User retention during operations and promotions is the biggest growth!

In the Corsair Model AARRR of growth hackers , from user acquisition, stimulating activity, improving retention , increasing conversion to word-of-mouth communication, it analyzes from the perspective of the user's product life cycle how to make more users pay attention to the product, use the product, form paid conversions and recommend the product to more users.

Among them, as the cost of user acquisition continues to increase, how to manage existing users instead of constantly attracting new ones has become the focus of Internet product managers. In essence, user activity and user retention are the same thing. If users do not use the product frequently, they will not remain in the product.

This article mainly analyzes the gameplay and design of current mainstream products from the perspective of retention.

1. The essence of retention

Any product that can gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive Internet must have a common core competitiveness: the ability to continuously create value for users. Growth is merely a means, an effective way to assist products in improving data indicators, but it is not the key. Blindly worshipping growth will only result in putting the cart before the horse. Even if the product obtains vanity indicators in the short term, in the long run, it may only be a flash in the pan.

Whether it is to stimulate user activity or improve user retention , essentially, we must look at it from the perspective of the product, how the product can continuously create value for users, and at the same time use growth methods to assist the growth of various product indicators to achieve a win-win situation for products and users.

2. Methods to improve user retention

1. Interest Incentive

The first and most important one among Charlie Munger’s 21 misjudgment psychology is interest motivation. It is often more effective to persuade people with interests rather than reason.

Qutoutiao , which recently went public in the United States, is the best practice of profit-driven user activity and retention. This reading consultation product, which focuses on third- and fourth-tier cities, gives "cash" for registration, reading, and signing in, allowing users to continuously open the product, sign in to read, and exchange gold coins for cash.

This method is considered a relatively low-level method by many first-tier Internet giants, but the monetary incentive is so magical that it allowed such a little-known Internet product to successfully enter the Nasdaq stage.

There are many similar cases, such as red envelopes for travel products and coupons for food delivery products. For O2O products, due to fierce competition, the user's choice cost is low. As the operator of the product, whether for the purpose of activity or retention, they are using various interest incentives to let users choose themselves.

2. Membership Benefits

Membership benefits are suitable for products with high-frequency usage scenarios , such as video, reading, and e-commerce products. Users use them frequently, and the incentive of membership benefits can keep users in their own products. Although competitors may have certain advantages, they can be fully compensated by membership benefits.

Taking e-commerce products as an example, Amazon , Tmall and JD.com have all launched their own membership rights services. Users can enjoy a variety of high-quality membership rights by paying to purchase membership. For example, JD.com Plus members receive five shipping coupons every month. So for users, once they purchase a JD.com Plus membership, if the price and the same product are the same, they may not choose Amazon or Tmall in order to pay less shipping costs.

There are many scenarios based on membership rights, such as video products. By purchasing an iQiyi membership, users can filter out annoying advertisements and watch exclusive video resources on the iQiyi platform. Once purchased, users will give priority to iQiyi, unless certain exclusive resources are scarce, they will use other video platforms.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, the design of membership benefits is more effective for products with high-frequency usage scenarios. For example, for moving products, it is obviously not cost-effective to ask users to purchase membership benefits. 99% of users move infrequently, and there is no need to purchase a one-year membership just for moving once a year.

3. Gamification

Gamification means incorporating gaming thinking into product retention design, stimulating user activity and retention by clocking in, signing in, logging in daily to play games, and giving certain rewards.

The above picture shows the gamification mechanism design in financial products. Through games and sign-ins, users are encouraged to log in, and given certain points or gold coins based on their progress, which can be used to make cash discounts when investing in financial management.

Gamification is a way to increase user interest, but it must be combined with corresponding user feedback design. In real games, users can get feedback on levels and honorary titles. For products that use gamification design, users should be given corresponding feedback based on the product's attributes to encourage them to participate in game design.

4. Sedimentation creates value

Luo Yonghao’s Nut Pro 2S launch event did not result in the sale of the phone, but instead made an instant messaging product popular: Bullet SMS. When Bullet Messenger was first launched, it announced that it had received a large amount of financing and acquired a large number of daily active users. What followed were reports about whether Bullet Messenger could subvert WeChat , etc. However, as time went by, although Luo Yonghao was still promoting Bullet Messenger, in reality, Bullet Messenger did not snatch users from WeChat.

Why? Because WeChat has consolidated users' social networks and accumulated users' value. Users have a large number of social relationships in WeChat, so when a user migrates from a familiar social product to an unfamiliar one, although some functions of the new social product are more amazing, the social relationships on the original social platform cannot be migrated synchronously, which is a huge social cost for the user. At the same time, in the WeChat system, WeChat Pay , WeChat official accounts , and WeChat mini-programs allow users to achieve a closed loop of their daily online and offline lives, which are not available in Bullet SMS. Users may try it out, but they may not stay for long and will eventually return to the WeChat they are familiar with.

This is the value of the product. By accumulating user value, it creates its own competitive barrier. When users are considering whether to change products, they will give up because of the cost and stay longer. Of course, the success of WeChat depends on its excellent product iteration and operation capabilities, which is what was mentioned at the beginning of this article, and its ability to continuously create value for users. Therefore, WeChat is still an indispensable part of the social world and even online and offline life.

5. Lost customer recovery

Any product, no matter how good it is, will have user loss. The product design cannot satisfy all user groups. The ideal situation is to satisfy 80% of the target user groups, but the reality is often cruel. User loss may occur due to various reasons.

Recovering lost users is also an effective way to improve retention. After all, those lost users were once users of the product. If the recovery method is appropriate, it is likely to achieve good results. Currently, the more common method is to send group push messages. If the user has uninstalled the product, group text messages or emails are sent to remind the customer of product function updates or various coupons are issued to encourage users to return.

This method of recovery is the simplest and most direct, but the effect is not necessarily the best. Think about user churn from the perspective of the product itself. Before trying to recover users, you need to first understand why they leave. Is it that the product does not meet the needs of users, or is it that the product's complicated operation brings a bad experience to users ? If it is the former, no matter what method you use to recover the customers, they will not come back, because even if they come back, they cannot meet the needs of users; if it is the latter, then based on the optimization of the product, you can use certain incentives to awaken users, let users feel the changes in the product after returning, thereby effectively bringing about user retention.

Efficient user churn recovery is achieved through analysis of churned users’ pre-churn behavior and targeted recovery. Different approaches are adopted for users with different churn reasons, thus achieving twice the result with half the effort.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, growth is a method, a means to assist products in gaining greater value. While applying various methods to improve user retention, whether you are the person in charge of growth or the person in charge of product, don’t forget to think about the value of the product and how the product can better create value for users. Only by grasping the essence behind growth can you achieve the ultimate closed loop of growth: self-growth.

Source: Remember a Little Memory