- Growth Marketing, Made Simple
Discover the viral campaign strategies real brands use to scale — and launch your own in minutes!
How Robinhood Skyrocketed to 1 Million Users Before Launch
Let’s break down their legendary strategy and show how you can replicate it for your brand!
The Case Study: Robinhood’s Challenge & Solution
Robinhood faced a classic dilemma: how to break into a crowded stock trading market and build a massive user base with a limited budget. Their solution was elegantly simple: a referral-powered waitlist.The Results Were Explosive:
- 10,000 signups in the first 24 hours.
- 50,000 signups in the first week.
- A staggering 1 million users on the waitlist by launch day.
Key Factors for Success:
Effortless Sign-Up: They minimized friction by only asking for an email to join the queue.
Gamified Waiting: Users were shown their exact place in line and could “jump the queue” by referring friends, turning a boring wait into a competitive game.
Viral Sharing Engine: With a unique link, users became brand evangelists, sharing across social media and email to improve their rank.
The Viral Pre-Launch Waitlist
How it Works:Create massive buzz for a new product by incentivizing users to share and refer friends to move up the waitlist for early access and exclusive rewards.
Goal:
Build a massive audience, even before you launch.
Why It Works
Viral Growth
- Robinhood’s success proves that combining referrals with exclusivity generates significant organic growth.
- Users eagerly shared the product to gain early access, creating a viral, self-sustaining loop of referrals.
Low Cost, High Impact
- Remarkably, Robinhood achieved this explosive growth without any paid advertising.
- This approach is perfect for startups and small businesses, enabling rapid growth without a large marketing budget.
Simple and Scalable
- With PerkZilla, you can easily replicate this strategy.
- Set up referral campaigns quickly, track performance, and scale as your business grows.
The true power of Robinhood’s strategy wasn’t just the final number—it was the act of building an engaged community before the launch.
This playbook gives you that same fundamental advantage.
What would adding an extra 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 highly-engaged fans to your list mean for your next product launch? Now you can implement the same strategy to help get you there.
How to Replicate This Strategy
Create the “Velvet Rope” (Your Waitlist)
Use Perkzilla to create an exclusive waitlist landing page in minutes. This captures emails and gets your first users into the queue, building that initial sense of anticipation and exclusivity.
Gamify the Wait (The Referral Loop)
This is the core of the engine. Activate Perkzilla’s leaderboard and referral system. When users sign up, they get a unique link. For every friend they refer, they earn points and climb higher on the leaderboard—directly replicating Robinhood’s “jump the queue” mechanic.
Automate and Track (Your Growth Engine)
Monitor your campaign’s performance with powerful analytics. Perkzilla’s automated emails will welcome new users and keep them engaged, while you track your top referrers and watch your audience grow—all on autopilot.
Turn Inspiration into Action
Robinhood transformed potential users into a million-strong marketing team. With PerkZilla, your business has access to the same powerful strategies, ready to launch today.
🚀 Launch Your Viral Waitlist Campaign Now Please Note: The marketing strategies and examples in this post are based on publicly available campaigns from various brands. PerkZilla is not affiliated with or endorsed by these brands. The strategies discussed are for educational purposes. The brands mentioned are most likely not using PerkZilla. We encourage businesses to adapt these ‘big brand’ marketing strategies to fit their unique needs using PerkZilla.