Hi there! 👋
If January is the month of goal-setting, February is the month of setting actions into motion. As always, here are the important takeaways of the month if you’re pressed for time:
🌸 Churn is a dreaded word. But the only way to get over the dread is to improve retention and reduce its impact by identifying its root causes. Will it be pretty? No. But, at least you’ll know how to fix it.
Also, what’s worse than customers deciding to churn? Customers churning involuntarily. Say what? Yes, it happens. But there are things you can do (or not do) to stop it from occurring.
🌸 There’s no such thing as a failed experiment. Experiments are all about gaining insights. Again, you can only improve what you know.
If an experiment proves your hypothesis right, great! Keep doing what you’re doing. If an experiment disproves your hypothesis, it’s not an idea worth pursuing further, and you need to find new ways to reach your customers.
Trying, failing, and knowing is better than not trying, not failing, and not knowing. So, go forth and be the best marketing scientist you can be! 💪
Prevention is better than cure. Retention is better than acquisition
Churn is a silent killer. It may show no symptoms until it’s a tad too late. By the time the threat of churn rears its ugly head, you may already be in a pot of boiling water.
If you can’t convince your existing customers to stay long enough, it simply won’t matter how many new customers your marketing and sales team manage to acquire.
Customers churn for many reasons. Maybe you’re not attracting your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Maybe your product needs further development. Maybe you have a faulty system in place. There are tons of maybe-s to explore.
But not knowing what’s causing your customer to leave you is pretty much the final nail in the coffin.
So what can you do to reduce churn?
The first step to reducing churn is to face your demons — analyze your user churn.
As our Growth Marketing Strategist, Ali, puts it: you can identify the root causes of churn by analyzing user churn and take steps to improve retention and reduce the impact of churn on your revenue.
Here’s how 👇
💰 Define your churn metric; decide what constitutes a churned user, whether it is a user who cancels their subscription, stops using the app, or goes inactive.
💰 Calculate your churn rate.
💰 Segment your data and analyze churn by different segments.
💰 Track key user engagement metrics to identify patterns of declining engagement that may indicate a higher risk of churn.
💰 Use cohort analysis to analyze your retention rate of different groups of users and identify trends and patterns in churn over time.
💰 Survey or interview your churned customers to determine their reasons for churning and find ways to retain them.
💰 Use historical data and machine learning techniques to predict which users will likely churn in the future and target retention efforts accordingly.
💰 Track user behavior at different customer journey stages, understand the drop-off points, and work on reducing them.
Then, there’s the other type of churn — involuntary churn.
Involuntary churn happens when your customer leaves you not by choice but by system errors. For example, a failed payment (true story!) Here’s what happened to another one of our Growth Marketing Strategists, Wiebke. 👇
There are 2 highlights from this story ☝️
⚡There are plenty of ways to keep your customers from churning, whether they left by choice or not. But you need to first figure out the cause before you design and try solutions. In this case, a payment reminder may help prevent involuntary churn.
⚡ Thumbs up to Julia (Customer Success) and Amr (Head of Product) from Urban Sports Club for their quick response and for not missing the opportunity to ask Wiebke for her feedback. Now, that’s what we call customer success done right! 😍 Find the full conversation here.
When was the last time you spoke to a customer to find out what they thought about you?
Speaking of which…
Here’s what we have in store for Valentine’s Day 💞
By replying to this email or contacting an Advancer you know, you can get a discount code to our webstore for a Valentine’s Day project or audit! 💞
We offer cool things, such as:
🚀 Content audits
🚀 Customer research projects
🚀 Cookie banner setups
🚀 HubSpot audits
🚀 GA4 migration projects
And if you really want a poem, here’s one for you too:
Roses are red 🌹 but we have none for you.
All we can give is a discount or two. 😉
To wrap it up 🌯
There is no one-size-fits-all way of marketing to your customers.
#1 reason customers churn: Not attracting the right customers into your funnel.
#1 secret to keeping your customers happy: Deliver a top-notch experience. Your customers stay because of the experience they have with you.
#1 step to do all the above: Analyze your user churn data. Identify the root causes. Design solutions and experiments to focus on customer retention. It’s cheaper than acquiring new ones all the time.
As always, we’re here to help if you need it. We’re also really happy to hear from you. 💌
And psst: If you found this content interesting, subscribe here to make sure you won't miss any future letters! 👇