"Friendbuy proved our hypothesis that if members are satisfied with our product and service, they’ll want to share it. We didn’t expect this program to be such a huge success—and we’re really happy with how many new members we get on a weekly basis."

Matija Valinger Sluga
Product Manager, Flaviar

Challenge

Growing referrals and measuring campaign success

Even before it launched its first tasting box, Flaviar was confident that new members across Europe and the United States would be passionate about the product and would want to share that passion with friends and family.

To make referring easy, Flaviar needed an intuitive and user-friendly referral program to help people connect over their mutual love of spirits.

As a data-driven organization, Flaviar also needed a built-in way to measure the impact of referrals on new members and revenue. Digging into the analytics of referral campaigns would help the company refine future growth initiatives.

“We started with a hypothesis: if our members are satisfied and happy with our product, they’ll share it with friends and family. That was the goal behind adding a referral program, and it’s worked out well.”

Solution

Friendbuy’s unlimited campaigns made it easy to market multiple subscription programs

Friendbuy makes it easy for Flaviar’s members to refer a friend and reap the benefits.

Implementing this “basic program” was easy—practically turnkey, according to Product Manager Matija Valinger Sluga. Friendbuy helped Flaviar get widgets and pop-ups set up and showed them how to easily manage campaigns—from reward adjustments to simple copy changes.

Friendbuy also helped Flaviar launch a “supreme program” by duplicating widgets and adjusting rewards for different membership tiers. Special promotional events are made possible thanks to Friendbuy’s unlimited campaign offering and flexible widget editor. This allows Flaviar to market multiple membership programs at a time, without any additional development effort.

Some of Flaviar’s most successful Friendbuy-powered referral events included:

• A Father’s Day event that gave a discount when members referred their fathers so they could taste together. Traffic to the widget increased by 75 percent for advocates, and engagement increased by 65 percent.
  
  
• A National Friendship Day event that encouraged members to refer friends and raise a glass together, even if they couldn’t be together in person. Sharing increased by almost 24 percent.

“The Friendbuy team is really approachable,” Sluga said. “They take the time to analyze our requests, and even minor issues are taken seriously. It’s been great working with them. We’re really happy.”

Results

256% increase in referral revenue year-over-year.

Since Flaviar launched their Friendbuy-powered referral system, shares have increased by an average of 130%. More important, total conversions are up by 300% each month and referral revenue has grown by a whopping 256% year-over-year.

Referral has been an important part of Flaviar’s tech stack since launch, but this became especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pre-pandemic, referral accounted for an average of 6.2% of Flaviar’s total new subscription revenue. In just five months, that number grew to 9.2% of total revenue and continues to rise, thanks to Flaviar’s commitment to remaining agile in these challenging times.

“When we launched, the results were just—wow. We’re talking about 500+ new members per month through referrals at the height of our member acquisition.”