# Increasing Retention with Push, In-App and Email Part 2: Developing a Mobile CRM Strategy for Retention

- Link: https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/
- Published: 2019-01-16T10:09:10+01:00
- Author: Andy Carvell

_This is the second part of a three-part series. In the first part, I outlined _
[_how to audit your mobile app retention efforts_](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-mobile-retention-a4b7ffd6b4e2/)_.
Part three will be ‘Implementing the Strategy’_

![Increasing Retention with Push, In-App and Email Part 2- Developing a Mobile CRM
Strategy for Retention ](https://phiture.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Increasing-
Retention-with-Push-In-App-and-Email-Part-2-Developing-a-Mobile-CRM-Strategy-for-
Retention-min.jpeg)

In part 1, I outlined a process for auditing mobile app retention efforts and identifying
some qualitative and quantitative signals that can inform a retention strategy. 
This article provides a framework for those strategic decisions and outlines common
strategic approaches that tackle different inputs to retention.

Table of Contents

 * [Defining Strategic Objectives](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#defining_strategic_objectives)
 * [Strategic Goal: Activate more Users](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_activate_more_users)
 * [Strategic Goal: Increase Visit Frequency of Repeat Users](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_increase_visit_frequency_of_repeat_users)
 * [Strategic Goal: Increase Depth of Engagement from Repeat Users](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_increase_depth_of_engagement_from_repeat_users)
 * [Strategic Goal: Increase Feature Adoption](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_increase_feature_adoption)
 * [Strategic Goal: Increase Cross-Platform Usage](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_increase_cross-platform_usage)
 * [Strategic Goal: Re-Activate Lapsed Users](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_re-activate_lapsed_users)
 * [Strategic Goal: Churn Prevention](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#strategic_goal_churn_prevention)
 * [Hybrid Strategies](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#hybrid_strategies)
 * [Mini Case Study: SoundCloud’s Hybrid Retention Strategy](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#mini_case_study_soundclouds_hybrid_retention_strategy)
 * [Summary](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/increasing-retention-with-push-in-app-email-part-2-458daac45d6c/#summary)

## **Defining Strategic Objectives**

Consider the make-up of your retained users in any given period to identify the 
biggest opportunity. Looking at your active users in a Growth Accounting view (discussed
in [Part 1](https://mobilegrowthstack.com/increasing-mobile-retention-a4b7ffd6b4e2))
will help you understand where to focus.

⌊A growth accounting view⌉⌊A growth accounting view⌉

_A growth accounting view (screenshot: [Amplitude](https://amplitude.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/228838627-Lifecycle))_

A mobile app’s active users in any particular time period (i.e. week, month, or 
whatever period makes sense to consider within the context of your app and its natural
usage) will either be New, Repeat (in Amplitude parlance: ‘Current’) or Returning
users.

In an ideal world, all New Users are activated within their first period and come
back (i.e. become Repeat users) in the subsequent periods.

Repeat users will hopefully remain engaged and ideally increase their engagement
over time as they realize more and more value from the app and develop strong habitual
usage.

Users who have lapsed in their usage may come back to the app, in which case they
are classified as Returning users for that period. Ideally, they re-develop a habit
with the app and become Repeat users in the next period.

⌊The retained active users in any given period are always in one of these three 
buckets ⌉⌊The retained active users in any given period are always in one of these
three buckets ⌉

_The retained active users in any given period are always in one of these three 
buckets_

At a high level then, it’s useful to decide which of these buckets needs the most
immediate focus. Below, I’ll outline some common strategic goals and explore how
well they fit with CRM/Messaging tactics.

## **Strategic Goal: Activate more Users**

The opportunity to improve activation with CRM goes much further than a simple Welcome
Email. And even Welcome Emails are rarely iterated on once deployed.

Invariably, the biggest opportunity exists with Activation: onboarding more users
successfully and helping them to get into the habit of using the app regularly. 
If you’re just starting out with Retention initiatives, the biggest wins will almost
certainly be available in improving activation rates. Even if you’ve been working
on activation for a year, it may still be worth iterating further on this stage 
before looking elsewhere for impact.

While much can — and should — be done to improve Activation rates by making changes
to the product itself, activation can always be significantly and measurably improved
with well-crafted Push, In-App and Email campaigns during the critical early stages
of user adoption.

Supporting, educating and onboarding new users more effectively with personalized,
adaptive, push, in-app and email messaging presents an opportunity not only to measurably
improve activation rates but also to communicate the brand values and personality
to the user. Ideally, the user develops a strong connection to the product and the
brand during this process; this hypothesis can be validated through qualitative 
research and supported by improved activation and retention metrics.

## **Strategic Goal: Increase Visit Frequency of Repeat Users**

Even if you see a healthy and growing Repeat Users segment in your growth accounting
view each month, consider _how many times _these users return within the period:
one of the problems with metrics such as MAU and WAU is that they are binary; the
user is counted as _active_ or _inactive_ in the period, no matter whether they 
come back once or a hundred times.

If a significant amount of users are engaging with the app less often than your 
reasonable expectation of natural usage frequency, then the increasing _frequency
of use_ should be a key strategic goal.

Tactically, _Push_ _notifications_, _Emails_, or possibly even _SMS_ are likely 
to be important channels when employing a strategy to increase frequency since these
channels have the power to bring users back into the app when they might not have
otherwise returned. I’ll cover tactics in Part 3.

## **Strategic Goal: Increase Depth of Engagement from Repeat Users**

Rather than aiming to bring users back for more sessions, perhaps your goal is to
promote deeper, longer-lasting sessions, where the user spends more time in the 
app, interacting with key features for longer, or consuming more content.

The content-consumption use case, in particular, is prime for messaging, especially
when there is a large library of existing content (i.e. _discovery_ of relevant 
content can be challenging), where there is new content on a regular basis (i.e.
users may struggle to keep up to date, or risk missing out on content they would
love). In the case where both of these are true — where new content is constantly
added to a huge library — messaging can be a really valuable and impactful part 
of the user experience.

⌊An in-app message campaign in the Headspace app to increase discovery and consumption
of new content ⌉⌊An in-app message campaign in the Headspace app to increase discovery
and consumption of new content ⌉

_An in-app message campaign in the [Headspace](http://www.headspace.com/) app to
increase discovery and consumption of new content_

## **Strategic Goal: Increase Feature Adoption**

_This is arguably of a sub-strategy that can support an Activation strategy (targeting
New Users) and also an Increasing-Depth-of-Engagement (targeting Repeat Users) strategy.
If implemented intelligently — more on this in Part 3 — initiatives to drive feature
adoption can often drive progress toward both goals simultaneously._

⌊A feature-adoption In-App Message (with transparency effects) ⌉⌊A feature-adoption
In-App Message (with transparency effects) ⌉

_A feature-adoption In-App Message (with transparency effects)_

If, during the audit phase, your analysis of user behavior showed many users are
failing to discover (or meaningfully engage with) key features, _increasing adoption_
of these features should be a key strategic goal. _In-App messages_, combined with
appropriate behavioral segmentation, are a great channel to use at a tactical level
to promote features, direct users to them and provide hints or explanations of them
how to use them, possibly supported by longer-form content delivered via email or
hosted on the company blog, or within a content feed in the app.

## **Strategic Goal: Increase Cross-Platform Usage**

Another common strategic objective for platforms that have multiple client applications
is to increase cross-platform usage: users are often observed to have higher overall
retention with a product or platform when they are interacting across multiple devices,
possibly with different modes of usage. Therefore, it can be a successful strategic
move to actively promote the use of other platforms to increase the number of user
touch-points. A tactical example would be encouraging users connecting your Spotify
account to your Amazon Echo, Smart TV, or Google Home device via an in-app message
or email campaign.

## **Strategic Goal: Re-Activate Lapsed Users**

Re-Activation is hard. If a user has genuinely lapsed — as opposed to simply go 
on vacation— there’s a reason behind it. Perhaps, for some users, the app is simply
not meeting their needs/expectations, in which case this could indicate either a
product or a user-acquisition issue (more likely some combination of the two: [product/market fit](https://mobilegrowthstack.com/finding-product-market-fit-is-hard-mobile-product-market-fit-is-even-harder-d2d4b37ad337)).

The reality is typically more nuanced: there are myriad reasons why users might 
fall out of love with your app and it’s unrealistic to expect to please all people,
all of the time. As always, the answer lies in actually talking to users, through
questionnaires, phone calls, focus groups, community forums, social media, etc.

Taking time to understand the reasons why users abandon your mobile app and then
devising approaches to address common concerns should arguably be a company-wide
effort. Reactivation at scale cannot be achieved with simplistic “We miss you!” 
push notifications or the odd discount voucher (though these tactics may yield some
limited impact).

The above caveats notwithstanding, CRM can play an important role in reaching out
to lapsed users. Email, Push Notifications and even SMS are channels that can reach
users when they are not in the app (and even when they have de-installed in the 
case of Email and SMS). Giving users a reminder and a compelling reason to come 
back to re-experience the app will have a positive impact with an at-least-nonzero
percentage of the lapsed user-base, but comes with a high risk of further alienating
already-disinterested users.

## **Strategic Goal: Churn Prevention**

In the ideal world, the growth team has a strategy in place to intervene _before_
a user lapses, based on signals that their engagement is waning. Successful apps
identify these users before they become long-term churned and find — perhaps unsurprisingly—
that it’s _far_ easier to re-vitalize a lapsing user than to re-activate the genuinely-
lapsed.

⌊the offer of free pizza in a re-activation push delighted at least some users ⌉⌊
the offer of free pizza in a re-activation push delighted at least some users ⌉

_One of the more creative campaigns I’ve seen: the offer of free pizza in a re-activation
push delighted at least some users (src: [https://www.leanplum.com/blog/7-most-creative-push-notifications/](https://www.leanplum.com/blog/7-most-creative-push-notifications/))_

Churn prevention is a huge and exciting topic that warrants its own blog posts, 
so I won’t cover it in depth here. However, I will provide some practical tips on
how to approach the topic in Part 3 of this series.

## **Hybrid Strategies**

All of the above strategies — implemented effectively — will increase retention 
in the mobile app. Adopting a hybrid strategy — aiming to achieve more than one 
of the strategic goals above simultaneously— is also therefore an attractive option.
However, the reader should be reminded that strategy is about focus and that focus
usually necessitates_ trade-offs_ or arbitrage.

It’s certainly possible to pursue multiple objectives simultaneously, especially
as the team grows. However, progress towards any individual objective is likely 
to be slower than if it were pursued with laser-focus. It’s a depressingly common
situation to see companies defining ten or more ‘strategic objectives’ for the year
ahead; the leadership team identifies many things they _need to do_ in order to 
be successful in the marketplace. Such situations represent a failure of strategic
thinking and are corrosive to team morale and effectiveness.

If it seems likely that multiple strategies would be similarly beneficial to the
business and to the overall usage growth of the app, the Growth Lead might consider
a divide-and-conquer approach, whereby one strategy is tackled from a CRM standpoint
and another through in-product A/B testing. In such a scenario, sub-teams can focus
on moving different input metrics (i.e. pursue different strategies) while the overall
Growth effort is hopefully moving the needle on two fronts simultaneously.

_Fortune Smiles Upon The Brave (while occasionally scowling in places The Brave 
aren’t looking)_

Some initiatives sometimes prove impactful across multiple metrics, proving beneficial
across activation, engagement, and re-activation. I would personally recommend focussing
on one of these at a time and to accept the good fortune if the results are strong
across the board, rather than attempt to design every initiative with the aim of
hitting multiple goals. The corollary, of course, is that an initiative that pursues
one strategic goal might hurt another. This is why every experiment needs to be 
analyzed not just for its impact on the target metric, but also a range of other
indicators.

_Strategies suited to CRM_

From a CRM perspective, it’s worth considering which of the above strategies are
most suited to messaging. CRM can typically drive impact in any of the above strategic
scenarios, but in my experience, CRM is a great lever for:

 * Improving Activation Rates
 * Increasing Frequency of Use
 * Increasing Feature Adoption
 * Re-Engagement of Lapsed or Churned Users

When the strategy is to increase the depth of engagement, CRM can certainly play
a part (particularly through increasing feature adoption), but it’s likely that 
enhancements to the product and/or content in the app (if applicable) will deliver
more meaningful gains than a CRM-only approach.

All of the other strategies can also be tackled primarily with non-CRM approaches,
but CRM can deliver impact fast, driving measurable impact on growth metrics in 
parallel with the product team’s development of core functionality.

## **Mini Case Study: SoundCloud’s Hybrid Retention Strategy**

During my team leading the Retention Team at [SoundCloud](https://www.soundcloud.com/),
our [North Star Metric](https://growthhackers.com/articles/north-star-metric) (the
key engagement metric we were optimizing for) was Listening Time. Our retention 
strategy was therefore predicated on either bringing users back for longer listening
sessions OR for more sessions. Either of these strategies would increase an input
to Listening Time:

Avg Weekly Listening Time per User = Avg Listening Session Length x Avg Weekly Sessions

The above formula shows that Weekly Listening Time is a function of two inputs. 
Increasing either of the inputs would, therefore, increase the output.

We didn’t really mind whether we increased average listening time per session, or
the number of sessions since both would contribute to greater listening time on 
the platform overall. Ideally, we wanted users to come back more often and listen
for longer when they did. Therefore, SoundCloud employed strategies aimed at increasing
both of these input metrics.

_Product-centric session-length experiments_

One of the best examples of a successful tactic (though in the product, rather than
via CRM) for increasing avg. listening time per session at SoundCloud would be the
Autoplay feature: defaulting to auto-playing a new track after the current one finishes.
Autoplay is now the default on most streaming platforms, including Netflix, Youtube,
and many others, precisely because it leads to more media consumption and takes 
advantage of ‘lean back’ usage patterns, where users seek to be entertained without
constantly interacting with the product.

_CRM-centric session-count experiments_

Our tactical approach to increasing the average number of sessions (per user, per
week) at SoundCloud involved the judicious use of push notifications to recommend
content based on users’ past listening history or their liking/commenting/play-listing
behavior. Personalized recommendations informing the user of new releases they might
like, or similar content to that which they recently listened, proved highly successful
at increasing the number of times the user would open the app and listen to music
on the platform.

⌊SoundCloud drives significant engagement and retention with content-centric push
notifications ⌉⌊SoundCloud drives significant engagement and retention with content-
centric push notifications ⌉

_SoundCloud drives significant engagement and retention with content-centric push
notifications_

You can hear more about the approach SoundCloud took with activity notifications
in this [interview with Brian Balfour from Reforge](https://brianbalfour.com/essays/mobile-growth-retention-soundcloud).

## **Summary**

The strategy for improving retention with Push, In-App, and Email messaging should
be based on insights from the initial [audit](https://mobilegrowthstack.com/increasing-mobile-retention-a4b7ffd6b4e2),
combined with a pragmatic assessment of where product-based and CRM-based initiatives
can be effectively resourced and deployed. Hybrid strategies, addressing multiple
strategic goals, can work well, especially when resources allow multiple workstreams,
but inherently lead to a dilution of focus, so should be employed with care.

In part three of this series, I will detail practical examples of how the various
strategies outlined in this article can be implemented with multi-channel mobile
CRM