Amplitude’s new Compass points to behaviors exhibited by returning users

Keeping the customers or visitors you have is a marketer’s first priority. But what helps keep them?

Today, mobile/desktop analytics firm Amplitude is launching a new product, Compass, that it says is the first in the open market to itemize the specific user behaviors that correlate to user retention, although such a capability does exist in-house for Facebook, Uber and other enterprises.

Previously, Amplitude only tracked numbers of users retained over time, not the surrounding behaviors.

CEO and co-founder Spenser Skates told me that multiplayer trivia game QuizUp employed his company’s new product during its beta phase.

QuizUp found that users who took advantage of the app’s social features within the first seven days of downloading the app — such as being challenged by another user to play a game — were 60 percent more likely to continue as users for at least the next 30 days.

Once the behavior is identified, Compass lets the marketer create a cohort of all the users who have exhibited that behavior, so they can be targeted as a common group for additional marketing. The behavior doesn’t need to be an action, however. A return visit to the same content on web pages, for instance, counts as behavior.

With this behavioral information, QuizUp could focus on promoting social features to new users in order to boost retention. But, Skates said, his company doesn’t yet have stats to indicate how valid Compass’s identification of behavioral drivers actually is.

In other words, it’s not yet statistically clear that these correlated behaviors are actually causative. It could be that long-term users simply like social gaming, for instance, instead of social gaming being a driver of long-term usage.

Here’s a screen showing top behaviors of returning users, for another client:

Amplitude defines “retention” however the client desires. It can mean that the user continues to play an app over a given period of time or that an unlogged-in visitor returns to a web site, or that a subscriber remains a subscriber.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.