Role: Product designer, product manager

Problem statement

Customers use our app to gather content from their community. We’ve created features for organizing and sharing their libraries of content. However, we must now figure out how to retain customers and enhance our platform’s value to prevent them from seeking alternatives.

Approach

🔬 Primary and Secondary Research

To better grasp how customers use User Generated Content post-download, identify their toughest job aspects. These insights will help validate future feature ideas.

🛠️ Prototyping

Rapid prototypes to test our ideas and see if customers are willing to pay for them.

📊 Analytics and No-code automations

Use analytics to track key metrics like retention, weekly active users, feature funnels, and growth funnels. Utilize no-code automations such as Intercom and Customer.io to assist with releases and increase activation.

Solution

After researching, we discovered an opportunity:
Our customers struggle with obtaining the correct usage rights for User Generated Content in ads, causing friction and uncertainty.

Scope of work

The project scope can be extensive. Improvements like requesting usage rights, attaching contracts, enabling payments, and setting up automated follow-up workflows can make a project really huge. Before diving into complex features, we ask three key questions:

1. Does it solve customer problems?
2. Will customers pay for it, considering its value?
3. What are the potential improvements needed, so customers can start using it?

To start, we’re introducing a simple automation for customers to request usage rights via Direct Message and track progress on our Platform.

After sending the request, the influencer will get a message that looks native. They can approve the request without leaving Instagram’s DM.

As we keep sharing it with people and getting their feedback, we’ve discovered ways to make the feature better:

1. Ability to make requests in bulk;
2. Send rewards with request;
3. Include a link to custom terms and conditions.

We had to tackle a separate complex project to add rewards to usage rights requests. This involved integrating platforms like Stripe and Shopify for payments, and Tremendous for sending rewards.

By the end we created a straightforward process: influencers log in with Instagram to verify their identity, receive a reward link, and choose from 1000 payout options including direct card transfer, PayPal, and Amazon gift cards.

Bulk Usage rights request

A straightforward UI flow lets users select multiple assets to share all at once, enhancing the influencer experience by reducing duplicate messages.

Results

Users adore this feature, with a significant number using it regularly. We conducted growth experiments to expand our monthly user base and encourage their continued engagement.

Our free plans allow for up to 5 requests monthly.

After customers download or share 5 items, we remind them to ask for permission before using assets.

When someone receives approval, we’ll send email reminders encouraging them to revisit and reuse their content.

Learnings

1. Simplify scope to focus better;
2. This way, you can identify any unique situations early on and address them faster for both platforms.
3. For a small customer base, handle tasks like refunds manually initially, avoiding premature automation across platforms during testing. You can better spend this time learning from people and running tests.