Marketing counts anyone who opens the app in 30 days. Product team only counts users who complete core actions.
We’re pulling completely different numbers in meetings and it’s getting messy. What worked for you to get teams aligned?
I only track users who upgrade to paid in their first week. Everything else is just noise when you’re trying to measure real business growth.
Revenue matters to both teams, so this metric gets everyone focused on quality users rather than vanity numbers. Budget talks get way easier too.
Stop chasing the perfect metric that pleases everyone. Pick what drives revenue and commit to it. I’d track users who hit your core value moment in 14 days - maybe finishing onboarding plus one key action, or whatever actually predicts retention for your app. The real solution? Make one person own this decision. When marketing and product both weigh in, you end up with watered-down metrics that don’t help anyone make good calls.
We just picked weekly active users doing one key action. Simple and both teams could live with it.
We had this exact mess. Marketing wanted growth numbers, product wanted engagement quality.
We picked one metric both teams actually cared about: “users who complete at least 2 core actions in 7 days.” Marketing got reasonable volume, product got the engagement data they needed.
Key was locking both team leads in a room until they agreed before company-wide rollout. Once leadership aligned, everyone else fell in line.
Took 3 weeks to get clean data to both teams. Way fewer arguments in meetings now.
