Today, we can see that the traditional sense of traffic dividend has disappeared, not only because the demographic dividend window has passed, but also because it is more and more difficult to obtain a new user at a higher cost. At this time, more attention should be paid to reserve. The core concept of reserve is to operate with the users that have been owned today as core assets. Only by managing the existing users well can we make further fission through subsequent socialization and reputation marketing.
Therefore, the difference between the concept of volume reservation and the traditional concept of flow dividend is that it is not product centric, but user centric. Users are labeled and priced before they can make the best use of everything to operate it.
How to keep new users active and retained has become the operating principle of the "retention era".
We call the users who have completed activation and continue to use, browse or purchase for a period of time as retained users.
When we grow our users, we tend to attach importance to customer acquisition rather than retention. Even if we acquire enough users, if we retain poor users, when the number of lost users exceeds the number of acquired users, our users will decrease, and user growth will not be sustainable.
Just like a pool, only when the water inlet is large and the water outlet is small, the water in the pool will become more and more. What the user needs to do is to find a way to narrow the water outlet of the pool.
How can we improve user retention? Generally, the retention of users of a product will go through three stages, namely, the high-speed loss period, the slow loss period, and the gentle stability period. These three stages are exactly the growth process of users in the product, the judgment period, the verification period, and the coexistence period.
Three stages of user churn
High speed loss period/judgment period : This is a stage of serious user churn. This stage is usually a new activation user. Users will try out the product's functions to determine whether they meet their expectations.
Slow loss period/verification period : This is the phase when the loss of users begins to slow down. At this stage, users can further understand the product functions to verify whether they meet their initial judgment.
Gentle stable period/coexistence period : It is the stage of less loss of users. After a long verification period, users at this stage have become familiar with the product, confirmed that the product meets their own use needs, and formed a habit of using it.
In different stages of user churn, the methods to improve user retention are also different.
▊ Guide users to feel the core value of products
High speed churn/judgment period is the most important stage of the three stages. If new users cannot quickly understand the core functions of the product in a short time, it is easy to cause large-scale churn of new users. To regain the trust of users, it is very difficult to recall lost users, and the cost is often five times that of maintaining an old user.
The first time the user touches the product, he has no knowledge of the product. The main way to retain the product is to guide the user. The purpose of guidance is to let the user quickly feel the core value of the product through a series of "designated actions". The purpose of guidance is not to show all the functions of the product, but to show the ability of the product to solve users' pain points.
Take "Keep" as an example. Through the new user guide page, Keep understands the user's basic information, movement goals and other user needs and pain points, and then recommends the content of interest to the user. Accurate content will hit the user's pain points, thus stimulating the user's interest in continuing to use the product. Without these guide pages, users may not be able to quickly understand the core functions and values of Keep, which may lead to the loss of users.
![picture](/image/1700030312401061983.jpeg)
Keep new user guidance
▊ Give users new reasons and incentives for retention
At the stage of slow turnover/verification, users have a preliminary understanding of the product, and the freshness of the product is gradually disappearing. In the case of many competing products, it is not enough to retain users only by bringing value to users and solving their pain points. At this time, new reasons and incentives need to be given to users.
Taking the driving test as an example, the user needs are phased and the reuse frequency is low. The main problem of their user retention is that the user demand curve is too short. After the user has taken the driver's license test, the product has no other use value for the user. At this time, the user's demand curve needs to be extended.
Before extending the user demand curve, you need to find out what actions will increase the probability of users staying. For example, "One click driving school" has found the growth of user's demand for buying cars after learning cars. Using the rich automotive resources within its 58 system, it has added the function of "buying cars", forming a clear direction to extend user demand from learning to buying cars.
![picture](/image/1700030312411020725.jpeg)
One click product interface of driving school
There are some common ways to give users new reasons and incentives for retention:
Build user incentive mechanism. The incentive mechanism is to give users the benefit of continuing to use, such as red envelope for sign in, level privileges, point exchange, etc. The red envelope for signing in on Weibo can be withdrawn directly, and the points of Didi Chuxing can be exchanged for coupons, both for the vested interests of users and to improve their retention.
Red envelope for microblog sign in and exchange for Didi points
Increase user sunk costs. Sunken costs are the unrecoverable costs that have occurred, such as money, time, energy, etc. They will affect users' decisions, because users not only look at the current benefits, but also pay attention to the previous costs when making decisions. The purpose of increasing user sunk costs is to enable users to use products continuously and improve user retention through advanced cost expenditure.
For example, Lulema's super food card is essentially a rechargeable member. First, increase the money cost invested by users, and then use preferential rights such as red packets to stimulate users and improve the priority of products in user selection.
Hungry? Super food card
▊ Innovative product functions make users dependent
Although the churn of users in the gentle stable period/coexistence period is more gentle than that in the previous two stages, if no new stimulation is given to users for a long time, small-scale churn will occur. In this stage, the most effective way to improve user retention is to update and iterate the product and develop new functions and play methods.
For example, Alipay's Ant Forest is a very successful functional innovation. Ant Forest copied the core playing method of the popular vegetable stealing game on the whole network in those days, and added its own core payment function.
Users accumulate energy and plant trees through green travel, online business handling and other environmental protection behaviors, and introduce social stealing of friend energy and friend energy ranking plates to increase users' time and energy cost investment. It not only brings users interesting and competitive games, but also improves the utilization rate of Alipay payment and convenience functions. More importantly, it improves the activity and retention of Alipay users.
Ant Forest, a game based and social innovation, has brought 40% daily live user growth to Alipay only half a year after its launch.
![picture](/image/1700030312439036763.jpeg)
In addition to functional innovation, personalized recommendation is also an important way for users to rely on, which is also a feature of most products. Personalized recommendation is to make accurate recommendations based on different users' preferences, so that users can feel that the product really understands them, and increase their preference and dependence on the product.
QQ music personalized recommendation
▊ Solve problems with retention analysis tools
The above methods are all methods to improve user retention at the product function level. How to compare the daily, weekly and monthly retention data of products before proposing product requirements? How to know if there are problems with the retention of users of the product? We can use retention analysis tools to solve the problem.
Yiguan Ark, the intelligent user operation platform of Yiguan Digital Science, has fully integrated the retention analysis function. Analysys Ark includes 12 major analysis models, including event analysis, channel analysis, real-time analysis, and intelligent path analysis. Retention analysis is also one of the important analysis models in the user behavior analysis system.
![picture](/image/1700030312530008059.png)
In the retention analysis mode, we define the initial behavior, subsequent behavior and time range of the retention user:
(1) By defining retention, select initial behavior and subsequent behavior in order according to the clear user related behavior path, and set the corresponding user retention period.
(2) Through indicator setting, we can see the related number of retained users over time, and also switch to see the related number of lost users over time.
(3) After the conversion path is set, we can add subdivision dimensions, such as "equipment type", to disassemble the retention population and mine multiple dimensions to find the retention differences under different dimensions.
(4) If short-term data can't help us find problems, we can set and modify the time to understand the retained performance in 7 days, 30 days or a specified time period.
Author: AnalysysData of Yiguan Ark
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