How Do You Measure Retention? Understand the Common Pitfalls, Challenges & More

Introduction

An Over-The-Top or OTT media platform is a service that delivers content to customers via the internet. Due to high competition, retention is a critical challenge in this industry. Not only are we competing with hundreds of brands but also with media services that not really in our space. The “TikToks of the World.”

HOOQ is one such OTT media platform. It is an on-demand service for online streaming with a presence in various places including Singapore, Thailand, etc. The company used to deliver its streaming solutions via media channels in India as well.

Ashish Mahajan, HOOQ’s Head of CRM Strategy and Customer Retention offered insights into the retention strategy of the media company. From the cohort analysis to golden retention rules, there’s so much to learn from HOOQ’s strategy.

The Metric That Defines Retention

Moving towards retention and analysis, an important factor to consider is cohort analysis. Looking at cohorts, understanding user patterns, and retention patterns form the key to knowing the lifetime value and churn rate of customers.

Cohort analysis is a behavioural strategy involving assessing user groups with shared traits to understand and track their behaviours and actions.

“The simpler way is to look at Cohort Analysis to figure out how people and which of the cohorts are retaining and for how long.”

A part of HOOQ’s strategy is also pioneering bite-sized subscriptions, including daily, weekly, monthly, and annual subscriptions, along with free subscriptions.

Retention Through Recurring Subscriptions

The idea of HOOQ’s retention is to increase recurring subscriptions; they stay with the business for the longest term. These recurring customers already believe in the brand’s proposition, they believe in and accept your content quality, strategy, and delivery.

“People who are on recurring subscriptions are the ones who are going to stay with you the longest. They have bought into the brand proposition and the content proposition.”

As a result, focusing on customers relevant to the brand makes the premium layer or the layer that is interested in paying money for the offered services. Below this is the free layer, which essentially nurtures the freemium model by dipping in and out of the paid subscriptions.

Post Facto Retention Strategy

In India, HOOQ utilised its channel-based route to break into the market. Therefore, HOOQ’s media streaming is included as a channel on various online streamlining applications like Airtel Xtream, Hotstar, MAXstream, etc.

Essentially, the company had a model that refrained them from owning the customer. The retention cohort analysis in a particular case was replaced with the Post Facto strategy. Later, the company used to analyse non-real-time data to improve retention.

A Comprehensive Retention Strategy

HOOQ curated a comprehensive retention strategy in a unique way. From its LTB (Likelihood to Buy) perspective, there is no differentiation in the retention or conversion strategy of a customer who has just joined or the customer who is on the free layer for multiple days or months now.

However, cohorts are prepared differently. We can prepare various cohorts for the customer type and from which source they are subscribing to the channel. From here, we can move on and analyse which source of acquisition (For example, Facebook) is offering more in terms of LTB.

“Looking at the cohort view is the best view to really understand how and what of retention.”

Four Golden Rules

Every organisation has that ‘Ah-ha’ moment. For instance, for Facebook, their golden rule is to get the user to add 7 friends in 10 days to retain them. For Netflix, the rule is if the user is watching premium content for 7 hours, they will stay on it for approximately 2 years.

Every business can create its own rule that works in favour of its retention. Over years, HOOQ has found these 4 golden rules that help them retain users:

24-Hour Rule

Once a user joins the platform from any source, make them watch something within 24 hours of their arrival.

New Every Day

The second rule is an easy one: make your users watch new media content every day. When users are arriving on HOOQ from different sources or watching it as a channel, make them watch new content each day.

Save 20% Customer

From the entire user group on the platform, save and retain 20% of these users to advance growth and drive success.

“The challenge with any OTT player is the churn. We are competing with the TikToks of the world, we are competing with the movie theatre. So, on HOOQ, you could do a paid subscription, you could do a daily subscription, you could do a weekly subscription, or you could take no subscription and watch on the free layer. You could also take a ticket and watch a movie or series.”

Identify Unique Company Rule

While there are many models for retention in the market, every business needs to identify the golden rule that works for them; and then you stick to that!

The Factor Impacting Retention Cohort

Every organisation has historical data, we have tons and tons of data flowing in each day. Utilise descriptive analytics on data to understand your data. It will help you identify the key markers that encourage your users to stick by your side.

HOOQ found out that in big-screen users or TV users of the channel. They stay connected for a longer-term. Identifying this as the key factor, they started encouraging users to sign in on their TV devices. For instance, finding the exact time a user is casting the screen to the TV and sending them a notification to sign in at the right time.

Another key factor for retention is how many people are downloading media content and watching it offline later.

“When people download something to watch offline, they stick more.”

These are the micro (Read: Ah-ha) moments to grab an opportunity and engage your users at the right moment. Therefore, run descriptive analytics to find out churn rate factors. Once you have identified the break in the flow, plan an intervention. Create appropriate interventions according to your users and retain your customers.