?? The ugly problem with resurrecting your inactive users... ?? The Easter Egg Hunt for hidden value ??

Hey folks!? It's almost Easter - so I thought I'd pick a season-appropriate?theme that's equally annoying?as that relentless onslaught of Easter Eggs for weeks without end, while you're desperately trying not to ruin your diet...

Resurrecting your inactive users. Terrible idea.?

Watch my video rant?

...Most of the time, at least. Let me explain. Most content on resurrecting or reactivating users focuses on short-sighted, growth-hacky tactics that bring short term activity spikes - and nothing in the long run in terms of retention. Write a re-engagement email! Book them on a call with CS! Bribe them with a discount to come back!

But by doing so - your marketing/growth team has done nothing to address the reasons why. You'll be?wasting all the time and resources on re-activation campaigns to bring your dormant users back to your app, just to see them leave again.

You will see that if the retention rate of your "re-activated" users is in fact...lower than that of new users. Welcome to"the problem curve":?

Guess what - if someone left, they probably had a reason.? There's something that?made this segment inactive in the first place.?If you've done nothing to address (or?redress) that - all your resurrection efforts will be going down the rabbit hole.??? So how to do it right???

Define who's inactive AND understand why

First of all, you should set up your retention tables (Userpilot has a Retention Dashboard?that's already set up for you) and look at the users who are dropping off. Put the users that dropped off on the respective weeks in a segment:?

Study this user segment:?

• Do they have any attributes in common, such as role, company size, or are they users of a particular plan??
• Where did they come from - were these users coming from a specific campaign, that maybe led them to believe your product offers something it doesn't??
• What was the average NPS score for this segment?as opposed to all users? What themes can you spot in the qualitative follow-up responses? Did they complain about something? What about their CSAT and CES scores? What about their health score??
• Which features did they engage with before becoming inactive??

• Launch a survey asking them for a reason why they stopped using your product. You will need to send it to them via email/ LinkedIn, because they are not inside your product.?Pick up the phone. If these were big, promising accounts - you need to do all you can to learn why they dropped off.? ?
• Then - address the reasons.?Hence I can't tell you exactly what you need to do so that your resurrection efforts make sense?- yes, send them emails, but first explain how you address the problems that drove them away from your product first. I don't wanna sound patronizing but let's spell it out just in case: it only makes sense to try to resurrect the users that had problems you?can/were able to?address - with everyone else, you'll get a short-lived burst in activity followed by this miserable exodus again.?

The easiest segment to resurrect is the one where the users failed to get value from your product that can be in fact obtained from it - simply because they didn't activate. Try to understand why and double down on onboarding - both primary and secondary (read more about the differences here) - to unlock all that hidden value from your product.

?P.S.?If onboarding UX is something you feel you could brush up on - we have a really helpful webinar on that coming up:??

How to evaluate your resurrection efforts??

Again - put the users you subjected to your resurrection campaign in a new segment, and compare your retention trends for this segment vs new users.?

If it's higher than that of new users - or at least the same - you've done something right :)?If not...well, have that Cream Egg (or two) for now and we'll get back to it next week.?

Happy Easter & see you soon!?