In this guide, we’ll walk you through some key steps to defining “active” in your product, and show examples on how to drive user activation. Building a successful product is no longer just about getting visitors in the door. It’s about turning those visitors into customers with a high lifetime value that keep coming back. Activation is the bridge between acquiring a new user and keeping them coming back – it’s the key to growing your product’s adoption and reaching over time. A user coming back to your product doesn’t inherently mean that they are truly getting value. Ultimately, if users aren’t getting value from your product, they are going to stop coming back.

1. Build a Better Product Strategy |
User Activation.

2. Our Presenters
Vijay Umapathy
Senior Product Manager
Christy Hollingshead
Director of Customer Education
Veronica Dasovich
Director of Customer Success

3. What will we cover?
● What is Activation?
● Why is Activation Important?
● How to Measure Activation in Heap
● How Heap used Heap to improve User Activation
● Product Roadmap (Informed by Activation)
● Q&A

4. Intro to Activation

5. Growth Metrics
Continue to
come back
over time
Retention ReferralRevenue
Customers
Signing Up
Finding Value
in your
product
Customer
advocates on
your behalf
Renewals,
up-sells,
cross-sells
Acquisition Activation

6. Growth Metrics
“Our D7
retention is
64% and our
D30 is 39%.”
Retention ReferralRevenue
“We just
topped 1
million
signups!”
“We have a
42%
DAU/MAU
ratio”
“We got
13,987 likes
on our our
customer’s
tweet”
“We have
$40m ARR
and a
$7,000
CAC”
Acquisition Activation

7. Growth Metrics
Continue to
come back
over time
Retention ReferralRevenue
Customers
Signing Up
Finding Value
in your
product
Customer
advocates on
your behalf
Renewals,
up-sells,
cross-sells
Acquisition
Activation

8. “Activation is the moment your customer
derives value from your product ”
—Lincoln Murphy (Sixteen Ventures)

9. Why does activation matter?

10. How to Measure Activation

11. How to Measure Activation

12. Step 1:
Start tracking user behavior.

13. Step 2:
Define what Active means to you.

14. Define what Active means for you
Following 30
users in your first
week
Getting your
question
“answered”
Adding 7 friends
in 1st 10 days
Running a Query
w/ a GroupBy

15. Step 3:
Identify the ideal customer journey to
activation.

16. Step 4:
Implement experiments and changes to
improve activation.

17. Step 5:
Repeat!

18. How to Measure Activation
1. Start Tracking User Behavior ✓
2. Define what Active means for you
3. Identify the Ideal customer journey to activation
4. Take action to improve activation
a. Reduce Friction
b. Customer Nurturing
c. Re-engage users
5. Repeat

19. How Heap Measures Activation

20. Heap on Heap

21. Evolution of our Definition of an Active User
2017 2018 2019
Has done sessions in
past 30 days
Has Done Session and
Saved a Report
Has Done Session and:
● Defined an Event
● Identified Users
● Ran a Query
● Saved a Report
● Created a Dashboard
● Taken a Heap University course

22. What Heap told us
When someone activates in their first experience, this form of engagement results in a 2x user
retention rate that is stable starting in their first week throughout their lifetime as a user. No other
activation event hypotheses had the same effect.

23. What Customer needs have we had to address?
● How can Heap be less of a blank slate?
● What business questions I can ask and how can I formulate those
questions in Heap?
● How can I more easily share analysis in a Dashboard with colleagues?
● How can I more easily define events in Heap?

24. Cross-Functional Team Actions Taken
Product
Activation focused features
● Home Dashboard
● Dashboard Email
Reports
● Suggested Reports
● Path Analysis
● Event Definition QA
Features
Customer Success
Standardized
Trainings
● Admin vs. Data
Consumers
● Heap 101 & Heap
102
Marketing
Retention Marketing
● New User invite
Flow
In-App Guides
● Walk-Me

25. Customer Data Maturity Curve
Sophistication
ACTIONSAVAILABLE
Level 3: Optimize
Engagement, Conversion,
Retention
Level 5: Automated
Decisioning
Level 1: Measure
Level 2: From measurement
to action
Level 4: Centralizing
Customer Data

26. What Heap told us
When someone uses a group by in a query, this form of engagement results in a 2x user retention
rate that is stable throughout their lifetime as a user.

27. Day 275-365Day 60-Day 275Day 1-60
The Heap Customer Success Journey
Expansion RetentionActivation

28. Optimizing for Value in the “Activation” Phase
We define an “active” event as a defined event
that has been queried in the Heap UI or synced
to a warehouse in the last 30 days
If account < 30 days old, Customer Health level is
always Green
If account is 30-60 days old, customer Health is
Yellow if there are <= 10 active events, otherwise
it is Green
If account is > 60 days old, Customer Health is
Red. If there are <= 10 active events, otherwise it
is Green

29. Learn more at: Heap.io
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