Thread by @Adam_Ha_Yes

What's the most important marketing metric?

CTR? CPA? CPM?

No. It's viral coefficients.

Your viral coefficient determines if your product will go viral or not.

Here's how to calculate yours and optimize it
🧵

Take your...

(Average invites sent per user X your conversion rate) = your viral coefficient

Example:
(5 invites x 30% conversion rate) = 1.5 new users

Your final number represents how many people one member brings in.

If the number is over 1, then your product will go viral.

Time for back of the napkin math

10 users would bring in 15 new users.
Who would bring in...
22
33
50
75
113
170
256
384
576
867
1,300
1,951
2,926
4,390
6,585
9,878
14,817
22,226
33,339
50,008
75,012
112,519
168,779
253,168
379,752
569,629
854,443
1,281,665
4,098,061 new users

Think of this like compound interest in economics.

All of that growth comes from the original 10 users with a 1.5 viral coefficient.

The more customers you bring in, the more customers they bring in.

Now, let's get to the juicy stuff... how to increase that number.

Here are two low-lift ways:

1. Referrals / Ambassadors
2. Product hacking

#1 Let's start with referrals.

At The Hustle we have a legendary ambassador program.

The Hustle's early growth from 100,000 to 500,000+ readers was largely fueled by ambassadors.

The mechanics are simple, get x people to signup and we give you y.

Here's a simple model you can follow:
- eBook (1 referral)
- community access (3 referrals)
- shirt (25 referrals)
- sweatshirt (50 referrals)

We also do contests and giveaways for who has the most referrals.

We once ran a giveaway for a Tesla.

You don't have to give away a Tesla.

A MacBook or even free access to your product can also work well.

#2 Build growth mechanisms into your product

Whenever building a product ask yourself, how can we make this a social experience?

Optimize for
- Invites
- Creating sharable content
- Onboarding
- A business model that encourages referrals

Also, even a simple ask goes a long way

The best way to improve your viral coefficient is to make it remarkable.

Nail that and your virality is inevitable.

Do you know Twitters best viral coefficient?

It's asking for a RT and a follow...

So follow @Adam_Ha_Yes and RT this and hopefully 1.5 of your followers will retweet it too 😂

Thanks for reading!

P.S. If you like this, here's a deep dive on how Dropbox built growth mechanics into their product to get to 4m users.

https://twitter.com/Adam_Ha_Yes/status/1384892603649363971