Question about activation definition in Mixpanel
I’m trying to define activation as:
A user is activated if, within 10 days after Sign Up, they do:
Event X ≥ 3
Event Y ≥ 5
Event Z ≥ 1
(order does not matter)
I’ve tried Funnels, Cohorts, Insights, and Custom Events and keep running into limitations:
Funnels are the only place with a signup time anchor, but frequency filters are always scoped to “between funnel steps”, which makes global frequency over the full window awkward or logically impossible.
Cohorts can express multi-event frequency, but can’t anchor it to “within X days of Sign Up”.
Insights has frequency filters, but there’s no way to define a “Step 1” or anchor event like Sign Up.
Custom Events can combine events, but still can’t express “within X days of Sign Up”.
My questions:
- 1.
Is this activation definition actually expressible in Mixpanel today?
- 2.
If yes, what is the correct pattern?
- 3.
If not, is the intended approach:
- 4.
- 5.
Funnel → save completers as cohort, or
compute activation externally and send it back as a user property?
Trying to understand whether I’m missing something, or if this is a real product limitation.
