Implementing the gifting feature in line with best practices
- Henrik Karlberg
TL; DR: Our recommended flow
Step | Goal | Key elements | Visual example |
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1 | Getting users to start using gifting |
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2 | Gift links gets shared |
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3 | Gift links get opened |
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Introduction
How gifting is implemented is everything
One of our key realisations looking at the data we collected is that conversion rates are highly variable across apps.
Between 4% and 40% of active users will send a gift each month, depending on how surfaced the gifting feature is.
In the same way, a generated gift link will result in a link-out anywhere between 7% and 35% of the time depending on how smooth the gifting journey is.
→ The impact of your feature will largely depend on whether it is implemented in line with best practices.
Three key moments in the journey
The success of the sharing feature boils down to 3 key stages of the conversion funnel.
1 - Adoption: getting users to start using the feature
Three things are needed in order for users to use the gifting feature:
A. Wide target audience: feature is on for most users
B. Feature awareness: users need to know the feature exists and what it does
C. Feature discoverability: The feature needs to be surfaced in the app, in an accessible way
1.A. Wide target audience: the feature is on for most users
This part is quite obvious: we recommend you activate the gifting feature for all users, whether they’re premium or not.
1.B. Feature awareness: users know feature exists
There are two main things you can do to inform your users that the feature exists.
i. In-app walk-through
This consists of tooltips that appear only the first time a new feature appears to the user.
Linked In | Humanity |
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ii. Marketing outreach
Tell your users about the new capability to send gifts to their friends in either marketing emails or push notifications.
1.C. Feature discoverability
Feature has to be visible and accessible, and has to carry a clear value proposition.
Pro-tip: A/B test 2 placements against each other.
Try placing a gift button in two different places of the user flow. Make sure you use the extra field of the create-link function so we can track the sharing activity coming from both locations and help you conclude on the A/B test.
E.g. one on the app home and another one in the main content view as shown above. The extra fields would be set to respectively extra: {'location': 'home'} and extra: {'location': 'content_view'}
2 - Feature usage: getting the “sharing moment” right
The challenge here is balancing two thing:
Giving the user who’s sharing a gift all the right information so that feel comfortable going through with the action of sending a link to their friend
Keeping this action friction-less by controlling the amount of information presented to the user.
→ Our recommendation is to rely on the default native sharing modal in both iOS and Android. You can always add custom components on top of it, as shown on the right:
Android | iOS | Built on top of iOS |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Code ressource
This stack overflow answer shows how to trigger this sharing modal for iOS in Swift.
Pro-tip: conveying scarcity
We assign a higher value to rare things, so make sure you’re telling your users how many more shares they have left. You’ll get this information in the code in API response payload, under the field userRemainingQuota.
Take a look at how these companies conveys a feeling of scarcity:
The Economist | The Financial Times | Amazon |
|---|---|---|
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3 - Ensuring sent links actually get opened
Here’s how an Envoy link looks like when shared on Whatsapp. Let’s go through key components one by one.
A good gift message | Its key components |
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Key principle: don’t sell now, but keep it on the content
It’s important you refrain from using commercial language at this stage. Don’t sell your company or your subscription just yet. Instead, focus on creating a special moment around your content.
3.A. Content metadata: image, title and description
Make sure the poster image sent with the content as a high definition. We’ll take care of making sure it’s not so heavy that it impacts the speed of metadata fetching. Here, the title and description should be self explanatory and focus on the content of the gift, not the company.
3.B. Include a message for context
We like to say lack of context is the biggest conversion killer for a user. That’s why we recommend you add a short text along with the gift link shared. Remember those three guidelines when writing a context message:
1 - Give the reader come context
say what the content is: 'Enjoy this free meditation session...'
share the name of your company
2 - Include these conversion catalysts
Emojis
An enthusiastic tone !
3 - Avoid those conversion killers
Once again, don’t make any mentions of downloading the app or special offers just yet
Keep short: 15 words is a good threshold, as this corresponds to roughly 2.5 lines on a mobile