# AGS Virtual Summit Berlin 2020: Andy’s 10-minute session on Master Mobile App Retention

- Link: https://phiture.com/blog/ags-virtual-summit-berlin-2020-andys-10-minute-session-on-master-mobile-app-retention/
- Published: 2020-06-10T11:12:12+01:00
- Author: Ajla Karic

![Andy Carvell APS Berlin](https://phiture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Copy-of-
Workshop-portrait-22.png)

The third [AGS Summit](https://appgrowthsummit.com/) in Berlin returned the last
month and was virtually followed by over 500 people despite the Covid-19 crisis.
The event saw experts that delivered insightful topics from companies like [Babbel](https://www.babbel.com/),
[Zalando](https://www.zalando.com/) and [SEGA](https://www.sega.com/) as well as
featuring 3 great panels with 8 presentations and 3 fireside chats. Phiture’s own
Andy Carvell, Co-Founder delivered a 10-minute Master Mobile App Retention session
which explained the difference between retention and engagement and the significance
of using both. Make sure to check out his presentation slides below!

Andy kicked off his session explaining the basics of retention and the concept of
active users, outlining the flow whereby new users activate successfully and remain
active users in the next period, while some new users will fail to activate and 
become dormant, along with some users who were active in previous time periods. 
Dormant users may be re-activate –  either as a result of deliberate reactivation
efforts or organically – and become active users again.  Retention efforts, therefore,
boil down to activating new users successfully, keeping active users as engaged 
as possible so that they remain active and re-activating as many dormant users as
possible.

#### _Growth Accounting and Retention Measurement_

⌊3 types of active users⌉⌊3 types of active users⌉The importance of visualizing 
the status of new user acquisition, activation, engagement within your app, as well
as understanding how many users are churning, during a specific time frame, is crucial.
A significant element of retention is the retention curve. The ultimate goal of 
this is to eventually see the curve leveling out after a certain period.  A growth
accounting view is very helpful for this.

![Factors that influence retention](https://phiture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/
06/2.png)

Andy also showed how to read a ‘retention curve’, which shows an aggregated view
of how many users are sticking around in the app.  Andy suggests segmenting the 
retention curve by many different variables, such as acquisition source and feature
usage, to develop more insight into how these factors affect user retention.

#### _Influencing Engagement and Retention_

⌊key levers for influencing engagement + retention⌉⌊key levers for influencing engagement
+ retention⌉Andy presented the key levers for influencing Engagement + Retention
and advised the audience to look into activation first since it usually presents
the biggest experiment surface and the most upside for increasing retention. He 
then broke out some specific approaches for increasing the engagement of active 
users.  If the purpose is to bring people back into the app more often or to increase
their engagement in particular areas on the app, push notifications, in-app messages
and emails may be implemented during the lifecycle marketing and activity notification
phases. Although levers such as Community engagement and support are often overlooked,
the significance of making users feel like they are a part of a bigger community
or simply feeling supported by the developer can go a long way to improving retention.

Later on in the session, the concept of ‘natural usage frequency’ was explained,
along with the importance of understanding the reasonable expectation of how often
users would interact with an app. With this in mind, it is worth looking at how 
often the ‘power users’ and casual users interact with the app each month and pick
something in-between these two extremes as a good target frequency for the average
user. 

⌊evernote app⌉⌊evernote app⌉Analytics tracking for each step in key funnels (especially
onboarding) is essential, Andy says. By doing so, you will see just how many users
are completing each step and can identify the key drop-offs to tackle and hopefully
improve. Andy used the example of Evernote, which has an onboarding process that
forces users to actually try out all of the key features as part of the tutorial.
Although this approach may increase friction, it will ultimately increase retention
as users understand the app and its value proposition _within their first session_,
which is the ultimate goal of onboarding. 

⌊churn prediction & prevention modelling⌉⌊churn prediction & prevention modelling⌉
Andy gave some advice on how you can tackle and understand which users are going
to churn. He presented the approach to see the _absence_ of actions, the key _actions
_that users are taking and if behaviors are _changing_ so that users are engaging
with the product less.  Tracking and identifying these changes provides the key 
to taking preventative measures before the user churns.

Andy’s final remark was that running experiments is critical to mastering mobile
app retention. This often requires tackling organizational fear from internal stakeholders
by explaining the methodology, using as much data to support your approach and, 
ultimately, communicating results and learnings so that people in your organization
get comfortable with improving retention.

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