How Uber and the referral program are born?

Imagine you and your friends are drinking together, then you need to wait and wave for each taxi per one of them. If the place is not famous or there is no cab at 10 p.m., it sometimes will be a bad situation for your group, wasting time and money. Which brings many worries. Then the UberCab is an excellent idea for booking a car to your area and picking you up the right way.

Again, for each trip, it is gonna be cheap or expensive. It depends. However, a cheaper price with the same service is a better choice. Uber gets that point, understands their customer’s needs, and deploys a referral system for clients to receive discounts. While the company expands its brand awareness.

Uber’s referral marketing is used to fuel its expansion and success. Customers and drivers can receive rewards, gifts, or discounts for referring friends and family to the Uber Referral program. Consequently, it added millions of new users and experienced rapid business growth. Join us as we dive in to uncover their strategies and enable exponential growth for your own company.

The outstanding features of Uber’s program

Uber greatly affects the Taxi industry

According to Business Insider, a firm named UberCab startled Silicon Valley in 2009 with its smartphone ride-hailing service. After a few years, this app, which was renamed Uber, has “covered” 570 cities worldwide and is believed to be worth over 70 billion USD. We cannot ignore Uber’s successes over the previous years, although the company is still not profitable. The post-COVID-19 pandemic has made many firms struggle, including Uber.

Uber impacts greatly on the transportation industry. These unique intangible products adapt well to the world of smartphones and digitalization. For people who need to move to areas, a flexible car service is the best option. Uber analyzes clients’ pain points and provides the right things they need through the app on smartphones.

How the Uber’s Referral Program works

Those who are referred by Uber’s drivers and customers must register using the referrer’s special code or link. They can be found on social media platforms. The users get credit in their accounts after the person they recommended takes their first journey through the Uber app. This action is beneficial for 3 parties.

 First, the drivers or clients who send codes or links to friends or close relationships will get a discount. Second, those who are referred to the program save the links or codes for their next first ride. Last but not least, Uber spreads its business’s name without promotion spending.

The requirements are simple: to receive the reward, the new user must finish their first ride within a set amount of time, typically a few weeks. Uber doesn’t need to persuade consumers that they need its product because it addresses a genuine demand in the market. Customers and drivers will share these products with their close relationship – as the aim of the Uber referral program.

Double-Decker Benefits

Clients who register for an Uber account will receive cash credits that can be used for their first few rides. Customers also get a special referral code to use as an incentive to encourage their friends to register an Uber account. Both get benefits in the form of Uber credit after that person uses that code.

When Uber drivers create an account, they can receive bonuses referring to the person they suggest completing some of the trips. The status of a recommendation is used to assess the incentives for drivers who refer others. Therefore, although the new driver received a $500 incentive, drivers might receive bonuses of up to $300 and, at a certain point, up to $1,500. As a result, the Uber recommendation scheme is very beneficial for drivers and all potential clients.

The signing-up process is straightforward

igning up as a member of Uber, sharing links and codes with clients’ friends and family, and tracking and receiving them when it is racking enough to reach the gifts and discounts are the main actions members need to do to get discounts.

A strength of this referral program is the ease of client accessibility. Uber did very well in making the referral program readily available in its apps for all of its drivers and consumers. Users can access the referral program by tapping the “free rides” button in the app’s interface. Plus, the company made a great decision by utilizing free rides as the program’s call to action instead of “refer a friend” as usual.

If you have a Shopify store, you can easily deploy a Referral program for your business. BON Loyalty Rewards Referrals is an expert in deploying a loyalty program on the Shopify platform that allows merchants to turn one-time buyers into repeat purchases. 

BON Loyalty is a top-recommedded Shopify loyalty app to set up the Referral program, which is likely as Uber. Moreover, it does not stop at the Referral program, Point System and VIP Tier are also the main features of BON, with clear guidance for the shop owners who want to set up their rewards program for their businesses.

What makes the Uber’s Referral Program so great

Personalized Touches

Uber is getting more creative when designing personal customer experiences correctly through the unique referral code. The ability for users (drivers and customers) to generate codes when they recommend someone to the service. This is a crucial component of Uber’s referral scheme. 

Uber referrers are urged to customize the code when sharing it with friends and family to promote “future” Uber users. This is much better than the system suggesting a random string of letters, numbers, and special characters, which are “too code” and too strict to follow as a member.

As a shop owner, you should know that Personalization in a Loyalty program and a marketing strategy is one of the key factors to increase the customer experience and improve customer engagement. Firstly, it creates users who can share the code with anyone with their message to encourage their friends to try Uber. Secondly, a customized code somehow removes brand-customer distance by a friendly message from users. 

When a referral code is personalized for a friend or member of your family, you are more likely to identify it with an individual. This association effect leverages the person’s familiarity to minimize the discomfort that typically follows attempting new things, hence eliminating resistance from the registration process.

Win-win motivation

To recap, the Uber referral program gives presents to the referring consumer and their referrals. The program is developed so that the customer who referred the friend would instantly get Uber credit, which is equal to a free ride when the friend rides for the first time on Uber. The friend who is recommended also receives free ride credits, which are distributed over their initial ride total. 

This dual-sided strategy is a powerful incentive for customers to keep bringing friends along to continue enjoying the trip. The referral program continues because both sides grow more engaged with the brand because they see it as a win-win situation.

Overview, the rewards program or referral of more newcomers are the strategies to appeal to more members to join the business system; those actions can create relationships with customers and push repeat purchases to increase the company’s revenue. Hence, providing valuable gifts or rewards is the first step in attracting customers. Since Uber’s drivers are the contractors, while clients are the outsiders who book the service, Uber rewarding those 2 parties seems to motivate them to call more people to join and stay with the program.

Omnichannel Onboarding

As a ride-hailing service, the more mobile-friendly the app is, the more it brings a vital advantage to the customers. Uber works entirely through apps for booking a car, tracking prices, and enjoying the service. So managing the referral program was likewise easy and simple. It was as simple as manipulating a smartphone to send an offer. Once more, the app offered several sharing options that were simple to use on any smartphone. 

Clients or referred people can copy and paste their referral codes to share them directly, or they can be shared via email, SMS, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Promote the referral program with ease thanks to its mobile-centric design and various sharing options, which are quietly convenient.

Omnichannel experience is how businesses interact with customers online and make their relationships closer through these activities. Building trust and reliability with customers is building your brand. When the belief is built successfully, then customer retention will occur without much effort from the business. Since your client decides to be with you.

To sum up

The fast growth and extension of Uber have been made possible by this referral scheme. Though the firm may have paused it for a future makeover, Uber’s referral program is still a fantastic case study for businesses to follow and learn from Uber’s experience. Thanks to its excellent product, dual-sided benefits, and easy accessibility. Uber’s referral program achieved tremendous success.

Lessons for the shop owners who want to build up a referral program on Shopify. Understanding your customer profile is key to achieving success. Your products and services need to be useful to the consumers for the returns. Plus, you need to make sure they are valuable enough to attract newcomers.