Hey everyone!

We know that a strong hook is crucial for high retention, which is why I’ve placed this picture here.

Let’s be real, you probably didn’t even read the first sentence.

This is Instagram superstar Teddington who my girlfriend and I got to walk last week - Christmas is officially around the corner! 🎄

As an early gift, I’ve got three more Retention Reviews for you! Let’s hit it 🎁

1 - That Sounds Familiar…

Title: START TODAY: How SEO Works
Creator: Exposure Ninja
Average % viewed: 41.3%

This video does what it says on the tin…

I’ve broken it down to make it easier to analyse, and I want to focus on these 3 segments.

(Ignore the dip in S4 - it’s basically an ad read)

S1 loses about 30% of the audience, whereas S2 and S3 only lose 5-10%.

That’s because S2 and S3 do something really well that S1 doesn’t.

Segment 2:

Shows us something familiar → how Google search results page looks different now vs 5 years ago
Provides recognisable and urgent stakes → unless you know how to utilise this, your website CTR will decrease
Promises to help us overcome those stakes → “yes please, tell me more!”

If you’re making a listicle video, every segment is like a mini video in itself. So it needs all the components of a full video (hook, stakes, resolution, etc) if you don’t want people to skip forward or leave.

Watch S3 and you’ll see it has the same components as I’ve just described in S2.

It lets the audience know WHY they should care before being offered more information (or a solution).

On the other hand, S1 does this:

The creator starts by telling us how THEIR business uses AI.
They mention some possibly inaccessible AI jargon.
They discuss AI’s use case.

It just needs a little restructuring.

Make the audience know why they should care or show them the topic in a context they’ll recognise before explaining the nuances.

For example:

“You may be worried that AI copywriting is putting your job/business/website at risk…”
“You may have seen articles about AI recently…”
“You may have seen people tweeting about AI copywriting recently…”

By grounding this segment in something the audience resonates with, the video could have avoided making some viewers feel left outside the conversation.

2 - Sticking To The Plan

Title: Why It's Almost Impossible To Gain 63lbs In A Month
Creator: Theory Y
Average % viewed: 58.6%

In this video, we learn about a bodybuilders crazy routine to gain huge amounts of muscle.

I haven’t divided the graph up because I want to speak about my overall thoughts, rather than isolating specific moments.

This video’s concept is super compelling, even for people like me who aren’t into bodybuilding.

But it makes a similar mistake to the first video in its hook.

It opens by saying that “[Athlete X] achieved [Y] in [Z] days…BUT HOW?!”

The problem is: I don’t instinctively know how difficult “Y” is without context.

Gaining 63lbs in a month sounds pretty outrageous, but so do most of the feats professional bodybuilders achieve.

The hook should focus more on why it’s so hard to achieve this or why it was previously thought impossible, before showing us the case study.

The second problem is that… we don’t ever really find out the answer to the question in the title, because the video changes tack and becomes more about learning how to follow a similar workout routine to the bodybuilder in question.

It’s a highly intriguing video, and the folks who happen to be interested in learning a new workout will stick around anyway.

But for those who came for an answer to the question, it gradually becomes clear that the video has strayed and that we won’t find out.

It’s well made and I had a blast watching the first half, but I don’t leave feeling like I got an answer to the question I clicked for.

A Brief Interlude…

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Back To It…

3 - The Big Moment

Title: I Spent $10,000 at the Chantilly Card Show
Creator: Breakout Cards
Average % viewed: 56%

In this video, we see the creator attending a huge baseball card trading event in Chantilly while negotiating some bargains.

Let’s break the graph down again.

Segment 1:
Fairly standard early dropoff.

71% isn’t bad, but the hook has just a little too much information for me.

I want to know: where you are, how long for, and what exciting items you’re hoping to find.

We could intersperse the hook with some B-Roll of the event. Or what about showing small segments of upcoming deals where we hear him make an offer, then cut away before we hear whether the dealer accepts it?

The start of the big $6800 deal might have been the one to show here, to keep people excited to see that deal later in the video.

This creator told me he also trialled cutting straight to the first deal on other videos, but this actually worsened his early retention. I could believe that, as I do like getting a little intro to set up who we’re spending the video with and where we are, but implementing the above suggestions could be a way of making it shorter and more engaging.

Segment 2:
Mostly consistent retention.

S2 has some nice pace switching and pattern interrupt.

We see plenty of deals being done as well as hearing from a couple of dealers about the cool history of their cards.

This is also interspersed with calmer establishing shots of the event which breaks up the content and makes us feel like we’re experiencing both the micro (specific deals) and the macro (seeing the whole event).

Varying the pace of your video like this naturally creates and then RELEASES tension, which creates nice little dopamine hits throughout the video.

It also causes a regular pattern interrupt which reengages any minds that might have started to wander.

Segment 3:
Consistent dropoff over time.

In S3, things felt suddenly way slower.

The biggest deal of the day (spending $6800) was mainly footage of cards being counted and took up over 3mins of the video.

I like that we saw the deal being done in context (checking everything adds up, counting the cards etc), but it just felt too long and like it should have been more exciting.

It comes back to the same thing we’ve talked about above - I need to know why I should care before I’ll give someone 3 minutes of my time.

And I didn’t know much about this deal until after it concluded.

He could try adding voiceover during exciting deals like this to explain a little more about the cards being bought and why they’re so valuable.

On paper, this should have been the ‘biggest moment’ of the video, but it lasted a little too long and without enough context.

That’s it for this week!

Thanks to everyone who sent me a video and allowed me to share their data publicly - you’re helping us all learn more together!

If you’d like me to review your retention graphs or have any other questions, DM me on Twitter.

You can also find my Notion templates for YouTube scriptwriters here and my (discounted!) script review service here.

Speak soon,

George 🕺

Write On Time

🔎 Retention Review #5 - Why Should I Care?