A couple of years ago, the slogan was “Retention is king”. Now it’s “Retention is the new growth”. While apps still tend to spend six to seven times more on new customer acquisition, according to Marketing Metrics, the success rate of selling to an existing user is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new user is only 5-20%.

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At the same time, user retention remains the most significant revenue driver:

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Therefore, retention rate is one of the most important metrics for your company to track and improve. It is also an important barometer of your app’s success, the basis of monetization, as engaged users are more likely to generate revenue by making in-app purchases.

Mobile app publishers that build the best user experiences and interact with users can see the benefits of that work reflected in the retention rate.

Face the Difficulties

Users are surely overwhelmed with market offers nowadays. And while retention is a mission-critical metric, it has become a significant pain point for marketers. The average retention benchmark decreased to just 5.1% & 3.6% last year for iOS and Android apps, respectively.

A common pitfall for businesses is thinking that if they have a great product, then user retention will follow naturally. And, while this might be the case in some instances, it’s only a short-term strategy. Sooner or later, your users may leave. If you stop trying, your clients start feeling that you no longer care about them.

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Naturally, customers stop buying from a business for unique and personal reasons, but they tend to fall under a few similar categories. In CallMiner’s 2020 report on Customer Churn, unfair treatment topped the list of reasons that drive users away.

Users who feel poorly treated by mobile apps would stay loyal if they had a better user experience. Ineffective services, such as limited access to customer support, solutions that don’t solve their problem, inability to interact with support or other users, are also causing users to feel angry and frustrated.

There's a need to earn a user’s loyalty continuously, and an in-app community becomes a powerful tool for this.

Use Community to Your Advantage

Community certainly is a vital tool for driving engagement within your current user base as well as creating lasting user relationships.

Even though users constantly search for better solutions, human beings don't tend to leave their established communities easily. Use this vulnerability to boost retention by providing a community environment within your app.

Let your users share their content and grasp the benefits of social push notifications such as "Someone liked your comment," "You got a new reply," etc. Your clients can subscribe to the topics they're interested in and get notified with the updates. Additionally, you can post admin topics with an auto-notification for all your users.

Pro tip: to increase retention, add a community section to your app and set up social push notifications in the console

Let Your Users Talk

Tackling churn problems starts by actively listening to what your users are saying about their experience, and implementing an in-app community is a great start.