Event Property vs. User Property: When to Use Each in Analytics
Should I send name and email as event property or user property? What's the difference?
Should I send name and email as event property or user property? What's the difference?
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Based on the knowledge sources provided, I can answer your question about whether to send name and email as event properties or user properties in Mixpanel, and explain the difference between the two.Mixpanel recommends sending name and email as user properties rather than event properties. This is because these attributes are typically demographic information about the user that doesn't change frequently.According to the User Profile documentation: "We recommend primarily using User Properties to track demographic attributes of the user, like their name, email, and domain. Most other properties are better tracked as Event Properties."The main differences between event properties and user properties are: 1. Nature of data:
- Event properties describe specific actions or behaviors that occur at a point in time.
- User properties describe attributes of the user that are more static or represent their current state.2. Mutability:
- Event properties are immutable once tracked.
- User properties are mutable and can be updated over time.3. Storage and querying:
- Events and user profiles are stored in separate tables and joined at query-time.
- User properties always reflect the latest state of the user when queried.For name and email specifically, Mixpanel has reserved user properties that are recommended for use: From the Reserved Properties documentation: "We recommend using the $name (or $first_name, $last_name), $email, and $phone Reserved Profile Properties) if you're uploading a user's name, email, or phone. Mixpanel shows these properties by default in various parts of our UI and are used for Cohort Syncs as well."In conclusion, it's best to send name and email as user properties in Mixpanel, specifically using the reserved properties $name (or $first_name and $last_name) and $email.
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