The document discusses the importance of customer retention for businesses, emphasizing that retaining users can drive acquisition, improve monetization, and create a competitive edge. It outlines strategies to enhance retention across three phases: initial, mid-term, and long-term, focusing on user experience, habit formation, and continuous improvement. Additionally, it highlights the challenges faced in improving retention due to competition and changing conditions in the market.

1. Why retention matters?
Emre Güney - Global Senior Lifecycle Manager

2. What is retention?
Why retention is important?
What we can do to improve retention?
Today’s Plan

3. What is retention?

4. The ability of a company or
product to retain its
customers over some
specified period.

5. “How do we acquire more
users?”
From this

6. “How do we get better at
keeping the users we already
have?”
To this

7. Why retention is important?

8. Basic approach
If users don’t return, your
entire user base will eventually
disappear due to churn.

9. Medium approach
CLTV = ARPU * Lifetime

10. Medium approach
CLTV = ARPU * Lifetime
Retention

11. Medium approach
Higher CLTV means higher
CAC you can spend

12. More sophisticated approach
It is THE ONE growth metric
that moves acquisition,
monetization and virality.
(This is important because if you improve retention, you’ll also improve the rest
of your funnel.)
Source: Reforge

13. Retention
drives
acquisition
Retention
improves
monetisation
Retention
builds an
acquisition
competitive
edge
As you retain more users,
those additional users take
more of the key actions that
accelerate acquisition, either
through sharing, inviting,
word-of-mouth, or creating
content.
As more of those new users
retain, more are acquired -
improving retention sets off a
self-reinforcing cycle that
drives acquisition.
You can retain a larger
proportion of a cohort, and in
doing so, make more money
from that cohort within a
given period of time, and you
can increase the length of
time that a cohort
retains, increasing LTV.
As you increase retention,
monetisation, and LTV, you
can pay more to acquire a
customer. In doing so, you
can push competitors out of
acquisition channels, open up
new channels that were
previously too expensive, and
grow faster.

14. How retention drives acquisition - UGC for Pinterest example
Source: Reforge

15. Source: Reforge
How retention drives acquisition – Usage driven virality Loom
example

16. How retention drives monetisation
Source: Reforge

17. Bad news

18. The average app loses 77% of users in just
3 days.
Source: CleverTap

19. Improving retention is really hard.
(and getting harder)

20. Fierce competition

21. Fierce competition
Source: Reforge

22. Channel fatigue
Source: Reforge

23. Monopolies
They are levering their network effects to build monopolies that have
the power to absorb any new start-up or product that could threaten
their dominance.
Source: Reforge

24. What we can do to improve
retention?

25. Phase 1
• The first 72 hours after acquisition
is the most critical, since it’s where
users get their first impression of
your product.
• Show new users the value of your
product and get them to the “aha
moment” ASAP.
Initial Retention

26. Phase 2
• Mid-term retention is about
forming, then reinforcing, your
users’ habits around your product.
• Eventually they won’t need
reminders to open the product,
they’ll keep coming back on their
own.
Mid-term Retention

27. Frequency matters

28. Phase 3
• This final phase of retention is
about continuously improving the
product so it stays valuable to
users. And understand your users’
needs!
• Keep finding ways to solve their
problems by adding new features,
improving UI and UX, and fixing
bugs.
Long-term Retention

29. A final checklist

30. Get your benchmarks
The most crucial ones to watch are: day 1, day 7, day 30, and month 6.
Source: CleverTap

31. Track the Right Segments
These three segments are key:
Source: CleverTap

32. Set S.M.A.R.T. Retention Goals
Create S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Source: CleverTap

33. Test, Analyse, Repeat
Focus your efforts on where users drop off and become inactive
Source: CleverTap
Test Analyse Repeat
Test your hypotheses, then analyse your results so you learn and improve.
Repeat until you see fewer uninstalls/drop-offs and more consistently active users.

34. Retention is a marathon, not a sprint.
Every failed experiment leads you closer to finding
the winning combinations that keep your users
loyal to your product.

36. Thank you.