We were tracking retention wrong for months. Counting churned users who came back as retained instead of reactivated.
Once we fixed the calculation, our actual retention dropped 15%. Painful but necessary reality check.
Do not count churned users as retained. That’s a common mistake. When they return, it’s reactivation, not retention. This 15% drop highlights the importance of real metrics over inflated ones. Prioritize early engagement in those first few weeks to drive genuine retention. It’s better to confront accurate data than to celebrate misleading successes.
Most apps I work with have this exact problem. Default analytics setups count comebacks as retention.
But now you know which users actually stick around versus those who need win-back campaigns. These two groups need different messaging and offers.
I set up separate funnels for reactivation since those users already know your app didn’t work for them the first time.
Been there. Same mistake with our meditation app - dashboard showed 40% month 2 retention but we were actually at 28%.
The worst part isn’t the metric drop. It’s that every growth decision was based on garbage data. We thought onboarding was crushing it while users were bailing after day 7.
Upside though - tracking retention vs reactivation separately let us optimize the right funnel parts. Reactivated users act completely different from retained ones.
These tracking mistakes happen way more than anyone wants to admit. Good thing you caught it early - you can still fix this.
Fixing bad data hurts but beats building on lies