Fine-Tuning SoundCloud’s Onboarding — Troubleshooting Segmentation Issues
600%
increase in daily Welcome Emails sends
507k
extra users each year will play a track within 1 day
4.5%
uplift in Plays within 1 day
4.2%
uplift in Likes within 1 day
The Challenge
After creating test accounts via Google, Apple and Facebook, SoundCloud discovered that new users using any of these sign up methods, who made up a big part of the app’s user base, were unable to receive Welcome Emails and were, therefore, missing out on a crucial part of the user journey. Phiture had already been working closely with the SoundCloud team on their Listener Onboarding journey. As the Phiture Retention team scoped and implemented their current Welcome Emails and are experts in Braze, they were asked to help them solve this problem.
“Phiture’s CRM expertise has helped us overcome various technical challenges over time. We’ve been able to move faster and regularly iterate on campaigns which were vital for our users’ journey. Added to that, working with a team of smart and dedicated people is always a joy.”
Dora Trostanetsky, Senior Manager, Growth & Optimization
@ SoundCloud
The Solution
The Retention team at Phiture realized that SoundCloud had a trigger/segmentation conflict within Braze and with a small alteration to the user segmentation, they solved the problem.
SoundCloud explained that the user registration event and the email confirmation event happen simultaneously for users on Google, Facebook and Apple. This was problematic, as the canvas through which the Welcome Email was sent, was segmenting users based on having performed the user registration event and then triggering the email confirmation event. As a user first needs to satisfy the user segmentation logic within a Braze canvas and then perform the trigger event, this was causing Google, Facebook and Apple users to fall out; the user registration and email confirmation events were happening simultaneously, not one after the other as the Braze canvas logic stipulates.
This was fixed by moving the user registration event to the step level targeting and adding a couple of minutes delay to the step.
The Results
Welcome Email Send Volume Increased Drastically
Within one day, daily email sends increased by over 600%. Projected over the course of a year, millions of additional new users will receive Welcome Emails because of this change.
Impact on Activation Metrics
Since playing tracks and liking content are two important metrics for SoundCloud to continually grow, the Phiture team focused on influencing new users to complete these actions early in their lifecycle. These Welcome Emails show an average uplift over control of 4.5% in Plays within 1 day and 4.2% in Likes within 1 day with 99% statistical significance.
The data shows us that by sending millions more Welcome Emails per year, an extra 507k users will play a track within 1 day and 315k users will like a track within 1 day. These are key activation steps that are highly correlated with longer-term engagement and retention.
This minor – but critical – adjustment in targeting logic is likely to make a massive impact on SoundCloud’s key metrics.
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website based in Berlin, Germany, that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio.
Client: SoundCloud
Website: https://soundcloud.com/
Services: Tech Audit