How F1V helps startups with marketing, product analytics — Mate academy case

By Alexandra Naidonova, head of marketing at F1V

Collecting data about your startup and analyzing it is an essential part of business planning. Product development, budgeting, expansion planning — there’s no way founders can do any of that simply relying on their intuition.

How can founders enter new markets if they aren’t sure how foreigners would react to their product? How can they plan their budget if they can’t predict marketing campaign results? How can they introduce new features if they don’t know how the existing ones are used?

The F1V marketing department has a variety of advisors who help startups with product and marketing analytics, design, sales, and growth marketing. Here’s an example of how we have assisted Mate academy with product and marketing analytics.

On our side in this case was the senior product analyst for Wise U.K., Liliia Lutsenko. At Wise, she analyzes data on the product with 37.7 million monthly website traffic and 10 million app users.

Activation

Measuring and analyzing activation is crucial to understand the level of user adoption and customer relationship initiation. It’s important not only in edtech but also in SaaS platforms, mobile apps, e-commerce, and marketplaces.

In Mate academy’s case, activation is the process of students enrolling in courses, creating user accounts, accessing the learning materials for the first time, and completing the first topic.

In other words, tracking activation metrics helps count the number of users who have entered the system and started engaging with the platform.

To gain the insights and turn them into product growth areas, we used a number of approaches from demographics segmentation to cohort-based analysis. By breaking down feature funnels by topic and customer type, we found that full-time students have higher completion rate of the first topic compared to the part-time ones.

The analytics also showed that the highest activation rates have Python, Frontend, and Java courses; users who sign up for courses from a desktop computer activate better than users on mobile devices.

We also noticed that the students from English-speaking countries are 10% less likely to complete the first topic than other students.

We worked with Mate academy to find ways to improve their completion rate. Based on the analysis we did, we decided to potentially simplify the content of the first topic and test how reducing the number of quizzes in the first topic would affect the activation rate.

We also advised conducting customer interviews to get feedback from students and splitting the first topic into several smaller ones.

Engagement

Engagement metrics show the quality and depth of user involvement. A high level of engagement indicates that students actively interact with content, peers, and instructors, which leads to better learning outcomes.

In the Mate academy case (similarly to other edtech startups), engagement is expressed in terms of time spent on assignments per week, active participation in discussions, contributions to group projects, and overall focus on learning materials.

Our analysis showed that, after students complete the first topic, they have a high level of engagement throughout the rest of the learning process.

Retention

Retention measures the rate at which users stay engaged and continue to use or return to the platform. When analyzing it, you can get insights into users’ interests, commitment levels, and long-time involvement.

In an online school, retention can be evaluated by tracking course completion rates on a weekly/monthly basis and ongoing participation in activities or discussions. High retention rates indicate that students remain actively involved in their learning journey.

We brainstormed to determine which retention type would be a better fit for the product. In the context of an online school, a weekly learning habit is more preferable. Then, we segmented weekly retention by customer type. The results showed that the rate of weekly completion was higher among full-time students than part-time students.

After that, we broke down retention within each customer group by course type and observed that Python has the highest retention rate compared to other courses.

We were also surprised when we analyzed retention by country. Despite U.S. students generally having lower retention rates, those who continue beyond the initial topics are more likely to complete the entire course compared to students from other countries.

Once we identified the segments with the lowest retention rate, we worked with the team to highlight key recommendations to improve them.

***

After making the product and marketing analysis, the main question is: “How can we help students complete their first lessons?”

We have provided several recommendations; the Mate Academy team has been brainstorming on how to modify the length, content, and number of dropouts in the first topic. Currently, the startup is testing theories.

When we work with startups, our recommendations vary depending on their challenges. We may suggest redesigning their platforms, increasing advertising budgets, testing new creatives, etc. As teams are testing new approaches, we support them and provide additional advice and guidance.

We want the Flyer One Ventures portfolio companies to grow and expand. If you have any requests regarding marketing, analytics, scaling, sales, or other areas — feel free to email us at go@flyerone.vc.

If you are a mentor and want to collaborate with some of the most promising startups from Europe and North America — let’s get acquainted. We are looking for talents to help budding entrepreneurs!

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