Retention
In one line
Retention is the share of users who continue to use or purchase from your product over time after their first touch — a primary signal of long-term product health.
Going deeper
Retention measures the share of a cohort that is still active N days, weeks or months after their first action. The standard visualisation is a cohort chart, and the gold standard shape is a 'flat' curve that levels off rather than decaying to zero.
It matters because spending more on acquisition while retention is broken just fills a leaky bucket faster. Lifting retention a couple of points often moves LTV and revenue more than scaling new acquisition does.
The most reliable lever is shortening the path to the 'aha moment'. Slack's 2,000 messages and Facebook's seven friends in ten days are the canonical examples, and the first few days of onboarding tend to determine long-term retention more than any single later feature.
Related terms
Churn Rate
Churn rate is the percentage of customers who leave or cancel during a given period — effectively the mirror image of retention.
MarketingLTV
Lifetime value (LTV) is the estimated total revenue — or profit — a single customer is expected to generate over the entire relationship with your business.
MarketingCohort Analysis
Cohort analysis groups users by a shared starting characteristic — usually signup week — and tracks their behaviour over time so you can see how each cohort evolves.
MarketingNorth Star Metric
A north star metric (NSM) is the single number that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers, used to align decisions across the whole company.
MarketingAARRR
AARRR — Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue — is the five-stage growth metrics framework popularised by Dave McClure and used as the default scaffolding for growth teams.
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