How do I pick one activation metric when the product supports five very different use cases?

Goes past the single aha metric to a three stage model (setup, aha, habit) with Apollo.io and Appcues case studies, plus the failure modes: no retention correlation, and changing the metric every quarter.

How to Measure Onboarding: Advanced Topics in Activation Metrics

From Product Growth by Aakash Gupta and Ramli John 25 min read

• Break activation into three stages, Setup, Aha and Habit, instead of one 'X in Y days' metric.
• Appcues lifted activation from under 2 percent to 25 percent by cutting onboarding into smaller steps.
• At Appcues, users who talk to a human are 2 to 3 times more likely to activate sooner.
• For one B2B company, Facebook and Instagram signups activated up to three times worse than organic.

A three step method (brainstorm milestones, regress against retention, then experiment to prove causation) with worked examples from six companies. The third step is the one most teams skip.

How to determine your activation metric

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky 15 min read

It defines time to value precisely enough to instrument: a start event, a value event, and the gap between them. The insistence that logging in is not value is the point most teams need to hear.

What Is TTV: A Complete Guide to Time to Value

From Amplitude 12 min read

• Value means the customer accomplished something, not that they logged in or clicked around.
• Track medians rather than averages, since time-to-value distributions have long tails.
• Watch the 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles to see the full spread of experience.
• Different roles need different value events: an admin connects a source, an analyst shares a dashboard.

Benchmarks from 500 plus products: 34 percent average, 36 percent for SaaS. If you have ever wondered whether your number is bad or normal, this is the answer, and it is free.

What is a good activation rate

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky and Yuriy Timen 12 min read

• Across 500+ products the average activation rate is 34 percent, the median 25 percent.
• For SaaS specifically the average is 36 percent and the median 30 percent.
• 60th percentile counts as a good activation rate, 80th percentile as great.
• A real activation metric shows at least 2x better retention for users who hit it.

Mixpanel works through defining and instrumenting activation for products where the path to value is not single track, which is the hard part when five use cases each have a different aha. Hands on, with the setup and habit stages treated separately.

Activation Masterclass

On Mixpanel 57 min