Retention just got better

We rolled out some big changes to the way retention reports work. Now you can slice and dice your retention data the same way you can in the Segmentation report.

To our existing customers, the biggest change is in the way cohort groups are determined. In the past, you could only select a single event for retention analysis, now you can select two – one for determining the cohort (usually you would pick a signup or $born event for this) and one to look at the retention for. This is explained in detail on our documentation page, and in the video below the fold.

You may be wondering: “what happened to compounded retention?” Now all retention is compounded retention – when you pick the first event, we will include all users in the cohort who fired that event, not just those who fired it the first time. To see birth retention, you need to fire an event that will only be sent once and determine the birthday for each user. This event can be called whatever you want, but we recommend calling it $born or $signup. To learn how to properly send a $born or $signup event, read this blog post. To learn how to import these events for your existing users, we have a blog post about that as well!

If you have any questions about new retention, we will be hosting a Live Q&A Webinar tomorrow at 11 AM PST. To tune in visit http://www.mixpanel.com/webinar then.