THE FIRST THIRTY DAYS

Whether you’re starting this as the founder or you’ve just been handed retention, the order is the same. Find out who uses the product. Fix the first thing they see. Ask for a plan and space the help. Then look hard at why people stay.

1. Week one: measureAdd the use question to a message ten days after delivery, with a 20% holdout (chapter 10). Pull whatever direct signals of use you have. Split last year’s first-time buyers into early users and non-users and put the repeat rates in the tool in chapter 2. Ask twenty non-users why (chapter 4).
2. Week two: the boxWrite the one-sentence first move and test it on five people (chapter 5). Name the anchor moment and place, and design one physical cue that stays there (chapter 7). Order the new insert; it will take longer to print than to write.
3. Week three: the plan and the sequenceAdd the two-question plan prompt to the confirmation page with its holdout (chapter 6). Re-time product education from delivery, one job per message, across 50 days (chapter 9). Add the missed-gap and address-change messages (chapter 8).
4. Week four: captivity and the pageScore captivity with two colleagues (chapter 11). List what customers lose by leaving and remove anything you added as a penalty (chapter 12). Check reorder is one tap to the same item at the shown price. Put the scorecard in front of the team (chapter 14).

At day thirty you won’t have reorder results; they need a quarter. You’ll have a first cohort measured, a box that tells people what to do, and the holdouts in place to show what worked. The first number to watch is the median time to first use for the next cohort.

Measure first use before you try to change it. Then change the box before the inbox.

Do this

• Put the four weeks on the calendar today, with one owner for each. If the same person owns the insert, the confirmation page and the survey, give them this guide.