Mastering retention: Product Analytics Playbook V.1

by Alicia Shiu, Archana Madhavan

Care about growth? Then you should care about user retention.
Without retention, your product is a leaky bucket; you can pour in as many dollars as you like into marketing, advertising, and other means of user acquisition, and still wind up with no long-term users — which means no sustainable growth and no means to generate revenue.
There are thousands of articles listing ‘growth hacks’ for increasing retention, ranging from social media tactics, to drip campaigns, targeted ads, and push notifications, etc. The problem with most of these tactics are that they’re just that: short-term, often unspecific tactics that lead to a transient uptick in active users. To date, there is no broadly applicable framework for improving user retention at various stages of the user lifecycle. Until now.

155 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Barun Patra · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has been written by two experienced PMMs at Amplitude. It is a very short read and I will probably re-look at it at various instances in the coming months. A basic guide to how you should look at your current users and plan for the future (how to retain them). It also states at every instance how Amplitude is a powerful analysis tool for tracking engagement and retention metrics. All in all a good basic read.

[Konstantin Valiotti · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read. To re-read. To keep with you at all times.
The bible of retention.

[Roshan Prabhakar · Rating 5 out of 5]

For something that is supposedly marketing material (at least the way I received it), this book is a gold mine. The fact that this one has a pretty good rating on goodreads piqued my interest and led to me giving it a shot. Mastering retention is amazing 101 material for product analytics in general and retention in particular. The book displays a lot of first principles thinking and demystifies product analytics and in fact, makes it look at lot simple. I also like the fact that the "Amplitude pitch" is not overdone at all and seamlessly blends to the overall narrative.

All in all, this book is worth the time spent and I would strongly recommend it to all the PMs out there especially if you are driving a consumer facing product.

[Daeus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really well done and practical guide to utilizing retention to increase growth. It was easy to read with very clear definitions and examples. I definitely recommend it for product analysts/product managers (particularly in tech).

[Justohidalgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very deep description of retention analytics. Really down to earth, with very clear explanations and full of examples that, even if not beijg a user of a Amplitude, ome can easily follow. A must.

[Alex Mykal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for everyone working on digital products and services. You’ll find the very useful but simple tips and approaches to building the retention process.

Strongly recommend

[Oleksandr Kurdiuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough and explanatory book on user retention analytics for digital services, crafted for a specific analytics platform, but still very useful for all the retention specialists.