Newsletter: An engineer’s guide to activation metrics

[ivanagas]

Summary

Write a short paragraph on what this article is about. If applicable, what's the opinion or point we want to make in this article?

What does activation mean?

Ask startups we are friendly with to tell us about how they count an activation metric. What was their first activation metric.

How do we make this not a rehash of Lenny? Focus more on engineers. Why should engineers care about activation. For example, engineers aren’t going to run a massive set of in-depth interviews.

• https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-a-good-activation-rate
• https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-determine-your-activation

Headline options

suggest a few angles

An engineer’s guide to activation metrics

An engineer’s guide to defining activation metrics

Defining activation metrics: Everything you need to know

What (if any) keywords are we targeting?

list any that apply

Activation metrics

Will it need custom art?

• Yes
• No

Outline (optional)

draft headings / questions you want to answer

• What is an activation metric
  • Ask our friends to give us examples like https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/how-first-time-founders-fail
  • When you deliver value, aha moment (time to value), one time, cannot be undone, users get the value of the product
  • We have ones for products and platform
  • For example for surveys, launched + team member invited + billing subscription + onboarding
• Why do activation metrics matter (for engineers)?
  • Activation is really the beginning of someone using your product. It is where engineers and product people can start to have an impact. It is your baseline for the rest of your metrics.
  • Answers the most basic question: Are people using your product?
  • Why does it matter to get them right?
    • Using slightly different definitions of activation leads to dramatically different stats.
    • For example, if you can a pageview as an activation, you might have a high activation rate, but it doesn’t help you. Vanity metric.
• How to define your activation metric?
  • How did our friends define this?
  • Talk to users
  • Watch session replays
  • Run experiments to see if activation rate impacts retention - Lenny
• What to do with a metric once it is defined?
  • Again, ask our friends how they have improved their activation metrics. What is a specific example?
  • A/B test to improve it
  • Are new features actually helping?
  • Activation vs retention
  • When should you look to activation metrics?