How to get lost users to come back to your product

How to get lost users to come back to your product(blog.alexgodin.com)

32 points by alexgodin 13 years ago | 16 comments

solox3 13 years ago |

You should also know when to stop emailing them.

I have received over twenty emails from Facebook, asking me if I know Tom Levesque, and to SEND him a friend request. Over and over, and over again. No, I don't know a Tom Levesque. I don't need to be asked the same question repeatedly.

jsnell 13 years ago | |

Right on.

A while back I logged into a Twitter account that had been dormant for a couple of years, since it appeared that some good friends had started using it more actively. As a result, I started getting email from Twitter once a week like clockwork. Clearly not a "our algorithms determined that something interesting happened" message, but a "our algorithm determined that you should get a message once a week, let's pick a random event from your social graph" one.

The main result is that I know better than to ever log in again and become a marginally engaged user worth spamming.

codegeek 13 years ago | |

Even better, facebook sends me email to my old email address asking to come back on fb when I am still on fb but with a new and different email address on the same account that I updated. Go figure!!

epo 13 years ago | |

This guy is easily impressed. I also get incessant spam from Facebook, it is one-note harrassment. The one variation I have is that it tells me about messages or likes from myself. Facebook is just sleazy and I am waiting for the inevitable backlash.

jdbernard 13 years ago | |

Yep. Facebook's flood of email did not get me back on board. It just got all of their email redirected by a rule to the trash bin.

gingerlime 13 years ago |

I also thought those fb emails, and even more so the linkedin ones where people endorse you to be very effective. So I personally hated and admired them at the same time.

The problem for me is that those tactics don't seem to translate so well outside of the social-network environment. When you have customers who use your products, and there's no personal interaction between customers, then what can you use that's as effective to bring customers back to use your product?

Features is perhaps the only thing, but it's not even remotely as effective in my opinion. And features can be a double-edged sword as they are quite often not really important to the customer.

factorialboy 13 years ago |

Persistent emails does not win me over. In fact when a reputed company / product I may have once tried sends me irrelevant emails, I just use the spam button.

Don't call (email) me, I'll call you (visit your website when i need to).

incision 13 years ago |

I've never used Facebook, but I'm flooded with messages from Twitter and LinkedIn which are identical to these.

Personally, I'd be much more likely to read and consider re-signing by way of less frequent messages which suggest how the product has been improved and why I might want to come back.

Incessant "FOMO" pressure just trains me to ignore that pattern.

kevinburke 13 years ago |

As a side note the photos of "people I may know" on Facebook, in emails I get and the emails in the post are mostly pretty girls.

alexgodin 13 years ago | |

Wow. It is pretty crazy that they're all female. I wonder if they have an algorithm to figure out who's more attractive or if they just choose people of the opposite gender.

lgray 13 years ago | | |

It's probably people with a lot of friends in your area. And if you already have a few friends, it's probably friends of those friends. Maybe pretty girls are just the ones with the most friends?

kevinburke 13 years ago | | |

If so it would be a pretty simple algorithm - just pick the people whose photos get the most views

chris_engel 13 years ago |

Well, I can hardly see a chance of using this in a service thats not a social Network.

For every other kind of service/app, I would send a reminder once in a while and/or showing the users what has changed on the service since their last visit.

Or much more crazy: ASK them why they are not coming back. If they are unhappy with your service. I think you might be suprised about how many valuable answers you will get.

carlsednaoui 13 years ago |

Thanks for sharing Alex! Are there any other companies you think are worth looking at in terms of email marketing?

I'm personally a fan of how well designed Twitter's re-engagement emails are.

kunle 13 years ago |

> Data shows that emails with questions in the subject perform much much better.

Would you be able to point to this? Would love the reference.

bernardom 13 years ago |

FYI: You blurred out the names on the image but not on the sentence above it.