Beyond Signups and Conversion: Guide on PLG Metrics for SaaS CMOs

In the world of B2B SaaS marketing, signups have become the default metric for gauging campaign success, or even further - marketing team's performance. It’s easy to see why: they’re straightforward to track and offer a quick pulse check on whether your message is resonating.

But after years of working closely with product teams in B2B space —and drawing on my background in statistics—I can tell you one thing - relying solely on signups is misleading, and in longer term harmful for both marketing teams, but also for a PLG business.

By identifying one to three key product usage events that have a strong correlation with long-term engagement or purchase, you gain a far clearer picture of which marketing efforts truly drive sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll walk through exactly how to uncover those critical events, the questions to ask your product counterparts, and common pitfalls to avoid.

How does a product team usually track usage?

Product teams typically rely on analytics tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude to track user behavior in your app, capturing each action as an “event.” The tricky part is that these events are usually defined by product or engineering, so it can be tough for marketers to understand exactly what each event means. Good product teams use solutions like Mixpanel’s Lexicon to make the data more accessible across departments. Even then, it’s often far more effective to sit down with someone from the product team—they can guide you to the events that best reflect initial activation, purchase likelihood, or retention potential. And that’s exactly what we’ll dig into next.

How to come up with the right PLG metrics?

When you sit down with a product manager or engineer, it’s important for both of you to look at each product action through the lens of your key PLG goals: initial activation, purchase likelihood (the “aha moment”), and retention.

Initial Activation

A step beyond raw signups, initial activation often involves pinpointing the first time a user really does something meaningful in the product. For a survey platform, you might be tempted to pick “creating a survey” as the metric, but that alone doesn’t confirm genuine engagement—almost everyone who signs up will create a survey. Instead, focus on “receiving the first survey response,” because that shows users have successfully launched something and are seeing real results.

Here are three questions you could be asking yourselves to find events you could tie to PLG metrics:

• “What’s the very first action that separates active users from ‘window shoppers’?” - This gets everyone thinking about a user’s first real engagement milestone rather than superficial usage.
• “Is there a specific behavior (like creating a project, inviting a team member, etc.) that strongly predicts whether a trial user will explore more features?” - Focus on actions that indicate genuine curiosity or willingness to invest time.
• “Which event or set of events correlates with users continuing past day one or week one?” - Pinpoint the short-term signals that show users are committing to the product beyond just signing up.

Metrics tied to purchase

Purchase likelihood is tied to that moment when users grasp your product’s true value—commonly called the “aha moment.” It might be seeing actual data or insights they can’t get anywhere else. In our survey tool example, that could be viewing early responses and noticing a pattern or insight they didn’t expect. That’s when they realize your solution saves time, reveals actionable feedback, or otherwise makes their job easier, making them far more likely to pay or upgrade.

Two questions you could use during such 'PLG metrics' exercise:

• “When do our customers typically say, ‘I see the real value here’?” - The product team might point to an event like completing a critical workflow or seeing a unique insight.
• “Which features or data insights do paying customers engage with that free-tier or trial users rarely touch? - Identifies the in-app experiences that lead directly to conversion.

Retention

Personally, I find this to be the most important metric, unfortunately often missed when evaluating marketing team efforts. Most probably, because retention PLG metrics can be tougher to nail down. A good place to start is a great understanding of workflows your tools help your customers with. When you know that features of your product 'fit' workflows of users of your app, you can be sure that you're on the right track to retain these users. Getting back to our survey app example. If a user connects survey platform to their CRM or marketing automation system they’re embedding the survey tool into their day-to-day operations. The more essential the workflow your product supports, the higher the chance they’ll stick around for the long haul.

• “Which recurring actions keep users around for the long haul?” - Looks at habits (e.g., weekly logins, monthly data exports) that strong adopters exhibit regularly.
• “Are there integrations or workflows that, once set up, drastically reduce the likelihood of churn?” - Highlights sticky features or setups (like connecting to a CRM) that make the product integral to their daily routine.
• “What usage patterns or lack thereof typically precede churn?” - Helps the product and marketing teams spot early warning signs, allowing for proactive re-engagement campaigns.

Missing Data

In some cases, you might realize that the key events you need aren’t even being tracked yet. Implementing new event tracking can be a relatively small lift—often significantly less than a week of engineering time—but it varies depending on how your app is structured. Some events are quick to capture (e.g., button clicks), while others (like complex workflows spanning multiple screens) can be trickier. It’s also worth confirming how each event is tracked: a server-side implementation is generally more reliable, since client-side events are susceptible to ad blockers and browser limitations that can skew your data. Be sure to ask your product or engineering team to clarify these details before finalizing any changes.

Bringing It All Together: One Source of Truth for PLG metrics

Once you’ve identified and instrumented your key product events, the next logical step is to correlate them with your marketing channels. This means capturing how each user discovered your product (e.g., through UTM parameters or campaign IDs) and then merging that data with your product-analytics platform—whether it’s Mixpanel, Amplitude, or something else entirely. When your campaign data and event tracking coexist in one source of truth, you’ll see exactly which channels drive users who reach those activation, purchase, or retention milestones. That clarity makes it far easier to decide where to increase spend, tweak messaging, or run targeted experiments. Even better, your product and marketing teams can collaborate without wading through disconnected dashboards or debating conflicting data. It’s a win-win: better insights for the marketing side, and concrete feedback loops for product teams to improve feature prioritization and overall user experience.

Acting upon collected data

On top of what we've covered so far there's more you can get from properly identifying actions that signals actual engagement with the product.

Segmenting Users

Use your newly integrated data to create actionable user segments, such as “Power Users” (those who use three or more core features within the first week) or “At-Risk Users” (fewer than two logins per week). By segmenting based on actual usage rather than just demographics or funnel stage, marketers can tailor messaging, onboarding, and retargeting efforts to each group’s specific needs. For example, if the data reveals that users acquired through LinkedIn Ads are twice as likely to adopt advanced features, you might double down on that channel. Conversely, if Google Ads leads stall after the initial signup, it could be time to revisit your targeting or campaign messaging. The real shift here is moving beyond cost-per-lead or signups to focus on whether each channel drives meaningful product engagement that leads to long-term success.

Product Marketing Campaigns

Once you’ve identified which channels and segments drive the most meaningful product usage, translate those insights into tangible marketing actions. For instance, if data shows a big drop in user engagement after day three, design an email onboarding sequence or an in-app nudge prompting your most valuable product actions. You can also direct budget decisions toward channels that consistently deliver high-usage cohorts, tweak your messaging to highlight the “aha moment” that triggers higher conversions, or promote specific features known to increase expansions or upgrades. By way of example, if you discover that trial users who complete a “team invite” within their first week have a 40% higher LTV, create a drip campaign focused on that precise action. The beauty here is an integrated marketing–product feedback loop—usage data informs everything from copy to channel priorities, ensuring your campaigns resonate with real user behaviors.

Review & Iterate - Routines for Product and Marketing Teams

Establish a formal check-in—monthly or quarterly—with product stakeholders to review the latest usage metrics, emerging trends, and any potential adjustments in budget or campaign strategy. Refine which product metrics matter most as user behavior evolves or new features roll out, always aiming for a data-driven approach to growth. A typical agenda might include identifying top-performing channels based on advanced feature adoption, spotting weak points where certain segments under-engage or churn, and assigning clear action items like revamping onboarding flows or testing new acquisition strategies. This recurring process ensures continuous alignment between marketing and product, elevating your team’s ability to respond to market shifts and user needs—not just around major launches, but all year round.

Closing Thoughts

By combining precise product metrics with disciplined segmentation and regular cross-functional reviews, your marketing organization can move beyond superficial performance indicators. It’s not just about which channels produce the most signups, but which ones create long-term value and true user engagement. As you refine these processes over time—pinpointing critical in-app events, measuring campaign effectiveness in a single dashboard, and iterating based on real-world data—you’ll build a sustainable growth engine that benefits every part of the business.