Enjoy the ride!
It feels like a perfect symbiosis of a Roman Holiday and Easy Rider: Free electric smart scooters in Berlin let you zoom around the city. Whether it is going to work, or having a leisurely ride getting to know the vibrant German metropole better.
The very best recommendations and referrals are those that are made without an incentive or prompt. They are simply down to a fabulous user experience...and I promise you this is an extraordinary one to share.
I had a smile on my face this morning on my way to work. Yes, it is because I love my job, but then it was also one of the first proper summer days in Berlin. What a day to try out something new. I'm following myself as a moving dot on the really intuitive map in the smart scooter app from Coup, getting closer to my destination - and then I spot it: The sexy e-scooter I had reserved through the very same app hardly five minutes ago. All mine, for the next half hour...for free!
Getting to within about 10 meters of the scooter, I am able to unlock it with my i-phone. The scooter connects automatically via Bluetooth, it greets me with its lights...and is ready to take me to work.
The guys developing the product did a marvelous job. They even included hygienic hair-nets under the seat to be put on underneath the helmet!
I press the GO button and my little e-scooter shoots off like a bolt. Amazingly, this little pocket rocket, being electric, hardly makes a sound and it is a super-comfy ride. It rather sounds like a bee on anabolics heading past the blooming trees alongside the wide Berlin alleys - than a 50kmh + scooter.
Far too short was the ride to the office from my digs in Neukölln, I could have zoomed on for hours. In Kreuzberg, I pull up outside our fancy historic building, put the helmet back under the seat, disconnect my i-phone from the scooter...and simply walk off. I'm in love, with red cheeks and a conspicuous smile on my face. My brain and body ready for a day in the office after a stress-free ride to work.
I marvel the founders of this startup – they are absolute geniuses. How better to get around Berlin in the summer than riding a super cool scooter? This is the future ... and I like it. What attracts me is the convenience, how easy it is to use, and how flexible it is. I even saved time because it is so easy and user-friendly getting from A to B directly – albeit with a couple of minutes walk to the nearest available scooter - but there are literally hundreds of them dotted around Berlin, so you're never far away from one. How cool is that?
And above all, this one was a free ride. I have to, again, applaud them for doing a great marketing job in offering those free rides. There are loads of ways to get free half hour rides with Coup. One of these is your initial first, or test ride.
To get your free ride you simply have to register with Coup and then enter voucher code REF-A51D-EFOR – this is no secret code, by the way, you may pass it on to your friends too. This code gives you a free 30-minute ride to try it out. After that, it's only 3 Euro per half hour. You can just walk away and consider it nothing other than an experience, on the off-chance that you did not like it. You wouldn't be out of pocket a cent.
Oh, and there is another nice thing: you don't need to be registered in Germany to use the service. Just follow the registration on the app and you will speak directly with one of their helpful team. They'll set you up.
What I like best about this from a professional standpoint is that this is such a lovely example of referral marketing. The reward for me converting someone to try Coup for free is three free rides. Multiplying benefits feels good: you get a free ride, I get three rides and Coup gets a new customer. Everyone's a winner. Because the user experience is so awesome they'll always be quids in.
This brings me to a very important part of any refer-a-friend program - choosing the right reward. Not every brand can boast such a fantastic user experience as zipping through Berlin on a hot day...on a scooter - so they need to make up for that with the reward.
Part of my job is to examine existing referral programs to see if, and how, we could optimize them. The majority of these programs offer a reward as either a discount on the next purchase (forcing the client to come back and buy from them again), or a voucher to be used in one of the brands' partners shops (forcing them to buy in a specific shop). Many times it is far better advice to rather put some sharing-mentality into people's minds with some real benefits...instead of enforcement of rewards. At Aklamio we call this Fairsharing.
So, what I would suggest is the following: unless you have something comparable to the Coup experience you really should consider offering a cash reward, paid straight into the referrer's account, to get the most out of your program. Cash is King in our opinion and the uptake of a refer-a-friend program with cash as the reward incentive outperforms discounts and vouchers massively.
As long as you have a partner in place who can manage cash payments and fraud protection, like Aklamio – please allow me at this stage to do some self-promotion – nothing can stop you blowing your refer-a-friend program up by giving real cash rewards for new business.
So, although it is really cool to see someone like Coup being creative and capitalizing on one of their strengths to promote their word of mouth message - their reward strategy is not for everyone.
Connect with me so we can see if what we do could help your growth objectives. Have you come across creative ways of reward payments lately? Please share and here's the code to get your free ride again: REF-A51D-EFOR.
So long...I'm off for my next free ride! Thanks for sharing and happy zooming through Berlin 🛵