The churn, the value and the big difference.

When users stop being active, most founders reach for notifications. But real retention comes from the product giving them a genuine reason to return on their own.

Sabeeha Banubhai is the founder of Jack Studios, a Joburg studio that’s helped 150+ tech founders launch. Her framing is simple: if the only reason someone opens your product is that you pinged them, you don’t have retention — you have a countdown to them muting you.

Stop asking how to remind people to come back and start asking why they’d want to. The pull has to live inside the product, a recurring value that’s genuinely worth returning for. Get that right, and the notification becomes a helpful nudge toward something wanted, not a nag toward something ignored.

“Give users a reason to come back that’s tied to real value — not just notifications reminding them you exist.”

Some products have a natural reason to return — new data, new matches, a task that recurs, progress that builds. Others deliver once and then have nothing fresh to offer. Be honest about who you are.

If there’s a genuine recurring value, name it precisely: the specific thing that’s new or useful each time someone comes back. If there isn’t one yet, that’s the real retention problem and no notification strategy will paper over it. The reason to return has to exist before you can point anyone at it.

The strongest reason to come back is one hooked to a goal the user already has — their progress, their results, their work, their people. When returning moves something that matters to them forward, they come back for their own reasons, not yours.

Look for where your product touches an ongoing goal in the user’s life and lean into that. A fitness app that shows progress toward a goal they set has a built-in reason to return; one that just says “don’t break your streak” is nagging about the app’s goals, not the user’s.

Retention holds when coming back is rewarding, not just requested. Every return should give the user something (a new insight, a small win, visible progress) so the act of opening your product reliably pays off.

If people come back and there’s nothing new for them, they learn that returning isn’t worth it, and the next nudge lands on deaf ears. Each visit that delivers a real payoff teaches the opposite lesson: opening this is always worth it.

Once there’s a real reason to return, notifications finally have a job, pointing people toward something genuinely worth their time. The difference is in the content. “Your weekly report is ready”, points at value. “We miss you — come back!” guilts.

Send prompts that tell the user about something waiting for them, not prompts that beg for attention. The first is a service. The second is the nagging that gets you muted. Same channel, opposite effect, and only the first one survives past the first week.

It takes honestly identifying your recurring value and building around it. It’s the difference between users who return on their own and users you have to chase until they leave.

This is one piece of Your Product Works. So Why Is No One Buying?, Sabeeha’s full masterclass inside the Founder Collab. The full session is a complete diagnostic for why products that work still don’t sell or stick:

You’ll also get access to 40+ other masterclasses from SA founders and operators on sales, fundraising, UX, paid media and more inside The Founder Collab.

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