How the early wins influence a higher retention rate

This is one complex topic but I will aim to break it into a simpler form. Having worked in marketing for over 15 years, one thing I experienced across multiple sectors and services is this. When a customer wins early into their journey with your product, he or she will stay with you for longer. Now, the length of that lifetime will be defined based on many many factors but in this post I will share my thoughts on Churn, Retention and how to help your customers win.

In marketing one of the most important goal is "reducing churn". Also known as "churn rate''.

What is "churn"?

Churn simply put when a customer stops using your product or services. If let's say you have 10 customers who started using your product in December and for some reason 2 of them stopped using it before the end of the month, you are looking at a 20% churn rate.

Businesses do plenty of things to keep customers happy, active, loyal etc. One of the tactics or perhaps a known psychological factor to keep a customer active for a longer period than usual is the feeling of winning, especially at the early days of their activities.

Let's look at a couple of examples of what winning means.

Winning at Gambling

Probably first thing comes to mind when discussing this topic is the gamblers. After all, a gambler if wins will definitely stay for longer and play more. There is no stop!

On the other hand, if someone is gambling and loses a few times in a row, you would expect that person to not be around for long. Especially if he or she never experienced a win.

One of the interesting factors in gambling is that people remember their wins much better than their losses. Despite an average gambler could potentially be 20% worse off at all times, he or she will still remember that one time big win and will continue to play more.

Casino players experience these wins a lot more often than any other gamblers. For instance, a slot machine almost always lets you win super duper early into it. You could even hit a big one and double your stake in no time. Many people could get to 50x of their starting amount in under 10 minutes. When you think of how big it is, you realise the adrenaline pump it provides to those, in particular new players. They are now hooked.

Winning at Computer Games

The fun element of playing computer games also tickles similar senses like gambling. Although gambling could potentially be a lot more financially driven, in gaming the competitiveness and the acknowledgement of success really hooks us up.

Most successful games offer some form of early wins for their players. Whether you kill a monster and loot a cool item or earn a booster and level up quicker or simply take over the other cars at the last corner of racing a game... Winning is built into the games from the very first second you play.

If you don't win anything though... Like nothing. It's hard. It sucks. I don't have time for this... Delete...

Winning at Anything

Whether it's providing a service or product, if a user feels the early sign of it working for him or her then the likelihood of the user staying to carry on using it is higher.

What does that all mean?

We as marketers have a lot on our plates. To make sure everything we do translates into keeping that customer active for longer, focusing on the ''winning feeling". All that hard effort went into acquiring a customer only to lose him or her in a few days is such a waste. We've got to do something about it.

Reduce churn rate by making your customers WIN

It's not all about every customer to come first at a race (if you are a race track provider for those weekend spins most mid life car enthusiasts attend). Not every customer will win for sure. But there is almost an unlimited amount of wins you can give. Think about them as values.

Your service has perhaps a top value and along with it multiple micro values.

Your train might be quite fast and your passengers get from A to B pretty quick. So your top value looks like the SPEED.

During that journey 40% of your passengers value your Wifi signal strength at your carriages which helps them save a lot of time of work or education as they can get things done while travelling. Another WIN.

Your survey after the journey allows 5% of your customers to quickly express how they felt and connects them better with you by not only helping them save time but also allowing them to feel more looked after. Add this as 10th or 50th WIN as you like. There are many touchpoints like these you can implement.

In summary, you develop systems that provide many many wins to customers who will in return prefer to stay with you for longer. Never underestimate the power of making your customers feel like a champ. A true champ that always wins.