To improve retention you can focus on — activation, engagement and resurrection.

Focus on Dormant users.

Returning users who used to have a habit back to an engaged state.

We call these dormant users, they once had the habit established, but no longer.

When to focus on resurrection?

Consider the size of the dormant users

Consider the difference between non-activated and dormant users.

1. Non-activated users never understood the core value prop or decided that the core value prop wasn’t for them.
2. Dormant users understood the core value prop, established the habit, and then unengaged.

Most users among your inactive users will be non-activated users, they have an ACTIVATION problem.

Within dormant users, you will see that the probability of resurrecting a user decreases exponentially. For users that have been dormant a long time, you should consider those churned. These users are often not worth trying to resurrect, the probability of resurrecting them is so low that it’s not worth the effort/cost to try.

When considering who to resurrect, think about your dormant users only, subtracting non-activated or churned users.

Potential lift

Users (dormant only) x response rate x % retained = lift

Usually you have a low response rate, so the lift will be small.

True cost of resurrection campaigns

1. Damage to your channels: un-engagement, unsubscribe, spam reports, etc.
2. Negative word of mouth