retention-and-engagement

What this skill does

# Retention & Engagement

**Category:** Growth

**Source:** https://refoundai.com/lenny-skills/s/retention-engagement

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Retention & Engagement | Refound AI

Lenny Skills Database     SKILLS  PLAYBOOKS  GUESTS  ABOUT               SKILLS  PLAYBOOKS  GUESTS  ABOUT                     Growth   29 guests | 47 insights

Retention & Engagement  Retention is the ultimate measure of product value. If users don't come back, you haven't solved a real problem. The goal is to build habits that bring users back daily, especially in the critical first seven days, while removing friction and providing immediate rewards that satisfy present bias.

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Read Guide

The Guide  5 key steps synthesized from 29 experts.

1 Prioritize the first seven days obsessively  The zero-to-seven day window is when you either lock in user behavior or lose them forever. Once users reach a seven-day streak or milestone, loss aversion kicks in and retention flattens. Focus disproportionate experimentation and resources on this critical onboarding period.

Featured guest perspectives

"We've looked at the data for our retention curves, and what we found is that once you get to seven days, loss aversion kicks in, and you retain. So, going from a one to a two-day streak, huge jump in retention... Once you hit day seven, it flattens out."

— Jackson Shuttleworth    "One of the things that I'm constantly reminding myself of is that a tool like Codex naturally is a tool that you would become a power user of... it's just critically important to go look at your D7 retention."

— Alexander Embiricos        2 Get users to the 'aha moment' faster  Shorten 'time to value' by exposing users to the product's 'special sauce' as quickly as possible. Removing adoption blockers is just as important for retention as adding new features. Create a dedicated 'blockers' team to systematically eliminate friction points.

Featured guest perspectives

"I think it is important to get someone into a product and very quickly have them experience some special sauce, something that's amazing about the product... shortening the time to scene and having that incredible moment and seeing the true value of the product."

— Dylan Field    "I've consistently seen that improving onboarding is one of the highest leverage opportunities for both signup conversion and increasing long term retention. Getting people to your aha moment more quickly and reliably is so incredibly important."

— Kristen Berman        3 Use positive reinforcement over negative feedback  After a user 'fails' (loses a game, misses a target), surface their successes rather than highlighting mistakes. This emotional recalibration dramatically improves retention and engagement. Build feedback loops that are encouraging rather than discouraging.

Featured guest perspectives

"When you lose a game now as opposed to surfacing your blunders and your horrible stuff that you did, we flip it on its head and so we show you your brilliant moves, your best moves, and we have coach say something encouraging... That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%, user retention by a lot as well."

— Albert Cheng        4 Build a gamification system with three pillars  Effective gamification requires a tight core loop (daily habits), a metagame for long-term motivation (leaderboards, paths), and a profile that reflects the user's accumulated investment. Each element reinforces the others to create sticky behavior.

Featured guest perspectives

"Jorge actually had this model of gamification patterns having essentially three pillars to it. You have the core loop, you have the metagame, and then you have the profile... Build a core loop that rewards daily habits. Implement a metagame (like leaderboards or paths) for long-term striving. Ensure the user profile reflects their accumulated progress and investment."

— Albert Cheng        5 Create proactive and reactive win-back experiences  For mature products, dormant users are often a larger pool than new users. Design specific 'resurrection' experiences that help returning users re-onboard. Build win-back flows triggered by specific drops in measurable engagement milestones.

Featured guest perspectives

"It's actually worth spending some time making sure that that resurrected, for lack of a better word, experience inside the product is really excellent and that you find novel ways to try to bring them back."

— Albert Cheng    "The only way to catch them if they fall is if you're measuring something meaningful along the way... We also have a map where it's the experience to get them to a certain value moment, but then that win back experience to get them back in should they fall out for any reason."

— Gia Laudi

✗ Common Mistakes

Masking poor retention with explosive top-line growthOptimizing local conversion rates while restricting the top of the funnelOver-simplifying onboarding to the point where the product loses its identityFocusing on acquisition over retention and expansion     ✓ Signs You're Doing It Well

30-40% Day 1 retention for consumer apps, 60%+ week-one retention for free productsCurrent user retention rate (CURR) is your most impactful metric for DAUUsers report they'd be 'very disappointed' without the productDormant users are successfully re-engaging through resurrection experiences

All Guest Perspectives

Deep dive into what all 29 guests shared about retention & engagement.

Albert Cheng 5 quotes

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"User retention is gold for consumer subscription companies. If you don't retain your users, then a lot of the onus is on getting them to pay on day one."  Tactical:  Focus on retention before aggressive day-one upselling.    "When you lose a game now as opposed to surfacing your blunders and your horrible stuff that you did, we flip it on its head and so we show you your brilliant moves, your best moves, and we have coach say something encouraging, 'Losing, just part of learning, keep it up.' That type of thing. That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%, user retention by a lot as well."  Tactical:  Audit product feedback loops to ensure they are encouraging rather than discouraging after a user failure.Surface 'brilliant moves' or successes even in a losing context.    "I think when you have your D one retention somewhere around the 30 or 40% mark, that's quite solid I think for a consumer app. If it's much lower than that, then sometimes I might question the intent of the user or the ability for that, you to I guess acquire just mathematically acquire enough users such that you can grow a big enough daily active user base."  Tactical:  Benchmark Day 1 retention at 30-40% to validate product-market fit and acquisition scalability.    "It's actually worth spending some time making sure that that resurrected, for lack of a better word, experience inside the product is really excellent and that you find novel ways to try to bring them back."  Tactical:  Create a specific 'resurrected user experience' that helps returning users catch up or re-onboard.Use social notifications (e.g., 'your friend joined') to trigger resurrection.    "Jorge actually had this model of gamification patterns having essentially three pillars to it. You have the core loop, you have the metagame, and then you have the profile."  Tactical:  Build a core loop that rewards daily habits.Implement a metagame (like leaderboards or paths) for long-term striving.Ensure the user profile reflects their accumulated progress and investment.

View all skills from Albert Cheng →

Alexander Embiricos 1 quote

Listen to episode →

"One of the things that I'm constantly reminding myself of is that a tool like Codex naturally is a tool that you would become a power user of... it's just critically important to go look at your D7 retention. Just go try the product, sign up from scratch again."  Tactical:  Prio