Imagine being able to acquire users for just a few cents. Sounds like a dream come true for any growth marketer, doesn’t it? Now imagine the same scenario with the worst possible retention, and it soon sounds like a nightmare.
Whether you’re a construction company, software startup, or Fortune 500 company, retention is an important metric for customers, employees and partners.
Growth marketing is not the panacea to solve retention, but there are certainly some tactics that can be implemented to help improve it.
Let’s dive in.
Growth and product
Within a company, the growth and product teams have to fit like a glove. At Postmates, I saw firsthand how a well-oiled machine can work together to address conversion and customer retention. We used to hold weekly meetings between teams to address trends in conversion rate and customer determination across growth media.
I believe the three main focus areas for growth and product should be:
- Improved measurement capabilities.
- Channel-specific landing pages and/or flows.
- Testing new products and initiatives.
A consistent problem and theme that I’ve seen cause countless headaches at startups is the lack of measurement capabilities. Accurately measuring conversion volume is paramount for all businesses. Otherwise, efforts will become inefficient.
It would also be naive to think that measuring is a task you can imagine. Measurement should be approached as a constant work in progress as channels and the privacy landscape are constantly evolving.
It is imperative to continuously analyze the sources that drive growth at a granular and bottom-of-funnel level.
By working with the product team on specific growth campaigns, you can personalize initiatives, measure accurately, and increase the likelihood of success. Imagine having a specific funnel for visitors who are new or retargeted. Or how about different landing pages just for influencers? These are just a few examples of the tests the growth and product teams should be running.
Whenever a new product, feature, or promotion is launched by the product team, the growth team should be the first to get their hands on it. All lifecycle campaigns and paid acquisition teams will be the first point of contact for customers, so understanding between these two teams is critical.
When the growth and product teams work closely together and prioritize the above key areas of focus, you will see huge leaps in retention.
Channel Effectiveness
When I was working at Postmates on fleet (or driver) acquisition, we went from budgeting using a simple method to measuring channel effectiveness based on LTV and retention. How long did our drivers stay on the platform if they were acquired from Google instead of Facebook?
