers free extra storage, Dropbox ensures that they will be more inclined to use and keep using the service — because if they don’t, their “gift” would be rendered worthless.
What does this example teach us about using a referral loop?
- Reward both the referrer and the referred user
- Offer value associated with the product
- Give away something that is of low or no cost to the business
- Use a unique identifier to link the two users (for tracking purposes and to avoid fraud)
Live trivia
The referral loop can also be used for live trivia quiz apps, which allow users to win prizes and/or points by answering questions correctly. Cool, you want in — who wouldn’t, right? But how do you include a referral loop in this kind of environment? At Ex Machina, we have recently completed quite a few implementations with our PlayTrivia product and have discovered two ways to do it:
1) Offering extra lives
Granted, we did not come up with this option, but we think this is the best example of a referral loop within a live trivia app. The original concept can be traced back to the lifelines in Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but it became widely popular when the trivia quiz domain started to explode.
The referral loop can also be used for live trivia quiz apps, which allow users to win prizes and/or points by answering questions correctly. Cool, you want in — who wouldn’t, right? But how do you include a referral loop in this kind of environment? At Ex Machina, we have recently completed quite a few implementations with our PlayTrivia product and have discovered two ways to do it:
The beauty of the extra-life referral loop is that it doesn’t cost the business anything. If ever there were to be a buildup of extra lives within the trivia game ecosystem, tougher questions could simply be used to encourage users to spend them. Extra lives are also a great way to reward positive user behaviour, like playing the app 5 days in a row or filling out a questionnaire.
It’s simple: any user who signs up with a referral code gets an extra life. The users who referred them will also receive an extra life when their referral code is used. In-game, the extra life can be used to skip a question when the user gets an answer wrong, with the exception that the extra life cannot be used on the last question.
A useful tool for users
Based on the product stats related to this feature, we concluded that a whopping 37% of new users were brought in thanks to referrals. In terms of the game economy, around 40% of all extra lives earned so far have not been used. Their distribution is fairly uniform — only 0.5% of users have more than 5 extra lives.
We decided to give players the option to use an extra life during gameplay. Based on data that showed which questions pushed people to use their extra lives most frequently, we noticed that people were reluctant to use them on questions 1 and 2. This, of course, makes perfect sense: the later an extra life is used, the more useful it is as a tool to get closer to winning.
2) Team play mode
Another way to incorporate a referral loop is by introducing the team play feature. What better way to boost user acquisition and increase engagement than to tap into existing connections outside the app? Let friends and family play together, encourage office departments to compete with each other, and reward them for their efforts.
During one of our implementations, we allowed users to form teams. These teams were competing for a separate prize pool, so if you were playing the game while also being part of a team, you had two chances to win: one as an individual, and one as a member of a group.
A team is considered to be “in the game” if at least 2 of its members answer the first-round question. Team members who join later are not considered to be part of the team. Each correct question earns an individual points. The final team score is calculated as the average of the team members’ individual scores. The team with the highest score wins. The prize is then distributed equally among team members.
Maximizing user engagement
With one of the live trivia games we developed for a client (to be used as an internal communication tool), we found that allowing users to form teams significantly increased engagement. Team members would encourage each other to join in and pay attention to company memos to succeed as a group.
More than half of users were part of a team, and larger team sizes were preferred, even though that means each individual member would get a smaller share of the potential prize. This implies that players are likely choosing to form teams for social reasons and fun, rather than maximizing their reward as an individual.
Any cool ideas about how to create a compelling referral loop? Let us know in the comments below. If you are interested in getting your live trivia idea off the ground, get in touch. At Ex Machina Group, we provide everything you need to launch your very own live trivia solution, including concept creation, business modelling, front-end design, back-end development, and operations. Check out our website to get inspired by our portfolio and client list. You can also contact me directly on LinkedIn.
