Influencer Marketing: How do I analyze Retention in Reports?

The Retention component in Reports enables you to track and assess how creators engage with brands, topics, and more. You can also discover creators who consistently create content about chosen topics and brands over an extended duration.

In the example table below, of the 12.5k profiles that mentioned Nike in January 2023, 38.93% of profiles also mentioned them in April. You can click on any value in the table to see profiles that are retained over a given period of time.

Use Case for Retention

Some popular use cases for Retention include:

• Seeing how many mentions of your brand come from brand ambassadors
• Finding your competitors’ brand ambassadors
• Benchmarking creator retention for your brand against the competition
• Discovering creators who actively post about chosen topics over a period of time
• Identifying which topics have a consistent versus a temporary audience

How to set up the Retention component

To set up the Retention component, you need three inputs: Retention intervals, rows and values.

Retention Intervals

Retention intervals split the date range of the report into equal periods of time of a chosen cadence. Select Intervals from the dropdown menu and choose between Daily, Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly and Quarterly. You can also create custom date ranges if your use case doesn’t suit any of the predefined intervals by selecting Ranges from the dropdown menu. 

For example: If the date range of your report is set to January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2023, choosing monthly intervals will split this range into 12 separate months, such as January, February, etc.

Rows

Rows let you ‌segment data by any available attribute to see how different groups perform. For example, you can choose the following data points as rows:

• Mentioned Profiles - identify which profiles relevant to your search query are mentioned in creators’ posts over time
• Keyword Group - see which creators consistently post about a keyword or topic over time
• Content Type - discover what types of content creators consistently publish 

Choose Mentioned Profiles as a Row and filter your component for Brand Profile type only to see how different brands retain creators and see their Brand Ambassadors.

Values

When using the Retention component, you can choose from four values specially designed for Retention analysis:

• Retention - See how many creators from the initial period still meet your Retention criteria. This can be displayed as an absolute number or percentage of the initial group.
• Lost - Determine how many creators from the initial period no longer meet your Retention criteria. This can be displayed as an absolute number or percentage of the initial group.
• New - How many creators posted in a given time period but weren't part of the initial group of creators.
• New to File - This is the ratio of a new creator to all retained creators in the given time period.

How Retention is Calculated in Reports

Starting with the first available period, Reports tracks creator retention by analyzing how Creators perform over time.

Creators are considered retained when they've created at least one post that meets your report criteria in the given period or after it (depending on Retention settings).

The following graphic explains how Retention is calculated by default:

Green - creator posted

Grey - creator didn’t post

The first period of Retention analysis compiles a group of profiles that are tracked in subsequent periods. In the example above, the creator listed on the fourth line isn't considered Retained because they didn't post in the first period.

Customizing the Calculation Method

Reports offers three slightly different methods of calculating Retention to help you uncover trends and patterns in your data. 

To filter by a specific method, click the three dots on the Retention component and click Edit. In the editing window, navigate to Retention Mode and select between On, On or After and On and Before (Funnel).

1. On - Creators are considered retained only if they've posted in a given period. An example of a creator labeled On is outlined in the second line of the graph.

Green - creator posted

Grey creator didn’t post

2. On and After - Creators are considered retained when they've posted in a given period or after it. An example of a creator labeled On and After is outlined in the third line of the graph.

Green - creator posted

Grey - creator didn’t post

3. On and Before (Funnel) - Creators are considered retained when they've posted in a given period and in every period before. An example of a creator labeled On and Before (Funnel) is outlined in the first line of the graph.

Green - creator posted

Grey - creator didn’t post