Retention & Revenue Series Part IV: How gamification can supercharge adoption

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Area: Product and data

Goal: Motivate various cohorts to take desired actions that make sense on their customer journey to extract more value from your products (and specific features that you want to increase adoption for)

User Cohorts: All (applies to low-active and high-active users)

There are so many great product-related retention strategies that I’m sure you’ve read, heard about, or even currently have implemented.

While I could list all the retention strategies related to product, if I had to hone into one which I’ve seen can be effective for SaaS brands, it’s using automation to give customers progress reports and insights on their platform usage, to "gamify" adoption.

However, the key to this strategy working effectively is that it needs to focus on the primary benefits of the core features that really help motivate users to keep using the platform.

4 examples of data reports and insights in action to "gamify" the adoption process

A great example, in this case, of a top platform many of us use is Grammarly. 

Here are some examples of emails I get regularly about how I'm using the platform.

Tailored metrics based on weekly activity:

Overview of different types of tones that were detected during the week:

Plus, something I think is a good addition to have with these types of data usage emails is including what the ‘total community has generated:

(Above Image credits: Grammarly Premium - directly into my personal email inbox)

Another amazing example from a company I’ve mentioned throughout this series is Loom:

(Image credit: Loom email - directly into my inbox)

As you can see in the above email, Loom has told me I’ve saved (or eliminated), on average, 1 meeting by creating 4 videos. After all, this is one of the core motivations why people use Loom - save time on meetings. 

Why data reports/insights and progress emails are effective (and great for encouraging inactive users to become more active)

• Great for keeping your product top of mind and reminding users gently about their usage

• Reminds users about key features they aren’t utilizing properly, which can help them achieve their goals faster if they used them more often

Mistakes to avoid and keep in mind (and recommendations)

• Send timely emails based on your primary segment/cohort behavior (DAU/WAU/MAU).

  • Don’t send weekly progress or insights emails/notifications for the sake of it. It needs to make contextual sense for your primary user base. If people, on average, need to use your product around 2-3 times per month, send a monthly report. If it’s a product that has users logging in and using it daily or a few times a week, you can consider a weekly progress report. 

• The data displayed to the user needs to make contextual sense. Don’t just send data for the sake of data - educate and provide helpful tips too.

  • Ensure not just to display data but also include helpful resources from the blog, video library, or anything that can help the user improve their product usage and unlock more benefits from the product. 

For example, for sending more than just data, Grammarly and Loom both include links to helpful content at the bottom of their emails:

(Image credit: Grammarly Premium)

(Image credit: Loom email)

Experiments and optimizations to consider trying

• Start small (if you currently don’t have this initiative in place).

  • Focus on doing one progress report experiment right (with user feedback) for your most important segment before scaling to other cohorts. Avoid doing multiple custom data report emails and in-app notifications at once across all segments if you’re starting out. This is keeping in mind internal resource capacity, as well as ensuring not to be annoying to users.

• Include helpful tips and content. 

  • Whenever you’re sharing data, include resources that are contextually relevant to the feature usage you’re reporting on. For example, “Unlock more of X through these Y tips.”

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