3 min read
Monitoring product-led growth metrics that matter
Alice Chen Marketing Specialist
In product-led growth, the metrics are the signals. Who's activating, who's expanding, who's about to leave — every move a customer makes shows up in the data before it shows up in revenue.
The trick is catching those signals when they happen, and turning them into action while the moment's still warm. Below are three PLG metrics worth monitoring, and the workflow you'd build in Attio to act on each one.
Before you start
These workflows are only as good as the product context behind them. Make sure your Attio workspace is connected to your product usage data, billing, and support stack before wiring these up. The agents below depend on those signals being there to read.
Metrics that matter
What follows are three of the most useful metrics to watch in a PLG motion, each paired with a workflow that turns the metric's movement into action.
Activation rate
Activation rate is the share of new signups who hit a meaningful first-value milestone in a defined window: completing onboarding, sending the first invite, running the first job, whatever your product calls "the moment it clicks." It's the most important top-of-funnel signal in PLG. Healthy activation means the rest of the funnel has fuel; a leaky activation rate means everything else suffers.
The workflow that acts on this signal watches new signups for whether they reach activation, and surfaces the ones who don't to a CSM with a brief on what they've done so far.
For every new signup, track whether they reach our activation milestones within 7 days. If they don't, send a Slack notification to the CS team channel with the user's name, account, and last activity date.
Engagement health
Engagement is the running pulse of an active account: how often users log in, how many features they touch, how deep they go. In PLG, engagement is the leading indicator of both expansion (climbing engagement means a team finding new use cases) and churn (declining engagement means a team drifting away). The number you watch matters less than the trend over time.
The workflow that acts on this signal watches engagement week-over-week and flags accounts whose trend has shifted, so a CSM or AM can act before the move shows up in retention numbers.
Every Monday morning, find paying customer accounts that haven't had any product activity in the past 14 days. Post the list to the CS team Slack channel with their MRR and assigned CSM.
Net revenue retention (NRR)
NRR measures how much revenue your existing customers represent at the end of a period compared to the start, including expansion, contraction, and churn. In PLG, NRR is the single best indicator of motion velocity: a number above 100% means existing customers grew enough to cover any you lost; below 100% means leaks somewhere. Leadership reads it monthly; the board reads it quarterly.
The workflow that acts on this signal monitors the components of NRR across cohorts and surfaces the accounts driving the biggest moves, up or down.
When a paying customer's MRR drops by more than 20% in a single billing cycle, send a Slack message to the AM channel with the account name, old MRR, new MRR, and the assigned AM.
Beyond the metrics
Activation, engagement, and NRR are three of the highest-leverage signals to monitor in a PLG motion, but they aren't the only ones. Workflows lets your team compose any signal-to-action play your product-led motion needs: AI agents that watch the data, draft the message, qualify the account, and route the work to the right person.