Find out how referrals made Current become the buzziest Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) of 2018.
Current is a new app that lets users access all their favourite streaming services from the same place. It employs a cryptocurrency token — called CRNC — that rewards members for streaming via Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other popular services. In return for their time, money spent and data shared, the user gets currency to spend on premium streaming subscription services.
By the end of its ICO on February 7th, Current had reached its goal of selling 350,000,000 CRNC tokens. In the process, it raised $36 million and earned a hype rating of “Very High” on ICO Drops.
As we’ll see, a referral programme powered by Maître’s Viral Lead Magnet played a central role in making this possible.
Getting 600,000 referrals from your investors
Getting tokens to sell like hotcakes in an ICO is all about building buzz and gaining trust. One of the best ways to do both these things at once is referral marketing. By getting fans to talk about your ICO, you can simultaneously reach more investors and publicly demonstrate to cypto investors trust in the ICO.
These objectives were at the top of Current’s strategy when they set up their ICO referral programme. To this day the approach earned them 636,000 token sale subscribers (and still counting) in the lead-up to the ICO.
What is even more impressive is that 91% of these subscribers were referred!!
Let’s go through the process Current used to achieve this.
The Perfect Landing Page
From the homepage you get a clear call to action (CTA), it is simple and enticing.
Once the user clicks ‘Join Now’ they are taken to another page on the site.
Simplicity is crucial to this landing page’s success, and we can see it at work in both the copy used and the signup process itself. The potential investor can clearly see that initial signup is going to be simple, with just two fields (Name and Email) to fill out before they click the sign-up button. This increases the likelihood of them going through with the signup.
The value proposition is clearly explained on the page. “Refer friends and earn $100 in CRNC”
They also included a section below the sign up form which contains a bullet list reasons Current is the next big thing.
Pro Tip: One other way is to include a break down of the rewards people get if they refer their friends
The Hook
The offer it sold in the most straightforward terms possible: “Refer friends to Current and, get up to $100 in free credit”.
Having a simple to understand offer one of the most important elements to the campaign as most people don’t have time to wonder what the hell they need to do.
Remember, the first aim of any referral programme landing page is to get them to perform the first action, i.e signup. From this, we now have a way to contact them directly to begin to push more marketing messages, like, refer more friends and get X.
Viral Sharing Screen
Once the lead has signed up, the Current referral programme uses the out of the box features in Maïtre viral lead magnet to show the user exactly what they can get from the campaign.
There are lots of different elements in this view that combine to make the lead likelier to start making referrals. Let’s break it down:
Simple Call to action (CTA) — the most important element of the whole campaign and, one that is crucial to your signups making their first referral.
Referral tally — when the affiliate revisits their referrals account they’ll be able to see their live referrals tally here.
Telegram group link — take a look right at the top of the screenshot showing the referral link and benefits view. You’ll notice a link to Current’s Telegram group, just beneath the title. This is an important part of how Current has built a sense of community around their referral scheme and placed useful feedback within reach of their affiliates. The Current affiliates group is currently the #1 group on the Telegram platform — a powerful signal of its success.
Social sharing buttons — Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Email and WhatsApp buttons enable subscribers to share a rich version of their affiliate link on social in just two clicks. One click loads a post of the link on the relevant social account; the second click sends the post.
Unique custom referral link — this is the key mechanic of the referral process. Each affiliate gets a unique referral link to share with their network. Whenever someone signs up after using it, the affiliate progresses towards earning a cryptocurrency incentive. To encourage sharing, we’ve made it as easy as possible for the affiliate to copy the link to their clipboard. All it takes is a single left-click.
Here’s an example of an affiliate sharing their unique referral link via Twitter:
Referral incentives — Current motivate their affiliates to make referrals by offering incentives, in the form of various quantities of their own cryptocurrency, CRNC. The affiliate can see how many referrals they need to make to earn each level of incentive, with the rewards getting greater as they work harder. The range of referral levels represented — from just 2 to 80 — is designed to appeal to a wide range of people, from casual users to full-time affiliate marketers.
Here’s what Current’s referral campaign manager, Shadi from the 1860 had to say on their tactics:
“Clearly communicating the incentives and linking out to our Telegram community meant we managed to build the biggest Telegram community in the world!”.
Engage throughout the campaign
Automating as much of your engagement as possible is crucial to the success a referral programme. As soon as Current investors sign up they get a series of emails which hit home what they can achieve if they refer friends to the ICO. They also get automated emails if they successfully refer someone or if they hit milestones set by the Current team. This is also true of the Telegram group where new joiners get welcome messages (See below).
Building the biggest Telegram channel on the web
A key component of Current’s campaign was to drive users to their Telegram group so as they would be able to message users and, promote their Airdrop and to build trust with investors.
They drove people to the group both via the viral sharing screen shown above, and by sending people who land on their website.
24/7 community management (near enough)
New joiners will expect to get their questions answered right away. Scams are a big fear in the ICO world so having someone to answer questions immediately will help remove any people calling you out for being a scammer.
Here’s how it looks when people join the community.
When direct messaging is involved people tend to ask the same questions over and over again. Questions like, ‘how do I receive my CRNC’ Either make sure you have a copy and paste answer at the hand to save time.
You are going to want to welcome new joiners and keep the community engaged so I would automate daily broadcast messages by using a bot.
Use community managers to carry out the day-to-day contacting required from questions which appear from the community. If you keep getting the same questions asked like, ‘how do I get my CRNC?’ then automate this as well.
How to replicate Current’s successful ICO referral programme
Emulating Current’s referral marketing technique takes a good amount of planning and/or consultation. How will you incentivise referrals? Will you use community tools like Telegram to support the process? How will you optimise your referral link content for social media?
Once you’ve got the details mapped out, technical execution on your site can be achieved in the space of minutes, using Maître’s Viral Lead Magnet.
To learn how, book a meeting slot here.