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My favorite thing about retention is the leverage it gives you. My favorite analogy is the "leaky bucket": You have bucket with holes in it. It's not holding
by webwright 12y ago
My favorite thing about retention is the leverage it gives you. My favorite analogy is the "leaky bucket": You have bucket with holes in it. It's not holding water. You can pour water in as fast as you can and you might be able to get growth... But as soon as you stop, the bucket begins to leak out.
Or you can plug holes. Make users happier. Work on re-activation. Give value.
If you work on top-of-the-funnel stuff (more water) FIRST and then try to solve retention second, there's a lot of waste. You've leaked users. You've created a group of folks who don't talk enthusiastically about your product.
If you work on retention first, all subsequent marketing efforts are more powerful. Word of mouth is more powerful.
- WadeF 12y agoThe caveat is that you do need to work on top-of-the-funnel up to a certain point or else you won't have any users to retain or you won't be able to measure the results of your retention efforts.
- medius 12y agoYup, need to pour enough water to find out all those leaks.
- Gustomaximus 12y agoIt needs balance. I've worked on products where ~90% of marketing resource is on retention vs. acquisition and they were getting outgrown by poorer products. And if you focus too much on what customers want to can limit opening your product to where the new users will come from. Or simply, customers never hear of your great product. With mass market products people often use whats put in front of them. My experience (as a marketer) is companies tend to swing hard towards one philosophy. I'm yet to work with a company that treats each equally allocating resource between them on ROI vs. a general prefered philosophy.