How to achieve effective user retention? Share 6 tips!

When it comes to product growth, one thing that matters is retention, because only a higher retention rate or DAU can help achieve long-term, stable growth and monetization.

Qu Hui, the author of "Silicon Valley Growth Hacker's Practical Notes", once gave such an example in the book.

Suppose Company A and Company B start from scratch, Company A has a monthly retention rate of 80% and 5 million new active users per month, while Company B has a monthly retention rate of 95% and 2.5 million new active users per month. After 6 months, Company A is still ahead of Company B. After 3 years, Company B will surpass Company A.

This is the compound interest effect of retention, which will ensure that the party that is at a relative disadvantage in development has the opportunity to overtake and exchange time for space. The prerequisite for achieving this strategic goal is to have a higher retention rate.

Therefore, if we replace Company A and Company B with any other company, the principle is the same. As long as the retention rate is significantly higher than that of competitors or the industry average, there is a very high possibility that it will become a leader after a period of time, and with the help of the word-of-mouth effect brought by high retention, the growth will become more benign.

Therefore, it is crucial to retain users well. As for how to achieve retention, you can use the following 6 tricks.

1. Loss Warning

Predict the possibility of churn in advance based on user performance and data feedback. Once the above situation occurs, remind users immediately, such as through app or text message reminders, proactive phone calls or WeChat contacts, etc., to minimize the risk of loss as much as possible.

2. Exceeding Expectations

Generally speaking, it is normal for a product to experience user churn. The main reason is that the effect is not significant or the demand no longer matches. If users can experience and receive services that exceed their expectations, the risk of churn can also be reduced, and even help with repeat purchases.

Therefore, when formulating product service standards, you can set minimum and maximum requirements, and use a series of indicators to control and improve the overall service level. At the product level, you can design game mechanisms such as rewards, redemption, and upgrades.

3. Recall

Recall is a very important task in retention operations. Specifically, at the activity nodes, push, SMS, phone calls and other means are used to remind users of activity information, especially to design the logic of recall scripts.

Take the phone call as an example: the first step is to inquire about the situation, the second step is to recommend products based on the results, the third step is to inform activity information such as purchase discounts and other benefits, and the fourth step is to guide the transaction.

4. Layered and refined operations

Layering and refined operations can be said to be the most basic and reliable means to improve retention rate. As for which one should be given priority, it is actually meaningless, because layering itself is a preparation for refined operations.

When doing stratification, it is often done based on user models. The following are commonly used:

Clustering model: A certain layer of users is segmented according to a certain dimension. For example, registered users are segmented by grade or region. In addition, multiple dimensions can be used for clustering. Two dimensions are commonly used, and then four quadrants are drawn. User attributes are redefined in each quadrant.

Pyramid model : stratification based on indicators such as business processes or participation, the overall pyramid shape after stratification, for example, according to download-registration-payment-repeat purchase, it can be divided into new users, interested users, paying users, loyal users, etc., following the 80/20 rule.

RFM model: divide users into three levels based on the time of the most recent user behavior (Recency), the frequency of user behavior (Frequency), and the total amount brought by user behavior (Monetary), and classify and set operational indicators accordingly.

Life cycle model: The user life cycle is divided into five stages: novice stage, growth stage, maturity stage, decline stage, and churn stage. Based on the characteristics of each stage, operational goals and strategies are designed for users at different stages.

The above are several common user stratification models suitable for retention. This article focuses on how to use the stratification model to implement refined operations.

First of all, let’s be clear that the concept of refined operation is to achieve detailed execution at the user level and process level to ensure the overall operational effect. Its implementation logic is very simple: set goals -> divide users -> find problems -> determine strategies -> iterate processes.

Next, taking a certain reading product as an example, I will talk about how to conduct refined operations based on this logic to achieve retention of member users.

(1) Set goals: Guide existing members to renew their memberships based on business processes, with the goal of increasing the retention rate of members.

(2) User stratification: Select one of the user models listed above for stratification. For example, select the lifecycle model for analysis. Based on the length of time a member uses the app, you can get five valid user tiers. Then, based on the data, label the tiers manually or through technical means.

(3) Find problems: Observe the number and labels of users at different levels, and analyze the actual needs and characteristics of users at each level. For example, novice users are not very familiar with the product and have low stickiness.

(4) Determine strategy: Set targeted guidance strategies according to different levels of users, such as using normal promotions in the growth stage, "small discounts + new course notifications" in the mature stage, and "large promotion activities + high-frequency recall" in the churn stage.

(5) Iterative process: Design specific operational processes based on the strategy, and use data to track and verify the effect of repeat purchases, especially in terms of copywriting, layout, color scheme, and path, which should be adjusted and optimized in a timely manner based on data results.

Regardless of the tiered model, this logic can be used to design specific and refined operational strategies to improve retention rates.

5. Membership system design

The membership system is another important means to improve retention. Its rights and service design follow two basic principles: high cost-effectiveness; rights and interests cover the vast majority of products; these two determine how strong the user's motivation to purchase membership is.

First of all, the higher the cost-effectiveness of membership, the stronger the user's desire to buy.

For example, a membership in Fan Deng Reading costs 388 yuan a year, which is equivalent to one yuan a day, and the benefits of this one yuan include: high-quality interpretations of 50 new books each year, automatic unlocking of more than 200 previous books, 4% discount on mall shopping, and 30 yuan in coupons every month.

Although many benefits can only be enjoyed on a monthly or even annual basis, the "unlock more than 200 books" included in it is very cost-effective or even worthwhile for people who like to listen to books, even if the membership period is only one day.

Secondly, membership benefits should cover the vast majority of products, especially high-quality and popular products.

The benefits should not be too great. Currently, the benefits of most paying members are designed according to this principle, with the aim of productizing user services and maximizing profits.

As for the specific rights and interests of members, according to the author's observation, they generally include the following aspects:

· The biggest purchase discounts on most products;

· Long-term free use of high-frequency core products;

· Free enjoyment, exclusive discounts, or limited use of high-value products or services;

· High-quality product source and user service;

· Exclusive purchasing channels and discounts for new products;

Periodic point rewards, cash back on purchases, coupon distribution, and gift of welfare products.

6. Build a user incentive system

At present, the common user incentive systems are mainly the points system and the growth system.

Points system: used to reward users for completing specific tasks, and can be used to redeem goods, top up, withdraw cash, and use coupons. It is often bound to the mall gameplay to achieve the purpose of activation and retention. A typical case is Dianping.

Growth system: Another commonly used incentive system, which records the frequency and extent of users' use of product services. The higher the frequency, the deeper the extent, and the longer the use, the higher the user's growth value and level will be. A typical case is QQ membership.

When building a user incentive system, how to combine the user's specific behavior to establish a points system and a growth system is an issue that needs to be considered. This is mainly divided into two aspects: What behaviors do users need to complete? What rewards can motivate users?

Next, I will answer these two questions using a certain reading product as an example.

From the perspective of user behavior, users need to complete actions such as searching for books, reading books, listening to books, buying books, and sharing. These actions can be concretized into fixed tasks, and their completion can correspond to the points system, and the number of completions can correspond to the growth system.

In terms of reward methods, points can be exchanged for product usage time and discounts, or for fixed books. Special levels can be set in the growth system. As long as you reach a level by accumulating tasks, you can unlock new permissions, including usage time, discounts, etc.

In fact, reading products such as WeChat Reading and Fan Deng Reading have all adopted similar designs. The difference lies in whether the incentive system is closely linked to rights and interests to achieve a more complete user incentive system.

The above are the 6 tips for improving retention introduced in this article. I hope they are useful to you.

Author: Wild Mushroom

Source: Wild Operation Community (dugu9bubai)