How to Increase Monthly Active Users in SaaS [+Examples Included]

Are you looking for ways how to increase monthly active users for your SaaS?

We’ve got you covered. In this article you’ll learn:

• What monthly active users (MAUs) are and why you should care.
• 8 ways to turn passive customers into engaged users.
• The best user engagement tools to use to turn new users into active users.

What are monthly active users (MAU) in SaaS?

Monthly active users (MAUs) refer to the number of unique visitors that engage with your web or mobile app in a month (i.e. actively using your product).

MAU is a key performance indicator (KPI) that companies use to track user engagement. To make the metric more effective, only unique visits should be tracked.

How to measure and track monthly active users (MAUs)

Measuring MAU is beyond just checking figures; if those numbers don’t tie directly to your business objectives, then they make no sense.

To start tracking monthly active users, you should determine what constitutes an active user for your product. For instance, in a SaaS context, an active user might interact with your core feature on a weekly basis.

Once this definition is clear, employ an analytics tool to collect user activity data via event tracking. From there, identify key metrics that correspond to your business goals, such as login frequency or feature usage.

With these metrics established, proceed to calculate monthly active users by tallying the total number of unique users engaging with the product within the designated month.

For more granular insights, you can even segment users based on attributes like demographics or behavior.

How to measure and track daily active users (DAUs)

Tracking daily active users is almost the same as calculating monthly active users. You also have to define what it means as a daily active user for your product.

From there, continue with determining all the relevant metrics that you should track i.e. daily logins, feature usage, etc.

You can have all these metrics tracked and calculated automatically using an analytics tool. For example, once you know what event to track, you can monitor daily active users using various types of analytics dashboards (i.e. line graphs, bar charts, etc.)

How to increase product engagement and grow monthly active users

This section will show you proven ways to improve engagement, which naturally increases MAUs. You’ll find examples and actionable tips you can begin implementing right away.

Offer personalized experiences from the start

Start by using a welcome survey to gather information about your users’ feature preferences and the tasks they need to accomplish (jobs to be done).

By doing so, you can trigger onboarding flows tailored to their specific needs. This tailored approach ensures that you can introduce users to the most relevant features and functionalities based on their responses.

As a result, they are more likely to engage with your product – which contributes to overall user retention.

Drive user engagement with interactive guidance

Interactive guidance is an effective tool to drive user acquisition (for SaaS product-led growth) and engagement.

It involves leveraging tools such as tooltips, interactive walkthroughs, or guided tutorials to enhance the user experience and encourage ongoing interaction.

For example, interactive walkthroughs can help new users navigate through the product’s features and functionalities, ensuring a smooth onboarding process. This reduces the learning curve and encourages users to explore more aspects of the product, thus increasing engagement.

Use gamification to encourage user interactions

By incorporating elements of gaming mechanics into the user experience, you can create a more interactive and enjoyable journey for users.

Some common gamification techniques include onboarding checklists, challenges, progress tracking, rewards, etc.

For example, you can implement an onboarding checklist that breaks down the onboarding process into manageable tasks. This makes it feel like a game where users strive to complete each step.

As users progress through the checklist, they feel a sense of accomplishment, encouraging further engagement with the product.

Trigger in-app messages contextually to enhance user experience

Contextual messages sometimes are a better alternative to push notifications. They serve as motivational triggers to encourage users to take specific actions or complete certain tasks within the product.

You can use messages to congratulate users on their progress, remind them of uncompleted tasks, or offer incentives for further engagement. This encouragement fosters a sense of achievement and motivation, leading to increased user activity and retention.

For example, based on user feedback, you can trigger an in-app message to address the issue promptly.

Use path and funnel analysis to optimize user experience

This approach involves analyzing user paths to identify the most common path to a specific action. For example, you can analyze the sequence of actions leading to activation, such as signing up, completing onboarding, and performing key tasks.

Once you’ve identified the common path to adoption, funnel analysis allows you to pinpoint friction points or areas where users are dropping off or encountering obstacles.

By identifying these barriers, you can focus on optimizing specific steps to streamline the user journey. This may involve simplifying the signup process, providing clearer instructions or tooltips during onboarding, etc.

Collect and act on user feedback to retain existing users

By actively collecting feedback from existing users, you gain valuable insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points.

This understanding allows you to tailor your product to better meet user expectations, ultimately increasing engagement.

For example, you can trigger an in-app survey after onboarding or when users interact with a newly released feature to gauge their experience.

Run A/B tests to determine what drives engagement

A/B testing involves creating multiple versions of a particular element, such as tooltips, and presenting them to different groups of users. For example, you can create two versions of tooltips—one with a GIF animation and one with text only.

By tracking user interactions with each variation, you can measure engagement metrics such as click-through rates. It helps you identify which version of the tooltip drives higher engagement among users.

Based on the results of the A/B test, you can iterate and refine the design of tooltips for all of your users.

Deliver tailored offerings to resurrect inactive users

This involves leveraging user data to understand their behavior and preferences, and then customizing interventions to address their specific needs and motivations.

For example, you can use the “Profiles” feature to access comprehensive user and company data. By analyzing this data, including feedback, feature interactions, and past behaviors, you gain insights into the reasons behind user inactivity and areas where improvements are needed.

Successfully resurrecting inactive users not only increases product engagement but also contributes to overall user retention and growth in MAUs.