Legendary Growth Hacks
AirBnb
Craigslist Hack
Airbnb found a way to automatically post their listings on Craigslist. They managed to continuously drive a lot of converting traffic from Craigslist to their platform.
Dropbox
Referral System
Encouraged users to invite friends to use the service by offering free extra storage for both parties in return.
Crowdsourced Translations
Facebook was expanding but did not have enough resources to localize for every market. They crowdsources translations from their users, making the platform friendlier for the international audience.
Mentioning people
Introduced tagging, where people were receiving emails whenever they were mentioned. This approach helped them keep users coming back to the website and keep the engagements high.
Gmail
FOMO
Google relied on the fear of missing out and used an invites-only system for Gmail. It worked so well, that some invites were auctioned on eBay.
Groupon
FOMO
Set a minimum amount of buyers for a deal to actualise. Users were encouraged to share the deal to get through the minimum threshold.
Hotmail
Email Signature
Included an email signature to all outgoing emails encouraging recipients to get a free email address.
Hubspot
Free Tools
Distributed their website grader tool for free. To use it, people need to sign up, providing their email address and opting in for newsletters.
Monzo
Queue
Created a virtual line of people waiting to use the app. Users could see how many people were ahead and how many behind. They jump the line by referring others.
YouTube
Embed Code
Leveraged Myspace, the platform that was super popular at the time, to allow people share YouTube videos by embedding them. Although the videos were not necessarily driving traffic to the website, they helped to build a strong brand recognition.
Recommended Followers
When having a struggle with retention, Twitter decided to suggest users who to follow. Providing 5 to 10 suggestions to users delivered significant and almost instant results in user retention.
Instgram
Cross Posting
When posting an image, users were given a chance to post on other platforms through Instagram. It spared time for users and provided free advertisement for the company
Email Contacts
Urged users to invite their email contacts to the platform stating it was the fastest way to grow their network.
Public Profiles
Allowed users to create public profiles that are indexed by search engines. Combined with a solid SEO, anybody who searches for a person who has LinkedIn, would see the link to the site in the top results.
HubSpot Academy
Status Bar
Added a status bar with colour-coding so users could see the progress on their courses, and also discover new ones. HubSpot also included the status bar to the emails of registered students. The result was the 18% increase in student certifications.