User operation, 4 user recall strategies and cases!

In this article, the author will use four user recall strategies - "conduct RFM analysis", "give the best price", "invite users to fill out feedback information and take measures", "provide personalized services" and three cases to tell you: how to recover lost users and improve user retention?

In romantic comedies, in order to win back the heart of the woman he likes, the male protagonist often does some exaggerated actions to attract her attention and capture her love.

Mobile commerce platforms must adopt similar measures—albeit with a less romantic touch—if they want to win back the hearts and minds of lapsed users.

On average, mobile apps lose 77% of their daily active users (DAU) within the first three days after installation. This number will continue to grow over time: as high as 90% of users will churn within the first month, and over 95% after 3 months.

What is a user recall strategy?

The so-called user recall strategy means exactly what it sounds like - recall lost users through a careful marketing plan, make them active users on the app again, and use these marketing activities to reduce your user churn rate.

User churn rate refers to the proportion of users who stop using the App within a certain period of time. User churn is not conducive to the success of a mobile platform. To build a successful app, the number of new users must be higher than the number of churned users.

User churn not only hinders the growth of your app, but also comes with high costs.

You can think of churn as a leaky bucket: water is flowing out much faster than you can refill the bucket, and filling the bucket can be very expensive.

Although it is difficult to develop a suitable user recall strategy, it is all worth it. The cost of acquiring a new user is up to 25 times higher than the cost of retaining an existing one, which means awakening "dormant" users can help you increase profits.

While efforts to acquire new users/customers remain important to the growth of a platform, it is equally important to continue to provide value to existing users.

Conducting user recall activities and developing strategies are effective ways to awaken "dormant" users and can also help you increase user lifetime value.

4 user recall strategies to effectively improve user retention

Once you understand why users stop using your app or service, you can start developing your “user recovery plan.” If you develop a strategy that hits the mark, you can not only re-engage lurking users, but you can also potentially get them to reactivate your app or service.

Next, let’s take a look at these 4 proven user recall strategies to get “offline” users back to use your app or service.

Source: "Jineng" applet

1. Perform RFM analysis

RFM (Recency of most recent consumption, Frequency of consumption, Monetary amount of consumption) analysis is a marketing model that segments user behavior based on historical data on user product usage.

These metrics allow you to identify high-quality customers and determine the types of users who are churned so that you can adopt appropriate recall strategies.

This type of analysis can help marketers answer questions such as:

• Who are the most active high-quality users (i.e., advanced users)?
• Who has the potential to become a more valuable user?
• Which users are most likely to respond to your recall strategy?

Once marketers have answers to the above questions, they can use RFM analysis to determine which users are at risk of churn and may need to be targeted with a recall campaign.

RFM analysis can also help marketers identify which users are loyal fans of their brand, which users have the highest loyalty, and which users can be targeted with other marketing activities, such as user rewards programs and promotions.

1. Give the best price

If you have dormant or disconnected users in your app, I strongly recommend that you use these two methods to connect with these users: push notifications and email.

Sending targeted messages to specific user groups and offering them special offers is a great way to make your presence felt in front of these users. It is very easy for App developers to push personalized information to users based on user information (such as geographic location) or transaction records.

If users feel like you’re offering a special discount, especially if the offer is only valid for a limited time, they’re more likely to make a purchase. You should clearly note the validity period of the offer in the push message or email.

1. Invite users to fill in feedback information and take action

User feedback is an important factor affecting the sustainable development and continuous improvement of an enterprise or organization.

When developing an app, every function and element requires thousands of discussions from a practical perspective by the internal team before it can be finalized. User feedback can give you new insights into the overall user experience and identify areas for improvement.

In-app surveys show an average response rate of 13% from users, making these surveys an effective tool for gathering real-time feedback from active users.

Once you have collected feedback, you need to let users know that their feedback is valuable and meaningful. If you decide to adopt any suggested changes, you want to let users know that you are listening. You could include a thank you note in your feature announcement email, or take a step further and send your users a personalized email to express your gratitude for taking the time to fill out their feedback.

1. Provide personalized service

Every user hopes that his or her opinions will be valued and his or her suggestions will be adopted. Given the high cost of acquiring new users, retaining the existing user base is an absolute top priority for business marketing.

In email marketing campaigns, you can use personalization strategies to let your subscribers know that you care about them. Include their name in the subject line of your email, and express your interest in hearing about their personal experience in the body of your email. You can also leverage user data to provide them with exclusive offers based on their previous purchasing habits.

At the same time, you can also use this opportunity to provide users with a personalized service experience. Assign dedicated customer service representatives to provide users with troubleshooting at any time.

Provide users with various contact channels, such as service phone, instant chat or email feedback to ensure that all users can easily and conveniently contact customer service representatives.

User Recall Strategy Success Case

If you don’t believe that “recall strategies are an effective way to regain the favor of users”, then take a look at these real cases. Many companies and organizations have really achieved success when adopting these recall strategies.

Case 1: Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go is a globally popular AR mobile game that has been downloaded a record 800 million times since its first release in July 2016. While Pokemon Go still has around (incredibly) 5 million monthly active users, that's down significantly from the 45 million users it had when the game was first released.

In order to maintain daily user activity, win back lost users, or awaken "dormant" users, the game has adopted a series of push notification deployment plans.

Whether it’s reminding users that rare Pokémon will appear nearby during a certain period of time, or recording the number of daily battles, these push messages play a big role in prompting users to open the App.

Case 2: Postmates, an American delivery platform

In order to attract users who have not made purchases on the platform recently, e-commerce brands usually adopt a recall strategy. As the most popular food delivery app in the United States, Postmates sends weekly emails with deals and discounts to its subscribers, but sometimes these discounts are carefully planned by them.

For example: Postmates sends an email to users with the title "A mysterious gift package for you..." In order to enjoy the discount, users must click the button displayed in the email and open the app using the delayed link. Daily active users can enjoy a 75% discount on delivery fees by clicking on the link. Such a high discount will surely excite users!

The real jackpot is for inactive users who, if they click on the email link, will receive a 100% discount on shipping costs (completely free shipping!). Giving users the best deals, regardless of whether they are active or not, is the best way to keep usage and retention high.

Case 3: Online education platform Skillshare

For subscription-based service platforms, adopting user recall strategies can help them win back lost business. Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of courses in a variety of subjects, providing users with a variety of learning plans.

In order to allow subscribers who have cancelled their membership to rejoin, Skillshare sends emails to users to reiterate the benefits of becoming a premium member of the Skillshare community and allow them to become members of the platform at the best price.

To get users to come back is to get them to use your product/service again

Acquiring new users helps a business succeed and grow, but retaining the existing user base is just as important to a business.

Don’t ignore “dormant” users. You can leverage user data and bring them back to your product/service through personalized re-engagement strategies.

Related reading:

1. User operation: new funnel model for conversion analysis!

2. User operation: How to use B-side operation thinking to increase user growth?

3. Product operation: How to use data analysis to drive product user growth?

4. APP user growth: One model solves 90% of growth problems!

5.How to increase users? Take Pinduoduo and Xiaohongshu as examples

6. Triggering user growth: Is user operation just about attracting new users?

7. User operation: What else can you do to attract new users without fission users?

8. User operation: how can financial products awaken dormant users?

9. User operation: How to make use of private domain traffic?

By KC Karnes

Source: Upskill