How Robinhood Turned a Landing Page into a 1M Person Waitlist
The strategies used to build a HUGE user base pre-launch
Robinhood was founded in 2013. Their waitlist strategy was the catalyst for exponential growth. Gaining 1M potential users pre launch is quite the target for any startup, however you can certainly boost your pre launch reach/waitlist by implementing Robinhood’s strategies.
Strategy 1: Leverage FOMO
Simply making customers feel like they could be missing out on something can often influence an action. 56% of consumers admit FOMO impacts their media usage habits Robinhood leveraged FOMO by creating an impression of exclusivity through a wait list
For prelaunch - they first invited potential users to gain invite only access to the private beta. Rather than an email list, they leveraged their interested fans desire to be one of the first to use Robinhood. This got the attention of Hacker News, skyrocketing the waitlist
Strategy 2: Simple Signup
To capture this FOMO, they made the sign up process as short as possible. All someone had to do was enter their email. This was really effective given the short attention spans of users today (especially their target users).
They designed a sign up page so straightforward that it could be completed before anyone had the chance to lose interest. It didn’t have too much copy, no jargon that some may not understand. It had one powerful hook
Strategy 3: Gamification
People love playing games, especially with rewards they actually want. Robinhood created a referral-based viral loop with a fun game as it’s lever. The reward was tied to the reason they signed up in the first place, to get access to the beta
Here’s how it worked: - The waitlist was first come first serve. The higher their position, the sooner they could use the beta. After entering your email, you were sent to a thank you page were people could see their spot in line.
Strategy 4: Referral
Under their waitlist spot, was a referral offer to share Robinhood. The incentive was clear - the more you shared with others, the higher it moved you up the waiting list. This was the key growth lever that grew the list from a few hundred to 1M.
They also made it as easy as possible to refer a friend. They included big green buttons to share by email and send across social media and also gave the option to send a unique link
This all perfectly aligned with Robinhood’s principles of ease and simplicity. Robin Hood's goal is to make trading as frictionless as possible. They embraced this and applied it to their pre launch strategy, making it an incredibly frictionless process optimized for conversions (signups) with referrals used as an acquisition lever to increase signups
Robinhood -> 2021
Today:
$20B valuation
13M users
$350B total transactions
Key to growth success:
Leveraged FOMO
Simple signup process
Gamification
Referrals with direct incentives
I hope you liked this growth study on Robinhood's pre-launch growth strategy!
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