Dollars & Sense

New Member Targets 🎯

When growing our network, we consider what it takes to keep existing members and grow into other industries. Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem reports that Facebook famously wanted a user to get 10 friends in a week because then the person would likely use the service. Similarly, Slack said users with about 10 connections tend to become active users. My company currently doesn’t have such new user benchmarks and we need to develop them. 

Adding New Retail Members to the Product Network
For Shop Local’s new retail members, I believe we should have these goals:

• A retailer should sync with a least two Product Syncing Brands within a week of joining. Once a store syncs, it sees the magic of syncing products. It sees the products in its Store and receives weekly emails with new products, price changes, and news posts from the brand. I wish the minimum was just one brand, but relying on one brand to wow a retailer is risky.  If a store doesn't sync, it's more likely to cancel our service. To reach this goal, I’ve tasked our coaches with contacting stores to encourage syncing.  
• A retailer should have one gift registry within the first week.  Registries are the bread and butter of online sales for indie stores.    

Adding New Brand Members to the Product Network
It would be convenient to speak about a brand successfully using our services. Let’s instead consider a brand client that is flailing: At the Atlanta trade show this month, I saw a brand that was frustrated with meager results over the network. Their stores have received almost no orders for their product via our network. The key reasons for this:

1. The brand is only syncing with six stores.
2. Those stores are not using our gift registry service.
3. The brand is not a well-known brand.
4. The brand doesn’t make items traditionally added to a registry (plates, cups, blenders, etc.). Many of our stores’ orders are gift registry related. Therefore, few registrants are adding the brand's items to their registries. 

What this brand needs:

1. We need to get the brand to sync with more stores.
2. We need to get registrants to add the brand's items to their registry lists.

Based on the above experience, I propose these goals for new brand members:

• Get a brand to sync with 10 stores within its first week.
• Get one or more of its items on 10 gift registry lists within the first week.

Brands Do the Hard Work
When setting goals for new members, we have to choose which parties receive the most attention from our coaches. Our product network has two sides: brands and retailers. Chen would say that the brand is on the ‘hard side’ of the network because it does the product update work. A brand pays for the syncing service  (there is no free plan) and works to maintain its data.  Due to this, this side needs more finessing and attention. 

While a brand is paying to work, the retailer is getting work for free.  A retailer can sync for free, and it saves the time and money of adding items. 

A retailer can often benefit from syncing with two brands, while a brand often needs to connect with ten stores to make the update work and cost worthwhile. 

Tags:
new member target growing a network cold start problem andrew chen

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