Simple product refinements can make a huge difference when it comes to user engagement. What can you do to optimize your product?
Airbnb, the poster boy of the sharing economy, valuated at $24 Billion, and is a juggernaut in a very tough space: Tourism. One of the main challenges for companies in the tourism biz is to keep their users engaged while not traveling.
Acknowledging this challenge, Airbnb has made many product refinements to maximize user retention and engagement and has come up with some interesting solutions that could be applied across a variety of similar services.
1. “Handshake” reviews
Reviews (on both hosts and guests) are crucial for Airbnb’s success. Nothing says more “a dead service” than only a few, aging reviews per listing. In other words, Airbnb is dependent on guest’s reviews to keep the service alive. And what is one of the best ways to have people do what you want them to do? Create a gap of knowledge in them. Hence, the “handshake review”.
A few days after the vacation is over, guests get an email with the subject line “(Host Name) has left you a review”. A review about ME?? I’d love to see it! Thinks the casual user, then she reads the rest of the email: “To read it, please leave a review for your host.”
An eye for an eye, a review for a review. The gap of knowledge is created, and the only prescription is to write a counter review. Very good bait, very well executed.
More “gap of knowledge” Examples:
LinkedIn emails: “Dori, people are looking at your LinkedIn profile.”
2. Friend referral program
Nothing’s new here, just effective. Users can send their friends $20 in Airbnb credits and receive $20 themselves if a friend accepts the gift and opens an Airbnb account. Should this person list her apartment on Airbnb, the referrer gets an additional $80 in credits.
The key takeaway from this referral program is: Use referral programs.
Simply put, if your service sells something, anything, even if it’s only virtual: Better allow users to send some credits over to their friends rather than claim it for themselves. So the next time you have a holiday discount, think how you can harness your users to deliver it for you.
More Examples
Lyft, Uber, Fiverr, almost any big platform.
3. A whole lotta-emails
Emails are one of the strongest tools for user retention and Airbnb is taking this matter very seriously. It seems like they have an email template for each of the Gmail tabs.
The personal info, (Host Name) has left you a review, falls into the main Gmail tab.
The referral program, (Friend Name) gave you $20 off your first Airbnb trip, falls into the social tab.
The remaining tab is the promotions tab. That’s where all the Airbnb Discover mails go: (My Name), how about a weekend getaway from (My City)?
Together with the first two categories, Airbnb completes a full-stack assault on the recipients’ mail boxes. Although annoying, I find Airbnb’s email marketing tactics to work very well. Apart from making sure they sneak in through every one of the Gmail tabs, the subject lines are very personal and accurate, either
1. Offering me money (via the referral program),
2. Tickle my fancy with gossip (someone left a review on you),
3. Or offering a dreamy vacation gateway to spice up my mundane day to day via Airbnb Discover.
This goes well with the prominent call to actions. Airbnb makes sure to have only one CTA per email, large and bold. Take this survey request as an example, Airbnb makes it easy (and appealing) for users to start answering the survey from within the email template.
Start filling out the survey from your inbox
What do you think about Airbnb’s tactics for user engagement?
Any cool ones that I’ve missed?
Share those 3 product tips with your fellow product friends!
The post 3 Airbnb’s Simple Yet Effective Product Tips on User Engagement appeared first on Dori Adar - Designing Users' Behavior.