So I’m totally sold with :mondo: and I’ve been showing the app off to friends and family. Can I generate/send them a referral code or should I just point them to the app store?
It’d be good to send them a referral code. Points mean prizes right?
In future a referral code could link to a beautiful landing page saying something along the lines of:
"Chris has invited you to join Mondo, the bank as smart as your phone.
This month Chris has used his Mondo card for:
£50 Eating out
£80 Birthday gifts
£150 Travel
etc…"
This might pose a problem with data security (sharing spend publicly) but with a user’s permission, using local and recognisable merchant logos, next to weekly spend, could make the app more appealing to new audiences.
Maybe for people in the beta queue, referring specific people to join the queue could bump them up a wee bit?
And for people already using Mondo, they could have a quick selection of some of their recent transactions to display, and they could just tap on which ones to use. Or perhaps just have a generic video (like the one on the website), as that could highlight more of the features while using the same screen real-estate? Although Personalisation is good, and could really endear more people to Mondo if it’s the first time they’re seeing the product!
I like the idea of selecting payments you want the share. That way you get around the data protection issue with a solid notification showing your happy to share this information.
This could all fit into a referral programme that rewards Mondo. 5 new users get a free coffee etc…
I know you have lots of people waiting to try the app already, but I’m ready to preach the good word of :mondo:
Personally unconvinced on this. It feels like a lot of work to do something that I’ve found is by far best done by just tweeting or directly sending someone a screenshot or two of my view in to the app. Additionally, I’ve found referral programs are often weird and failure-prone. I’d rather see Mondo deliver a product that people want to share naturally (I get many people interested by just posting screenshots of interesting transactions and notifications to Twitter, the share buttons in feature unlocked feed items is also great but could be improved with minor text changes), rather than incentivise users in to spamming their entire contacts list.
In the short term, I would definitely like the ability to somehow bump friends and family up the waiting list though, especially with P2P payments.
How about a similar thing for developers, for them to refer other people to use the API?
Something along the lines of:
"John has been using the Mondo API to develop x,
What could you do with Mondo’s data?"
[Link to documentation]
[insert examples of projects from hackathons/other developers]
Could be a really interesting way to engage the developer community, and allow them to spread the word! Building more services with the API will only benefit the end-user
I guess that is also something to promote via natural sharing, as well, as @RichardR says. Agree with the spamming comment, but some way to help developers share their work would be useful, I think.
I agree with you; many referral programmes are prone to failure or lack real incentives that reward advocates fairly. A fancy referral scheme will never trump natural sharing. However, I would feel more comfortable choosing which payments to share rather than screenshotting my recent payment history.
I wouldn’t see the referral programme being a core development priority, rather a nice to have. There are plenty of people ready and waiting today!
I guess this discussion poses two new questions:
Will social media channels and social sharing be enough to convince traditional bank users to swap to :mondo: ?
What end game goals create a successful referral programme ?
I would be interested to hear any lessons learnt from the initial alpha and beta schemes.
I just redact things with an app like Pinpoint or crop a good section out using the built in Photos tools. For a while, TestFlight builds of Mondo included a box drawing feedback tool that activated when a screenshot was taken, putting a blur + share tool there could be something to explore.
Considering the 80,000 person queue for cards and the whole breaking Crowdcube thing, I think it’s working! Word spreads quickly if there’s something good and people will find out about it once you get the first few onboard.
I tend to back this theory. Any compensation tends to crowd out any goodwill. Especially relevant as people are referring sufficiently anyway, because they want to see genuine change in the market. Any incentive will be compared to customer acquisition strategies of incumbents which are ~£100/user and may actually damage referral.
Accelerating or improving organic referral process a good idea, but any direct incentive idea needs to be explored very cautiously.
That’s a great app! I needed a decent crop application for my phone - Thank you!
Your right nothing beats good old word of mouth, but social campaigns only reach tech savvy and social media users.
What about older banking customers?
People who use tablets but dont use smart phones?
New users who refuse to believe an app can replace their bank?
Users who don’t spend all day on a mobile/PC/Mac and you have one opportunity to ‘sell’ the service?
People that are scared to part with cash?
80,000 is a huge success for launch, but it doesn’t guarantee long-term sustainability.
I once worked for a provider of shared services who tried to onboard all employees of a public sector organisation onto self-service systems. It quickly became apparent that a significant amount of people were forgetten. These users were not tech savvy and in some instances could not access their payslips because they didn’t have regular access to the internet (due to the fact they didnt sit at a desk all day or in some instances they could not afford internet access.)
This is something I never forget because regardless of good intentions, one channel doesn’t work for everyone.
Thanks for sharing, fascinating read. Less about the reward, more about a small thank you. Like it! I think there are too many problems for a direct incentive to work. I have to admit the ‘Cash Back’ scheme banks currently run do nothing to peak my interest.
There are some very good points here but I would argue that in the case of the product of Mondo, it is a mobile first banking app and appeals greatly to exactly my generation of mobile and social network users. Almost all of Mondo’s value right now is in the app (and API). If you are not a smartphone user, Mondo likely does nothing for you and that’s probably going to be okay. The big banks won’t be going away any time soon!
Certainly, if you are a utility, the only provider of something people need to use or aiming for those markets, those points would need to be thought about very carefully. As a small challenger bank, I think Mondo will be okay focusing on creating a truly excellent mobile banking experience and marketing through the mobile native channels (at least for the foreseeable future).
I’ve been working on the referral program at TransferWise, and I can tell you a couple of things about referral program with monetary incentives:
no matter what, you’ll get abuse / “friendly” fraud / fake accounts… and that means also an increase in workload and costs for the support teams. do not underestimate.
measuring pure word of mouth is very hard
early adopters are much more likely to use a referral program, but that’s because they are also much more likely to talk about you (even without incentives)
the vast majority of the users might not care about personalization when sharing a link to a product. that’s more for early adopters (as we are now)…
what could help more to convert new people is to actually show them what the product is about and how it works
what could be interesting, at least until when the waiting list is still closed, would be to allow existing users to invite a restricted number of personal connections that could skip immediately the queue (similar to what Product Hunt did).
aside referral programs and as a few of you mentioned, it’s much more powerful to include features that make the product viral by nature or that facilitate engagement outside of the product.
think about Venmo: they grew so much in the US because:
they built a better way to send money to friends
they made it easy to send money to a person that was not on the platform
in the meanwhile, they used this opportunity to push adoption
Hey- I’m a bit late to this party , but am finding the thread fascinating so will try to reignite it…
@RichardR - great point around sharing personalised screenshots and including blurring functionality. I like it! Is it mainly person-to-person means of sharing these (SMS/iMessage/WhatsApp) or publicly on social?
@matteogamba - awesome insight, especially around abuse of the system/fake accounts. Something we’ve already seen a little bit of.
The ‘viral by nature’ point - when we launch properly, peer-to-peer payments is one big example of how this could work. As well as other yet-to-be-built features (bill splitting?). Thoughts?
@MaximHarper - a really interesting point around ‘trivialisation effect’. Adding any kind of financial reward changes the perception of the task, the danger being that motivation changes from intrinsic to extrinsic. And if that’s the case you have to offer some bumper rewards (see all big banks!) in order to see results. (Dan Ariely among others has done some great studies along these lines).
Ideas to thank users for their referrals without introducing expensive (and risky) financial rewards? To kick off:
send them swanky Mondo swag and a nice handwritten note
invite the top referrers to exclusive Mondo events / parties / BBQs (we like BBQs)
I do both and for different reasons. Most often I’m posting screenshots of the notifications or single transactions of note to Twitter (Example: when buying a game or signing up to a new service). Screenshots of my feed past the first few weeks have generally only been to friends and family. Most often recently, I’ll crop a screenshot because I need to be paid back for multiple transactions. I do still occasionally send general screenshots to show Mondo off to work friends of friends in high places though.
I’ve just signed up to Monzo, and two friends have now signed up by using my friends and family url, but the app still shows three blank spaces under where it says “invite 3 friends”. I hope this doesn’t mean that there’s a bug in the process.
Eating out
Birthday gifts
Travel
, but am finding the thread fascinating so will try to reignite it… 
