Case Study: The Referral Program
Explore how to design and implement data collection strategies to assess a referral program's effect on new user signups and retention. Understand key metrics to guide investment decisions and support leadership with clear evidence.
We'll cover the following...
Let’s say your company just launched a new referral program: existing users can invite friends, and both get a reward when the friend signs up.
Leadership is excited, but they want answers:
Did this actually increase new user signups?
Did it hurt retention (because people sign up just for the reward)?
Should we invest more in scaling it, or cut our losses?
The team looks to you—the Staff+ engineer—to design how the evidence will be gathered.
Staff+ hot seat
Put yourself in the Staff+ seat and answer the following questions:
Quiz: Referral Program Case Study
Telemetry: Which events would you log to measure referral success?
Only “signup_completed.”
“referral_sent” + “referral_accepted” + “signup_completed (with referral flag)”
Log everything in the app, just in case.