“The referral program is our highest converting channel, with a conversion rate of approximately 50%. Compared to other marketing channels, referral is the most effective and the most efficient.”
Aaron Hall
Marketing & Referral Program Manager, Byte
How does a startup go from zero to $1 billion in two years?
For Byte, it began with a core vision: Deliver first-class invisible aligners at a reasonable price and never sacrifice an amazing customer experience to achieve growth. As Founder Scott Cohen told Bloomberg:
“We stayed disciplined to building the brand based on focusing on customer experience, and that accelerated adoption very quickly.”
The idea being that if customer experience takes center stage, then referrals will organically drive business growth. All Byte had to do was build a referral program to help turn loyal customers into brand advocates.
But building a referral program from the ground-up was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, as Aaron Hall, Marketing and Referral Manager at Byte, explains. So Byte partnered with Friendbuy to accelerate growth while meeting its cost per acquisition (CPA) goals.
“We definitely didn’t have the bandwidth to build out a referral program ourselves. I don’t think we could have done it.”
With Friendbuy’s help, Byte set up their referral program so customers can quickly get their personal referral link or share through email, SMS and social. Advocates get a $100 gift card for every friend they refer, and the referred friends get 75% off their first impression kit and $100 off aligners.
Following Friendbuy’s recommended best practices, Byte integrated the referral program throughout the brand experience. CTAs (calls-to-action) are strategically placed on the website and in triggered emails, and the program is promoted on social. According to Aaron, combining awareness with ease of use led to “some serious growth.”
“Byte takes care of our customers, so they want to refer their friends. Friendbuy facilitated a really easy way for customers to kick out a referral link to their friends. We’ve even seen some people who aren’t officially ‘influencers’ post their referral links in YouTube reviews.”
Any referred friend who clicks on a referral link gets a personalized pop-up message welcoming them to Byte. Once the referred friend enters their email address, a promo code is displayed on the widget as well as sent via email that the friend can apply at checkout.
Friendbuy offers unlimited campaigns, making it easy to test and iterate as the program scales. One example is a “Friendsgiving” campaign that Byte ran during the holidays, in which advocates were rewarded with gift cards for each referral. The campaign generated a 2x lift in referral conversions.
Friendbuy also integrates with technologies in Byte’s tech stack, like Delighted, which powers NPS surveys. The integration allows Byte to automatically ask customers to refer if the customer provides a positive NPS score of 9 or 10.
But what Aaron really loves about Friendbuy is the responsive team behind the product. His Friendbuy Customer Success Manager offers many strategic & data-driven recommendations that yield immediate results.
“Our Customer Success Manager notices things that other companies are doing that work well. His ideas always pay off and his support is amazing.”
Within two years of launching its first product, Byte was acquired by Dentsply Sirona Inc. for $1 billion. Byte is now projected to hit over $100 million in annual sales, and it’s still growing.
Byte’s secret is its commitment to providing an amazing customer experience, while also running a business that’s designed to be profitable from day one. Friendbuy-powered referrals help Byte achieve both goals by keeping their cost per acquisition low and the benefits for their users high.
With Friendbuy’s help, Byte’s referral transactions doubled year-over-year—and Aaron says that referrals remain one of Byte’s top-performing channels, with an average 50% conversion rate.
“Being able to run unlimited referral, influencer, and ambassador campaigns gives us the breathing room we need to try different things. It’s imperative—and it’s helped us triple in size over the last year.”
2516 Via Tejon
Suite 201
Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274
