Is there anything worse than a relationship ending?

You can probably think of a time that happens. Ughh. Yowch.
Exhausting to think about.

If your product had feelings, it’d probably feel the same way about customers who leave.

And we can’t have that.

So here are 3 ways you can use edutainment principles to increase customer retention for your product or service. Your product’s feelings are at stake:

1) Your brand becomes a friend, not just a service provider

When a service provider comes to your house, you offer them a drink then keep out of their way. You want them there only for as long as they’re doing precisely what they need to, then you want them gone.

When a friend comes to your house, you offer them your whole fridge, a place to stay if they need it. You want them there for as long as they want to be there.The difference is profound. We need to give the brand a voice and personality (in both product UX and content) to ‘befriend’ rather than merely ‘transact’. Make signing up easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Make getting started easy, valuable, and enjoyable. Don’t behave like a service provider. Behave like a friend.

2) Edutaining content: another reason to stay engaged

Knowledgebase. FAQs. Documentation. Guides. These all sound boring, don’t they? That impression didn’t come from nowhere. We learned this the hard way over many years: going deeper with a product is kinda boring.

But we want users to go deeper. So use better paradigms. If your people enjoy the comic in their newspaper, use that paradigm. If your people enjoy watching fun videos on YouTube or Netflix in their own time, use that paradigm. If your people like playing games, use that paradigm. Give them WHAT they want to know, HOW they love to consume.

3) Sticking with 1 and 2 is where ‘a spark’ comes from

We’re faithful to our partners. We wouldn’t ‘switch to a competitor’. Those relationships started by being a friend: interactions being easy, valuable and enjoyable. Those relationships were nurtured by giving reasons to stay engaged, modelling paradigms they enjoy.

And so it is with products we ‘love’: we don’t cancel them when we’re not ‘feeling it’ or they go through a rough patch, we don’t switch because someone else has ‘better features’. Sustained integration of effective edutainment makes your product about as churn-proof as you’re ever likely to get without being the single only option on the market. Not because you’re “the only choice”, or even “the best choice”, but because you’re “my choice”.

Question for the week: which of these do you think could apply to YOUR business? Do you have ideas of how you might apply them, even if they’re just dreamy head-in-the-clouds ideas?

Reply to this email with your answer.
I read every one, and reply to as many as I can.

Have a good weekend lovebirds,