Over the weekend I launched a referral program for my app Pull Reminders (https://pullreminders.com). Here's a quick summary with two screenshots showing what it looks like: https://twitter.com/abi/status/1001432164569960451

For some background, Pull Reminders is used by over a thousand developers and has 100+ new developers signing up each week. I've been looking at strategies to reach more potential customers without having to spend money or a ton of time so a referral program seemed like it had potential.

There are well-known success stories out there of referral programs designed by consumer products like DropBox, but far fewer for B2B, and almost none that I found which were targeted at developers (DigitalOcean is one).

I considered a cash incentive (ie. $25 per converted referral), but developers are well-paid so offering cash seemed like it could actually be a turn off. I considered offering credits, but Pull Reminders is expensed by teams so for an individual on the team this feels like a poor incentive. This eventually led me to the idea of offering free coffee (and tea)–not just regular coffee, but high-end coffee from specialty roasters. It's a generalization but I feel that most developers like coffee, and getting a bag of specialty coffee seems like it could be a fun and novel reward.

I have no idea if my approach or design is good so I would love your thoughts and feedback. How can I improve the structure, presentation, or description of my referral program? Is the coffee idea good? Is my copy written well (this was tough – I spent several hours repeatedly tweaking and rewriting)?

P.S. Sorry for the long post – I plan on eventually turning my learnings and results into a blog post.