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DAU, or Daily Active Users, measures how many unique users engage with your platform on a daily basis. MAU, or Monthly Active Users, tracks user engagement over a month.
When combining these metrics together, we get the DAU/MAU ratio. This ratio shows the amount of daily active users you have compared to monthly active users.
This metric provides a more accurate picture of how your customers interact with your product than simply counting registered users. After all, a user who signs up but never logs in again doesn’t contribute to growth or success.
In this blog, we’ll break down this metric, explain how this can improve product adoption and customer retention, and offer practical steps to help you make the most of it.
How to calculate and interpret the DAU/MAU ratio?
Now that we understand what the DAU/MAU ratio measures, let’s look at how to calculate it. The formula is straightforward:
DAU/MAU = (DAU / MAU) * 100
A ratio of 20-30% generally indicates strong engagement and stickiness, while anything below 10% could suggest low user adoption or potential churn risks.
Of course, these benchmarks can vary depending on your company’s size, industry, and user types, so it’s important to set your own targets based on your product and customer base.
Next, let’s dive into why this ratio matters for Customer Success and how it connects to user engagement, retention, and long-term customer health.
Why DAU/MAU matters for Customer Success
Once you’ve calculated your DAU/MAU ratio, the next step is understanding why this metric is so important for Customer Success teams.
The DAU/MAU ratio directly connects to the key responsibilities of CSMs, helping you measure product adoption, identify retention risks, and monitor user health.
Here’s why DAU/MAU matters for Customer Success:
1. Product adoption
DAU/MAU shows how many customers are actively using the product, which is a good indicator of successful onboarding and user stickiness. A healthy DAU/MAU ratio suggests that customers are finding value in the product regularly.
2. Retention
A low DAU/MAU ratio could point to disengaged users, signaling a potential churn risk. Identifying these users early can help you proactively address their needs before they leave the platform.
3. User health
If you notice a decline in DAU/MAU, it might be a sign that customers are struggling with certain features or experiencing friction in the product.
DAU/MAU also fits into broader Customer Success KPIs like customer health scores and NPS, giving you a clearer picture of overall customer engagement.
Next, we’ll explore how you can leverage DAU/MAU data to improve customer retention and boost product adoption through targeted actions and automation.
Leveraging DAU/MAU to improve customer retention and product adoption
Once you've identified trends in your DAU/MAU data, the next step is to take action to improve product adoption and retention.
By segmenting your users and leveraging automation, you can create personalized experiences that cater to each customer’s unique needs, helping you address engagement challenges more effectively.
Here’s how you can leverage the DAU/MAU ratio effectively:
1. Segment users for targeted strategies
Breaking down DAU/MAU by user segments helps you uncover distinct engagement patterns.
For instance, new users may need a more tailored onboarding experience, while long-term users might benefit from feature adoption campaigns to maintain their engagement.
By automating segmentation and tracking with tools like Velaris, which unifies data across sales, marketing, onboarding, and support, you can easily identify which segments require proactive attention and adjust your strategies to meet their specific needs.
2. Use automation to address disengaged users
If your DAU/MAU ratio shows a decline for certain users, it's crucial to address the issue early to prevent churn.
Automated workflows can be set to trigger when a user’s engagement drops below a certain threshold, allowing you to reach out with personalized support.
With Customer Success software like Velaris, you can automate email sequences that re-engage users, offering tailored tutorials or assistance based on their unique usage patterns. This helps ensure timely intervention and keeps users on track.
3. Standardize onboarding and adoption processes
DAU/MAU trends can highlight inefficiencies in your onboarding process or reveal gaps in feature adoption.
A smooth onboarding experience and regular feature updates are key to maintaining user engagement.
Velaris’ automation builder and playbooks can help you standardize these processes, effectively guiding customers and ensuring they are familiar with the most important features.
Next, we’ll explore how you can improve DAU/MAU with proactive customer engagement, ensuring you keep users engaged over the long term.
Improving DAU/MAU with proactive customer engagement
Maintaining or improving your DAU/MAU ratio requires consistent communication with your users.
Regular engagement helps ensure customers feel supported and stay connected to your product, which can positively impact both adoption and retention.
By using in-app messages and automated emails, you can provide timely information and gather valuable feedback to keep users engaged. Here are two ways to leverage communication to boost DAU/MAU:
1. Build stronger communication with in-app and email messaging
Consistent engagement is key to improving DAU/MAU. Regular touchpoints, such as in-app surveys or automated email sequences, help you stay connected with your users and gather valuable feedback.
With Velaris, you can easily create custom in-app surveys and automate email campaigns, helping you maintain ongoing communication, track key feedback metrics (NPS & CSAT), and respond to customer needs – all in one centralized platform.
2. Monitor customer health scores to catch churn early
DAU/MAU trends are useful, but combining them with customer health scores gives you a more complete picture of customer engagement. A drop in health scores could signal that a user is at risk of churning.
Velaris’ customer health monitoring tracks multiple engagement metrics, including DAU/MAU, and provides alerts when a customer might be at risk, allowing you to take action promptly.
Next, let’s explore some of the common challenges that CSMs face when working with their DAU/MAU ratio.
Common challenges with DAU/MAU
Using the DAU/MAU ratio can be insightful, but they often present challenges for CSMs when it comes to interpreting and acting on the data.
While this metric provides a snapshot of user activity, it doesn't always offer the full story behind customer behavior. Let’s look at some common pain points CSMs face with DAU/MAU:
1. Lack of context
DAU and MAU give you raw numbers, but they don’t explain why usage patterns change.
Are users encountering friction in the product, or are they simply losing interest? Without additional data, it’s hard to pinpoint the cause.
2. Segmentation issues
Aggregated DAU/MAU data can obscure important insights. For example, power users and disengaged users might be lumped together, making it difficult to identify specific user groups that need attention.
3. Interpretation difficulties
The DAU/MAU ratio shows how often users return, but it doesn’t explain why some users fail to engage. This can make it challenging to determine the right intervention strategies.
In the next section, we’ll conclude by discussing how to address these challenges and make the most of DAU/MAU data for long-term customer success.
Conclusion
The DAU/MAU ratio is a valuable tool for tracking user engagement and understanding product adoption, but it comes with its own set of challenges.
From a lack of context to segmentation and interpretation issues, CSMs often need more than just raw data to make informed decisions.
By addressing these pain points and leveraging automated tools that provide deeper insights, you can use the DAU/MAU ratio more effectively to drive product adoption and prevent churn.
Velaris offers solutions that help you go beyond basic DAU/MAU tracking by automating segmentation, monitoring customer health, and providing actionable insights – all in one place.
If you're looking to streamline your Customer Success processes and gain a more complete view of user engagement, book a demo today to see how Velaris can support your team.
