Kolibri Games saw a 306% lift in invites sent and a 364% increase in installs generated with GetSocial Smart Invites.

Improvement 1 - Make the solution easy to find

Kolibri Games uses arrows in the tutorial to point players’ attention to specific features that they introduce at different points in the game. An arrow was added, pointing to the invite button to encourage players to take a look at the invite mechanic at least once. They wanted to have multiple vectors for the user to interact with the sharing mechanism. So they also introduced the ability to share important milestones in players’ game progress with friends.

They also experimented with the standard native share interface, to see if this would improve clickthrough, but instead, they saw a large increase in the canceled invitation. When several weeks later, they went back to a custom UI (improved, and with more channels) the result was a doubling of their social metrics!

Improvement 2 - Explain the benefits

In order to ensure all players, even existing ones, had seen the invite mechanic at least once, Kolibri Games implemented a nudge panel that would be shown to all players once, when they opened the game. They also implemented a panel that better explained the benefits of playing with friends: the permanent Idle Output boost, faster expedition times, and the ability to earn additional boosters for hitting certain milestones.

Improvement 3 - Reward the user

Kolibri Games wanted to make sure their users felt like they were getting something substantial when they invited their friends, so they made some changes to the reward mechanic as well. Initially, the user gets a 5% boost in Idle Output when a friend installs, but now, as more friends unlock a specific point in the game, they also unlock extra boosts.

Results

• Over the entire journey, from the first implementation to the recent improvements, Kolibri Games saw a lift of 306% in invites sent and 364% in installs generated.
• Referred users show significantly better retention: +21% D1, +48% D7 and +72% D30.
• Referred users also have an 84% higher LTV, compared to all our other users (organic and non-organic)

Conclusion

Having a sharing mechanism in your game is already a good start, but when you take the time to show the mechanic, explain the benefits, and fine-tune your reward to your audience, you can really deliver incredible results and drive highly valuable users to your game. The changes with the biggest version-on-version impact were the addition of the tutorial arrow in the FTUE to ensure that new players all saw the invite mechanic, and the change back to the custom UI from the native share UI, with more channels added.