Analyze Acquisition Channels for User Value and Retention
Company: Chime
Role: Data Scientist
Category: Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Difficulty: Medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
acquisition
| user_id | acquire_channel | acquire_date |
| 101 | organic | 2023-01-05 |
| 102 | paid_search | 2023-01-06 |
| 103 | social_media | 2023-01-08 |
transactions
| transaction_id | user_id | amount | transaction_date |
| 9001 | 101 | 45.50 | 2023-01-10 |
| 9002 | 101 | 19.00 | 2023-02-05 |
| 9003 | 102 | 60.00 | 2023-02-12 |
| 9004 | 103 | 30.00 | 2023-03-01 |
##### Scenario
An e-commerce platform provided two tables: one logging the channel and date each user was acquired, another logging every purchase. Product managers want actionable insights on acquisition effectiveness and user value.
##### Question
Write a query that returns each acquire_channel together with the count of distinct users acquired from it. 2. For every acquire_channel, rank users by their cumulative spend and output the top three spenders per channel with their totals. 3. Build a monthly cohort table that shows, for each acquisition month, the percentage of users who make at least one purchase in any subsequent month (retention). 4. Within 90 days of each user’s acquire_date, compute average revenue per user (ARPU) by channel and identify the channel with the highest ARPU.
##### Hints
Expect multiple CTEs, DATE_DIFF/DATE_TRUNC, JOINs, window functions such as SUM() OVER and RANK().
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in SQL/Python data manipulation and analytics, testing aggregation, cohort and retention analysis, ranking, joins and window-function usage along with interpretation of user-level revenue metrics.