A recent post and slideshow (slideshow below), Robinhood Waiting List Breakdown, raised a great opportunity for how all types of company can use a waiting list to generate growth. Robinhood.com is a stock brokerage related product that already has 300,000 people on its waiting list and is adding more than 1,000 daily. By looking at Robinhood, not only are there great lessons for your product launches, but even for launching new features or content in your product. For example, a company like Uber could build a waiting list if it plans to launch a dog walking service, and then when the service launches already have enough demand for critical mass.
There are several steps to creating successfully a large waiting list:
- Start with a clean home page and a clear message. Have the main value of your product or content the focus of the page with very few distractions.
- Have good messaging and a clear call to action to encourage sharing. What Robinhood does is thank users for signing up and then list how many people are ahead of them in the queue to get the service. It then encourages users to get friends to sign up, which improves where the user is in the queue.
- Make the sharing easy. Put in links to share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, other relevant social networks or by email.
- Make it easier by creating the email for the user and putting in links to make it easy for recipients to accept.
- Then show a promotional video to get users excited about the product and more likely to generate word of mouth.
- Encourage people to check back to see where they are on the waiting list.
Use waiting lists to build customer interest in almost anything
Although it is obvious that waiting lists are a great vehicle for Robinhood to build a user base before launch, everyone should consider using them. If you have a mobile game and plan on releasing new content (say a new bingo room for a bingo game), you can use a waiting list to get people to talk about your game, get their friends to sign up and then drive usage when the feature launches. It is a powerful tool for growth in a world where many growth channels are short-lived.
The Business of Social Games and Casino 
Is there particular software that will manage the queue and let people access their place etc. or did robinhood create their own?
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We are building it ourselves, not sure about Robinhood. A FB event would be a potential option.
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