What are the primary levers for improving a consumer product's retention?

Raman Malik · published Nov 15, 2024

There are only a finite number of levers to move retention: milestone metrics, channel mix shift, and audience mix shift — and organic and referral users always retain better than paid acquisition and partnership users.

Because Perplexity's growth is already word-of-mouth and partnership led, there is little channel optimization left, so the lever is targeting higher-retaining audience segments to shift new-cohort mix.

23:16 Milestone metrics channel mix and audience mix are the only real retention levers organic beats paid

Raman Malik · published Nov 15, 2024

Curiosity-driven 'weekender' users retain poorly, while users solving a knowledge gap — work users and students researching papers — are very sticky.

Solving a real knowledge gap rather than mere curiosity is what makes the product sticky.

24:15 Curiosity driven users retain poorly knowledge gap solvers are sticky

Raman Malik · published Nov 15, 2024

The two biggest retention needle-movers were audience mix shift toward high-quality cohorts and cross-device adoption; getting users onto multiple platforms drives strong retention, and product improvements are always an underlying driver.

Cross-device usage means the product is integrated into the user's life — weekends and workdays — so you're everywhere.

25:38 Audience mix shift and cross device adoption are the biggest retention needle movers

Martin Gontovnikas · published Feb 14, 2024

Growth teams over-focus on the activation moment and retention while ignoring anti-retention patterns — the specific actions that cause users to drop off instantly

Some features are too complex for a user's level of product knowledge at that stage; at Auth0, users who implemented multifactor authentication in week one churned, while those who did it between month one and one and a half were likely retained, because they needed a month of other usage to build the mental model

27:44 Anti retention patterns are overlooked relative to activation and retention focus

Martin Gontovnikas · published Feb 14, 2024

Retention on personal projects matters even more than retention on work projects and should be counted in your retention thinking

A user who keeps using you for personal projects will remember and try to bring you into whatever company they move to over time

30:05 Personal project retention matters more than work project retention

Sam Corcos · published Dec 11, 2023 · hedged

In health-tracking products, the users who retain longest are those who value the tool's accountability and goal-setting more than the discrete learnings it produces

Knowing that alcohol is bad for you is a one-time learning; being held accountable to a behavior is recurring value

25:43 Accountability and goal setting value retains users better than discrete learnings

Thomas Plantenga · published Feb 12, 2024

A seller's first two transactions are the most important signal of retention, even though the probability of returning keeps rising with each additional transaction

22:26 First two transactions are the strongest early signal of seller retention

Gokul Rajaram · published May 5, 2020

Retention is not always driven by price; drivers may instead be personalization, support quality, or feature parity, and should be established with data.

source Retention drivers are personalization support quality or feature parity not just price and must be established with data