With the calendar service, users can elect to receive e-mail reminders about important events. In Yahoo Clubs, people with similar interests can create a club with its own Web site within Yahoo, complete with chat rooms, a mailing list and message boards. And with Yahoo Pager, users can receive instant messages alerting them to urgent e-mails or fluctuations in the prices of stocks they have selected. Such programs equal retention, according to Tim Brady, Yahoo's executive producer. And well over half of the things we've put out in the past year have some sort of personalized aspect to them.
Analysts say the retention battle is important for several reasons.
Second, many of the personalized services that sites use to retain customers also require users to register, and the information gleaned is valuable to advertisers and direct marketers. And those retailers, in turn, are beefing up their own customer retention efforts. The messages refer users back to the merchants' sites, in hopes that users will be more apt to buy on impulse. Even as retention programs multiply, however, Web users are showing a strong proclivity to sample other sites. According to a report released two weeks ago by Relevant Knowledge and IDC, even loyal users of each major portal site were found to visit other sites frequently.