Crafted by Bess

How we designed a roadmap aimed at doubling the MAUs in one year

Project summary

Product: Contextual’s no-code in-app messaging through SDK
Goal: Reach the performance goals through optimisation of the user acquisition funnels
Outcome: 1M SDK installation and 100k MAUs

Role: Growth product designer
Team: Product manager, Marketing specialist, Development team


Contextual 2023

In this case study

This project is conducted with the aim of enhancing the user acquisition, engagement, and retention at Contextual. It resulted in a series of projects aimed at increasing the top of the funnel user acquisition, monitor of user drop offs and ultimately achieved sustainable growth and achieve business objectives.

Business analysis

Process: 1. Business OKRs | 2. Market analysis

Research goals:

Before diving into the research phase,  a research plan was created to define the goals and to outline the different methods that could be used. By doing this, we were able to conduct the research with a clear direction and purpose. 

  1. To discover what are the business goals and discover underlying pain points
  2. To understand the market of in-app messaging services and set expectations
  3. To define goals and success metrics for the set period

Market analysis

Based on data from Mixrank, we identified the common theme between the competitors as well as what extra we have to offer at Contextual. This helped in identifying the main aspects to focus on in this period and what customers needs are.

Company v.s. Product OKRs

To start, we had a series of meetings with the CEO and the marketing representative to go through the business OKRs and understand what we’re aiming to achieve.

Activity goal:

  • Our current users bring 50,000 installations, it’s important to aim and gain customers with large user base
  • It is reasonable with existing data to expect 10% conversion from trial to paid customers

User acquisition funnel

Process: 1. User acquisition funnel | 2. Drop off analysis | 3. Design of an action plan

Initiatives:

  • Introduce a full free plan to allow users to explore the value we offer:
    Our payment plans are limiting and might cause churn
  • Try paid google ads and start a meetup group for mobile app developers:
    Not many people know about the services that we offer and the key strong points that we have, we should try a few avenues to get the word out more
  • Improve the look and feel of the marketing website to reflect the brand’s identity:
    Our brand should be reflected into the marketing website
  • Redesign the signup page of Contextual:
    Our signup page does not reflect the strength points of our brand
  • SDK installation process should improve:
    Having a SDK based product can be a major source of user churn as this requires involvement of developers (not our main user persona) and prevents the immediate user activation.

User activation funnel

Process: 1. User activation funnel | 2. Drop off analysis | 2. Market analysis

User activation funnel:

In order to design a detailed user activation funnel we first identified the “aha’ moments in the product journey. This not only helped with clarifying the over all journey but removed all the unnecessary nice-to-have features that might not play a critical role in user retention and churn reduction.

Initiatives:

  • Redesign the SDK installation wizard:
    Dependency on SDKs is causing the biggest point of friction in customer’s journey to activation.
  • Set up sending weekly success emails to customers:
    It is important to remind the users of the value we’re offering. We set up weekly success emails as well as news letters.

Annual road map of 2023

Based on the timeline of the projects, we introduced the below road map as to prioritise and make the most out of the resources in hand.

Revision

  1. Identifying the “aha” moments in the customer journey resulted in 1M SDK installation
  2. Lack of developer resources limited our abilities to achieve what we aimed at Q2
  3. High dependency on the “SDK” installation has lead the business to consider other approaches like app frames, etc.
  4. Innovation is a necessity for startups. New ideas have risen and new products are being introduced that might disrupt this whole journey altogether.

Reflections

  • Funnel diagrams might be confusing. It is important to have the right step following each other and make sure they don’t impact the overall conclusion.
  • The number of overall users isn’t a good metrics for the value that the product has to offer. The overall monthly, weekly or daily active users of the customers is a better metrics for a B2B2C business.
  • Although it is the business’s ultimate goal to achieve customer success, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the necessary resources are in place to conduct the projects.