Build a Retention Report

Mixpanel’s Retention allows you to analyze the rate at which your users are re-engaging in certain behaviors over a fixed period of time. Learn about the basics of Retention reports in this article. Learn how to interpret a Retention report in this article.

Access the Retention Report

To view the Retention report select Retention from the Analysis section of Mixpanel.

Select Type of Retention

Select either Recurring, First Time, or Frequency from the drop-down list at the top left of the query builder.

Select Events

Depending on the type of Retention you have chosen, you will be able to select one or two events to analyze. For First Time Retention you can select an event you want your users to perform first, then the event you want them to return to perform.

By default Retention will show “Any event”.

“Any event” includes:

• All of your events, including any that have been hidden.
• “Message Opened” events, generated automatically by Mixpanel when users open certain types of messages.
• “Experiment Started” events, generated automatically by Mixpanel with the A/B test feature.

“Any event” does not include:

• “Message Sent” events or “Message Bounced” events, which are also generated automatically for some message types.

Filter by Property

Filter each event by one or more properties by clicking on the … icon beside an event and clicking Add filter. Select an event or user profile property from the drop down list.

Click the x button beside the property filter to remove it.

You can also add custom properties here using this guide.

Select User Cohorts

By default Retention will analyze all users who performed the selected events. To filter to specific user cohorts click the Filter button below the query builder and select one or more cohorts from the drop-down list.

Select USERS IN at the top of this list to choose whether you want to filter users in a cohort, or not in a cohort. You can add multiple filters.

Breakdown 

Click the Breakdown button below the query builder to select properties or cohorts to breakdown your results by. The buckets of the Retention report will be broken down by that cohort or property, rather than the date. Each bucket shows the average number of users in each cohort who performed the event, or the number of users with that property who performed the event within the date period.

When you breakdown the report, all of the users who performed the event with a given property value or in a given cohort are grouped into a single row. This is different from the default Retention report, where rows in the selected date range are divided by day, week, or month intervals.

You can also add custom properties here using this guide.

Select Date Range

Select the date range you would like to see by clicking on Last 7 days at the top of the chart and selecting from the drop-down list. Learn more about the date and time selector here.