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

Raman Malik · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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