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- Sean Ellis on how to dramatically improve retention in two weeks
Sean Ellis on how to dramatically improve retention in two weeks
After helping ignite Dropbox’s growth through its viral referral program, Sean Ellis agreed to consult a mobile security company called Lookout for 6-months to see if he could ignite their growth too.
His first step was to survey Lookout’s existing users and ask how disappointed they’d be if they could no longer user the product. Only 7% said they’d be “Very Disappointed” — well below the benchmark of 40% that is usually indicative of product/market fit.
The next step was to dig into why those 7% of users would be very disappointed without the product. At the time, Lookout offered a variety of services from helping you find your lost phone to protecting it with a firewall. But Sean found that the “very disappointed” users only cared about the antivirus functionality.
“Now we know that antivirus was what people really valued,” Sean explains. “So step one was to just reposition the product on antivirus… By setting the right expectations around it upfront, you’re going to bring in the right people. The second thing we did was streamline onboarding so that the first thing the user did after signing up for the product was set up the antivirus protection. Then you got a message saying you’re now protected from viruses”
Sean continues:
“It was really the combination of those two things: setting the right expectations and then speed to value. The next cohort of people we surveyed was at 40% saying they’d be very disappointed without the product… Six months later it was 60%, and then they hit a $1 billion valuation four or five years later.”
That change from 7% to 40% only took two weeks. Sean explains:
“Ultimately moving retention is really hard but it’s usually more a function of onboarding to the right user experience than it is about the kind of tactical things that people try to do to improve retention. Until you deeply understand [why you have] product/market fit, you don’t have the tools to grow the business. So that’s really the first step: dig in and figure out who considers [your product] a must have? How are they using the product? What did they use before? What problem are they solving?”
One of Sean’s favorite questions for users is, “What is the primary benefit you get?” Then he asks, “Why is that benefit important to you?”
This context is really important. He explains why:
“When you really dig into the context of why that must-have benefit is important to people, you start to get the ingredients to build that flywheel that leads to long-term sustainable growth… Make sure your product roadmap is doubling down on the things that are important to your must-have customers, your onboarding is bringing new people to the right experience, your messaging is setting the right expectations, your acquisition campaigns are targeting people who actually have the need. It’s all about getting the right people to the right experience. And then even your engagement loop is just about reinforcing how to get people to experience that benefit more often.”