Mila Superstar
@milasuperstar
Mila Superstar
Why Retention Is The Silent Killer: 1. To properly understand the impact of retention and prioritize initiatives you need to take a long-term view - and that often conflicts with most teams’ short term goals. 2. Retention metrics are easy to mis-define and can lead teams in the wrong direction when defined incorrectly. 3. A healthy business is the
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Not only does deeper engagement drive monetization, but it also helps a product defend its place in the market.
Brian Balfour • Why Retention Is The Silent Killer
Retention measures breadth - the percentage of users who are still active in a given time period. But it doesn’t answer the critical question - how active are they within that time period?
Brian Balfour • Why Retention Is The Silent Killer
choosing the wrong core action can lead to a variety of problems. You could end up ignoring an important part of the user base, thinking you are optimizing for the right behavior when, in reality, you are covering up problems hiding underneath the surface.
Brian Balfour • Why Retention Is The Silent Killer
Choosing a retention metric involves defining the core action your user takes in your product. In other words, what qualifies a user as active?
Brian Balfour • Why Retention Is The Silent Killer
A second part of accurately measuring retention lies in choosing the right frequency for product engagement. When considering the right frequency for your product’s retention metric, ask yourself, “Does a user of my product need to engage on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to be considered active (or possibly longer for certain products)?”
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Revenue retention is the output of engaged users. The usage is the input, and looking only at revenue retention as a proxy for usage retention has two big problems: 1. Revenue can hide what is going on under the hood with product usage, and shield you from signals about your product’s health over the longer term. You may earn a month or a year’s
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a boost in retention: increases new user acquisition, improves monetization, strengthens acquisition muscle so you can push competitors out of channels and explore new channels, accelerates payback period so you can reinvest in acquisition sooner