It's No Secret: Retail Investors Love Snapchat

Whether or not you believe in Evan Spiegel, Snap Inc's SNAP highly anticipated IPO is seeing unprecedented demand from retail investors.

Institutional Investors? Not so much.

Stockpile, a full service brokerage that allows you to give shares of stock in the form of a gift certificate, saw incredible demand for Snap shares on Thursday.

"We saw a massive amount of people buying Snapchat gift cards on Thursday," Dan Schatt, CMO of StockPile told Benzinga. "It was by far one of the biggest days we've had since we went live in 2015."

Daily normal volume was around 10 times higher on Snap's IPO than a typical day, according to Schatt. The massive demand on Stockpile for Snap shares is indicative of retail investor interest in the social media company.

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"This is indicative of retail interest. It reminds me of Tesla and Amazon and to some extent Apple shareholders. These are people that have pride of ownership, they love Snapchat, they use it everyday, and they want to own what they love," Schatt said.

While tracking the demographics of those who redeemed their stock gift cards Thursday, 38 percent were millennials. The IPO served as great exposure to stocks and investments to a younger demographic, as the generation-defining company has finally hit the public market.

According to a Bain & Company study, when consumers own shares in a company, they spend 50 percent more with that company and refer people twice as much over the lifetime of the relationship.

As companies continue to roll out new loyalty programs to create devoted customers, offering shares as an option may not be a bad idea.