Growth & Marketing

How do I measure and analyze retention properly?

A starting point

Use cohort retention curves, not a single churn number: group users by signup period and watch whether the curve flattens to a stable plateau or decays to zero. A flat tail means real, retained value; a curve heading to zero means you don't have product-market fit yet. Segment by behavior to find who actually sticks and why.

Go deeper

Read

📄 Article
Freemium Intermediate

How the Best Companies Measure and Improve Retention

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky ~20 min read

Why we picked it

Concrete retention benchmarks and cohort-analysis methods gathered from dozens of top companies, so you can tell a healthy retention curve from a dying one.

  • Judge retention with cohort curves; a flattening plateau signals real value.
  • A curve decaying to zero means you don't yet have product-market fit.
  • Benchmark retention against your category, not against vanity averages.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →
📄 Article
Freemium Intermediate

The North Star Playbook & Choosing Your Growth Metrics

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky ~20 min read

Why we picked it

Lenny distills how the best product teams pick a single North Star that captures real customer value and drives the whole growth model, with concrete company examples.

  • A good North Star metric measures delivered customer value, not vanity signups.
  • Break the North Star into a small set of input metrics you can actually move.
  • Fewer, well-chosen metrics reviewed weekly beat sprawling dashboards nobody reads.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →

People also ask

Why is retention more important than acquisition? Retention is the foundation everything else stands on: without it, acquisition and referral just pour water into a leaky bucket. A flattening reten... Beginner 2 resources → How do I actually improve retention and make my product habit-forming? Use the Hook Model: pair a trigger with an easy action, a variable reward, and an investment that makes the product better next time. Get users to ... Intermediate 2 resources → When should I build a referral program? Only after you already have strong word-of-mouth; a referral program adds fuel to an existing fire, it can't start one. You also need enough active... Intermediate 2 resources → Is my product going to go viral, and how do I make it more shareable? Probably not, true peer-to-peer virality is rare, and most 'viral' growth is really one big broadcast reaching many people at once. Instead of pray... Intermediate 2 resources → What's a common mistake founders make with referral and virality? Bolting a referral program onto a product people don't love yet, and expecting it to manufacture growth. Referrals and virality amplify existing en... Intermediate 2 resources → What growth metrics should I actually track as an early-stage startup? Track one North Star metric that captures real customer value (weekly active users, orders shipped, revenue retained) plus the inputs that move it.... Beginner 3 resources →