6 Tactics To Increase User Retention
Brian Balfour is the former VP of Growth at Hubspot. He’s also started several VC-backed companies including Reforge, of which he is currently the CEO.
Without customer retention, your business will inevitably fail; businesses must prioritize retention as part of their growth plan.
HOW TO: Customize user experience and flatten your retention curve
Focus on flattening the retention curve →
There are lots of reasons why customers could leave in the first week: they don’t get it, it wasn’t what they were looking for, they forgot about it, etc. Find out why and fix it.
Send a survey and if you get a response, follow up with a personal email to dig deeper →
Encouraging interactions among users with your team is a great way to keep customers engaged with your product.
Create a simple forum to help build a community around your product and give users a voice →
Or create a Facebook Group dedicated to your user community →
For instance, the onboarding pages for Twitter and Facebook are drastically different from their normal platform. During this process, allow new users to opt into additional resources like a blog or “how-to” email series.
Create landing pages that usher users through without confusion →
Here are a few great examples if you don’t know where to begin →
Everyone will be using the same features, but you can send different welcome messages explaining specific benefits to marketing teams, small business owners, etc. For some personas, video will be most effective; for others, blog posts — no assumptions here. Test, test, test.
Check the analytics each week; if you don’t already have good email analytics, get started here →
The testing process takes time, but 3 weeks is usually enough to judge if your experiment was effective in increasing adoption and retention.
Keep an eye on user engagement and drop-off each week →