Growth stories from Pinterest, Wish and an NFT collectible startup to increase signups, improve activation and reduce churn

Today, we're lifting the curtain on three powerful experiments.

1. Pinterest Sign-Up Experiment: Boosting Sign-Ups by 15%+ by just 1 hour of engineering work.

Problem: A dwindling number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) had Pinterest's growth team scratching their heads. How could they reignite user interest and encourage sign-ups? 

Old Solution: If you went to any social media (facebook, etsy, reddit, pinterest) sign up page previously, you had to sign up/ sign in first to view content that either you found organically or a friend shared with you. This was natural friction for users who were asked to enter their information without knowing if content behind the sign-up was valuable. The growth team asked the question what if they could allow users to see/scroll the content first before asking them to sign up.The biggest fear from the product team was there is a short window to prove value and if we didn't capture it we would see an escalated bounce rate

Solution: They threw the rulebook out the window and decided to let users scroll freely before hitting them with the sign-up prompt. The magic number was three pages worth of content– after three pages views, users were gently encouraged to sign up.

Result: A jaw-dropping 15-20% increase in sign-ups with just one hour of work. Now, that's what we call an efficient growth experiment!

2. Unicorn NFT Collectible Startup Achieves 20%+ Increase in Activation

Problem: An NFT collectible startup that represents special moments in basketball games (e.g. Giannis' block in the NBA Finals, Steph Curry's half-court shot). The challenge was to engage users and encourage them to collect these coveted digital collectibles.

Old Solution: Initially, when users signed up for the app, they were prompted to purchase a pack of 3 mystery collectible cards for $7. However, this approach had its shortcomings. The product lead, an NBA fan himself, disliked the random nature of the packs, which often contained NBA moments unrelated to the user's preferences. He observed new users interacting with the products and they disliked it as well.

New Solution: The startup decided to revamp its approach by offering a more personalized experience. Users were required to purchase a cheaper NFT for $3 in order to unlock a chance at a pack of 3 cards for $7. Effectively this made it easier for a new user to understand how to play the game, leveraging established progression based patterns common in gaming.

Result: This strategic shift led to a remarkable 20% increase in activation. It required only two hours of engineering work and some clever UI tweaks to achieve this significant improvement. Activation, in this context, is defined as getting users to make three purchases.

3. Wish Preventing Churn Experiment: Win Back the Lost Audience

Problem: Wish had to recapture churned users and improve Time-on-Platform (ToP) Monthly Active Users (MAU) due to rising CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Solution: Janani and her team at Wish adopted a customer-centric approach. They offered real-time support to churned users, listened to their concerns. The team noticed ton of users churned due to high shipping costs and had noticed a lot of these users had churned prior to the feature teams launching flat rate shipping. The team quickly understood there was clear value that they could provide to this segment. Based on these learnings, they experimented with two variants: 

1. One group was offered a 5% discount with the flat rate shipping 

2. Other group was offered free shipping for their first purchase back

Result: Group that was offered free shipping, the profitability boosted by 10-12% and a 30% effectiveness rate in reclaiming churned users. It took 2 sprints of engineering work, where most of the work was towards coordination with cross-functional teams. They applied similar methodology to other top churn reasons and thus created a repeatable playbook.

Counterintuitive Insight:

Most Product Managers don't consider targeting churned users, but this experiment proved that recapturing them could be a goldmine, especially in thin-margin businesses like e-commerce.

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