How can training institutions establish a "retention" model to continuously double the number of users
Time:2026-01-21
Source:Artstep
Before starting, please imagine a scenario
You are the head of the marketing department of an art training institution, and there are two main ways for you to attract new customers: 1. Conduct Baidu bidding to attract customers to stay; 2. Operate WeChat communities and attract new members through viral growth. But you find that the cost of acquiring customers through Baidu bidding is getting higher and higher, while the user churn rate through WeChat is also high, and paid conversion has always been a problem.
What would you do at this point?
Firstly, let's consider three questions:
- What is the fundamental purpose of our user growth?
- What is the relationship between customer acquisition and retention?
- What is retained growth?
In fact, "retained growth" is not a new word. As the growth rate of China's mobile Internet users declines year by year, it has become a consensus that traffic is exhausted. In addition to continuing to search for traffic troughs, major platforms and manufacturers have also begun to shift their focus to the existing market, that is, to create "private domain traffic pools".
As a market leader, facing the customer acquisition costs of hundreds or thousands of yuan and traffic blockades from peers and cross-border competitors, if you don't attract new customers, you will die. If you attract new customers, you will die faster. How can you break through these user growth dilemmas?
This leads us to the first question, what is the fundamental purpose of user growth?
I think it's to increase the company's revenue!
Can be broken down into two parts: new revenue growth + retained revenue growth
For example, driving new growth is fueling the car, while retaining growth is engine efficiency. High efficiency engines can run with just a little fuel, while low efficiency engines waste more fuel. So if you want to spend less money and make the car run farther, you need to improve engine efficiency, that is, increase retained revenue growth.
As shown in the figure, retained revenue growth=number of old users * repurchase rate * customer order value. With the same number of users, as long as the repurchase rate and customer order value are increased, the overall revenue can be improved. Specifically, it extends the user lifecycle and increases the user ARPU value.
So, we introduced the first model
User Growth Model
Design an advanced user path to create super users (improve repurchase rate)
1. User defined
Different business models have different standards for defining users: sales categories are defined by the amount of consumption; The media category is defined by the duration of stay. And users can be specifically divided into the following four types:
(1) Recruit new users: For users who are new to the product, they need to see the value of the product in the first place.
(2) Effective users: Registered users or member users (depending on the business model) need to receive unexpected value incentives in order to convert.
(3) Super user: VIP customers, limited in quantity, require scarce resources to convert.
(4) Lost users: Users who leave at any level.
2. Key user growth behaviors
(1) Recruit new users and retain them：
Good content accumulation: community communication + free courses + game development
(2) Effective user activation：
Activate Value: Material Incentives + Stimulating Pain Points + Strengthening Value
(3) Super User Advanced：
Creating a sense of personal customization: high threshold + scarcity + drawing big cakes
Designed for deep users of the product or users who wish to gain a higher level of identity recognition. The entry threshold is high, and the permissions granted should be scarce. It is best to output them together with the brand values.
(4) User fission and user churn prevention：
Fission and anti churn can be embedded at any level of user growth.
Product Value Model
Create a product value ladder and enhance user ARPU value.
Essentially, any product can be divided into the three levels mentioned above according to its value gradient. This is the vertical construction of the product system, aimed at digesting high customer value products in stages; At each level, small orders can be converted into large orders by combining products from different categories, which is the horizontal construction of the product system.
1. Vertical disassembly of products in the same category
A product can be divided into three levels based on difficulty and value. The operation courses of the three classes are divided into P1, P2, and P3, and the prices corresponding to each course increase in sequence, and the value of their content also increases step by step. Users can learn different levels of courses in the same category at different stages of their lifecycle, which will help them continue to advance.
2. Horizontal combination of different product categories
Combining products of different categories at the same level aims to maximize user order value.
3. Discount Curve
The higher the user's consumption value, the greater the discount they enjoy.
The purpose is to motivate users to complete large purchases. If a member recharges for three classes and purchases 1000, they will receive a refund of 200; Buy 2000, get 500 back; Buy 3000, get 1000 back; Or, for example, when applying for a hair salon card, recharge 1000 and get a 10% discount, recharge 2000 and get an 20% discount, recharge 3000 and get a 30% discount.
Through the above two models, it can be found that the essence of retained revenue growth is to create a closed loop of user lifecycle and product value, and achieve enterprise revenue generation and cost reduction.
For the convenience of understanding and summarizing, I will merge the above two models.
Finally, the third model was derived
Nuclear Energy Retention Growth Model
Design user growth paths and maintain a balance between supply and demand of value in each link (user | product)
1. Bottom period
Stage objective: Improve new user retention rate | Effective user activation rate
Value balance: Provide users with free content and form a UGC ecosystem. If everyone is a product manager supporting authors among users to achieve a closed loop of content production and sales.
Keywords: Unexpected value
2. Lumbar phase
Stage objective: Cultivate user usage habits | Guide super users to advance
Value balance: Provide users with scarce content and empower them with PGC.
Keywords: Differentiated Value
3. Head stage: Improve user repurchase rate | Customer order value
Value balance: Provide users with extremely scarce content.
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Keywords: scarcity value