Activation Metrics- 4 steps to observe, measure & increase your SaaS growth

What is the activation metric? It is the aha moment in the user journey - When a new user tries the product & feels himself transition from his problem state to his solution state.

Activation is important because it measures the degree to which the product is engaging & retaining new users.

Use these 4 steps as a starting point to find & measure your product’s activation event:

Step 1: Observe success stories - Observe patterns across users who are already customers. (a) Figure out what is common among them and (b) in what way is the product experience different to churned users?

Step 2: Talk to new users: Conduct interviews or send emails to folks who just signed up. Set up email automation sequences/drip sequences and ask them questions about their user experience. Take them closer to patterns discovered in Step 1.

Step 3: Study potentially-churnable users- For users who signed up, tried the product but didn't experience the AHA moment - what happened there? what went wrong? Is it a product problem? Is the customer not the right fit?

Step 4: Reverse-engineer user behavior - Every month, observe how both segment of users actually use your product using heatmaps. Study which user activities/events correspond directly to user engagement/retention.

Use these tools to make life easier for you:

Useheap - A data analytics tool that tracks every move your users make.
HotJar - Gives you heatmap on your website/product.
Loops - send automated marketing/customer emails at scale
Dovetail - Translate your data into insights and bring your customer into every decision.
Feedbear - collect customer feedback/build roadmaps in one place.

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PS: Here's a pretty image of this essay for you to print out :)