How Cello helped Moss achieve 600% more referral ARR

Moss, a leading corporate expense management platform headquartered in Berlin, joined forces with Cello in 2024 to boost its referral program and meet ambitious growth targets.

The goal was simple: to optimize its referral program and generate €100,000 in referral ARR. However, Moss faced significant hurdles with its previous referral program provider, which hindered their ability to scale effectively.

The Challenges

Before partnering with Cello, Moss’ referral program was plagued by:

• Poor engagement: Despite a significant number of users being enabled, engagement with the referral component has been minimal. Only a small fraction of users interacted with it, leading to very few conversions over the span of six months..
• Integration issues: The Salesforce integration was buggy, causing inefficiencies and frustration for the team.
• Manual effort: Referral rewards were managed manually via Amazon gift vouchers, creating significant legal and administrative hurdles.
• Ineffective reward: Amazon gift vouchers proved ineffective (e.g. each country required different type of vouchers, for instance bol.com for the Netherlands), whilst the platform lacked the necessary compliance framework for private monetary payouts.

Faced with these obstacles, Moss required a more flexible and effective solution to achieve their growth objectives.

How did they succeed with Cello?

Moss partnered with Cello to completely revamp its referral program. Moss’ product manager Sebastian championed the integration, recognizing its potential as a key growth driver. Cello’s value proposition quickly gained buy-in from decision-makers, demonstrating relevance for both product-led and sales-led growth strategies.

Core Features

The collaboration introduced a suite of features and continuous improvements that transformed the program’s performance.

Custom Referral Launcher and Design

Moss integrated Cello directly into its first-level menu, increasing visibility and accessibility. The modern, customizable widget design aligned seamlessly with Moss’ branding, while the intuitive reward structure and engaging copy boosted activation and sharing rates.

Internationalization

One of Cello's unique selling points is its flexibility and robust customization options. The referral widget was deployed in English, German, and Dutch, allowing Moss to cater to its diverse user base. This multilingual flexibility ensured a tailored and localized user experience.

Seamless Salesforce integration

With Cello’s automated Salesforce webhook, Moss eliminated the inefficiencies of their previous integration. Referral data synced seamlessly via API, ensuring the program ran on autopilot with minimal maintenance.

Fast onboarding and implementation

Despite the complex Salesforce setup, the implementation was completed in just 2-3 weeks under the leadership of Sebastian.

GTM and continuous growth experiments

Cello doesn’t stop once the program is live. Cello partnered closely with Moss to optimise and find critical improvements that drive performance.

In-App and email notifications via Intercom

Through continuous announcements (in-app and email) Moss increased awareness and engagement, boosting the referral activation rate from 2.8% to 9.8% – a 330% improvement to a monthly activation rate of 15%, e.g. every month 15% of Moss’ users open the referral widget.

Dedicated landing page with personalized banners

In close collaboration with Cello’s growth team Moss optimized the landing page with an inline signup functionality, replacing the previous ineffective design. Targeted messaging for different user segments enhanced engagement (Version 1).

Moss continuously improved the landing page by reducing required fields, adding a video, and creating a personalized header (Version 2).

Optimized reward and growth system

The reward system was optimized, increasing the referrer reward from €600 to €1,000 private monetary payouts and prominently displaying this new amount in the referral launcher and the widget. By displaying the reward amount in the menu directly, the activation rate increased by 140% and sharing rate by over 390%.

The result?

Moss achieved remarkable results. In just two months with Cello the activation rate increased by 18%, surpassing industry benchmarks. Looking at a yearly comparison the impact becomes even more obvious:

• Moss achieved 250% year-over-year growth in customer logo acquisition (2023 vs. 2024).
• The referral ARR grew by an impressive 650% over the same period (2023 vs. 2024).
• 50% lower CAC compared to other channels.

Beyond these impressive metrics, Moss benefited from Cello’s flexibility and automation:

• Ease of use: Seamless integration with existing tools like Salesforce and Intercom reduced manual effort and boosted team efficiency.
• Scalability: The multilingual, automated solution enabled Moss to scale effortlessly across regions.
• Enhanced user satisfaction: Improved UX and a streamlined referral process made participation easy and rewarding.

With proven results in engagement, revenue, and scalability, Cello exceeded Moss’ ambitious goals and established itself as a critical partner in their success.