What Really Is AAARRR Framework? (Fully Explained)

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“The AAARRR framework, also known as the Pirate Metric, is a marketing funnel created by Dave McClure in 2008. The goal of this framework is to help marketers understand how to track their campaigns and find areas for improvement”.

AAARRR pirate metrics are a framework that helps website owners identify what is working and what needs to be improved on their site. The acronym stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral and Recruitment. AAARRR pirate metrics can help businesses understand the customer journey before they buy something online. This article will cover some of the details of this framework to provide readers with an understanding of how it can help them determine if their business goals are being met or not.

An Introduction To The AAARRR Framework

The Pirate Metrics were developed to the more general but less actionable Lean Analytics metrics. Compared with other methods of measuring customer success, this method starts from a different perspective that is particularly useful when looking for growth opportunities in startups or early-stage ventures where there is not much data available yet. In summary, they measure how successful you are at acquiring new users who use your product repeatedly over time (retention), providing positive feedback about their experience increasing its virality (referrals). This will lead to increased revenue from the most active users.

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The AAARRR metrics are a simple yet powerful framework that provides a snapshot of how your startup is doing at any given moment.

Understanding The Six Metrics Of The Pirate Funnel: AAAARRR

The acronym AAARRR stands for Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. Each of these steps has a specific purpose of helping you grow your company or product successfully, so they will not all be covered here today. Still, we will break down each one into some important key points that should help understand how this framework works as a whole!

The awareness step of pirate metrics involves creating goals for the process, which are used to get everyone on board with what’s happening at any given time.

Acquisition refers to getting new users or customers on board with what you have going on. There are different methods which could include paid advertising campaigns through social media platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, or even offline methods like billboards and radio commercials. The acquisition shows how many people have visited your site or signed up for an account on the latest version of the software.

 Marketers must keep track of this number, so they know if there needs to be a change made somewhere along the line by trying out different types of paid ads or looking into where most traffic is coming from. If someone visits but doesn’t sign up, they are still counted as a visitor. AAARRR metrics also track how many people leave after entering their email addresses. This is because sometimes it’s not worth putting in your personal information if you won’t be receiving any direct value from the company, such as new high-quality blog posts or tips to help improve your life daily.

Activation is about what happens when someone first signs up to your service, so you want to make sure that the incentive for them coming on board in the first place will be fulfilled quickly after this initial interaction with your product. This also requires some onboarding process which will show off all of the best parts of your platform without overwhelming new users who have no idea where to start once they sign up!

In addition, it is where marketers try and get more of those visitors that signed up but didn’t turn into actual users who will come back time and again to use the software every day or week. They focus on making sure links work properly so when someone clicks on them, they go where they were supposed to instead of somewhere else by mistake, causing confusion among new users. AAARRR metrics also look at how many of those people who signed up log in or return to the website daily if they are supposed to be working with the software instead of having it collect dust somewhere where no one will ever see it again, thus wasting all your efforts put into making an amazing product!

Retention ensures that people keep returning again and again by providing valuable tools or resources that help them achieve their goals faster than ever before. It gets harder and harder to retain these customers as time goes on because more competitors are popping up everywhere. Hence, you want to make sure the people already with your company stay loyal for as long as possible.

It is important to make sure you aren’t just acquiring users but keeping them around long enough (and happy enough) that they won’t want to leave no matter how many other options come out with similar products/services one day or another company decides to do something about improving theirs by increasing prices across the board after getting complacent. AAARRR metrics look at how many new subscribers come on board each day after signing up for things like free trials, but AAARRR metrics also look at whether these people are cancelling their subscriptions to your product or service when they should be renewing them. AAARRR metrics keep track of all this information so that marketers can adjust what they have been doing from the acquisition phase onwards to improve retention rates and overall customer satisfaction!

Referral is about encouraging word of mouth advertising by providing incentives for current users or customers to recommend your product or service to their friends and family members if they love what you’re doing, just like how Uber gives out bonuses! It can also involve some referral programs that will allow new sign-ups an incentive to attract more interest in your product before they even join themselves.

It has marketers focus on gaining new subscribers and keeping current ones happy enough to tell all their friends about your amazing product or service! A referral means you have done something right along the line, whether hiring someone great as a community manager who knows how to care for their users or creating a product that effectively solves someone’s problem. AAARRR metrics look at the number of new subscribers you gain each day because getting more people on board with your company is what it’s all about! AAARRR also tracks the number of current customers who continue using your software and refer others, which means they are satisfied enough with the initial value gained from signing up for things like free trials to renewing once those months are over.

Revenue is all about making money, but it doesn’t necessarily have anything directly related to selling products. This part focuses on getting those early adopters involved with whatever brand you might have. It can include selling ad space or creating an affiliate program that will pay users to drive traffic elsewhere.

It is where marketers make sure everything they do along the line by acquiring, activating, retaining and referring has paid off in some form or another through sales brought in through either existing customers upgrading to premium plans or new customers signing up for things like free trials that will eventually turn into paying members when they realize the value gained from your product. AAARRR metrics look at all these factors so marketers can keep adjusting what they are doing to reach their revenue goals along the line, which means growing and making more money each year!

Why Is The AAARRR Framework Different From Other Forms Of Marketing Strategies?

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They are different because they focus on the customer journey rather than just marketing campaigns. AAARRR metrics aren’t focused only on existing customers but also potential ones as well.

AAARRR metrics are different from all the other marketing acronyms because they help you track your users rather than give general information. It makes it easier to keep customers happy and make money through each stage of their journey with your company until they decide that they’ve had enough or can no longer be reached by a customer support representative after deciding not to renew their subscription.

Benefits Of Using The AAARRR Framework?

The AAARRR framework is a great tool for marketing and startup teams to track key business metrics

  • It makes it easy to understand the stages of growth that your company will be going through, from startup until you reach product/market fit.
  • You can easily see where problems may arise or what areas need more work by looking at each stage individually. 
  • This allows companies using this framework an advantage because they better understand how their customer interacts with their product. They know exactly what needs improvement and which parts are working well independently without having outside input from customers or other professionals within certain fields such as psychology etc. The AAARRR Framework gives businesses a clear understanding of where they are in the customer journey. 
  • AAARRR stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue, which each have their subcategories depending on what stage your company is at. For example: if you’re starting with little to no customers, your Acquisition will be minimal, but as you acquire more users, that number might increase exponentially. On the other hand, if people aren’t using or activating your product, then it may not matter how many new sign-ups you get because these people won’t become valuable customers without first coming back for another use (retaining them) 
  • The AAARRR Framework makes it simple to keep track of all these categories to easily see what they are doing right and where the problems lie.

Why Are AAARRR Pirate Metrics No Longer Effective Today?

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AAARRR metrics have been a popular framework for startups to track the success of their business. However, as technology evolves and businesses need to compete faster than ever, this strategy could become obsolete. 

Startups can use this model to track what percentage of visitors sign up, how many users they acquire and the number that payor converts into customers. It’s been used by companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Dropbox since 2007 – but it has become too easy. To keep pace with new competitors in today’s market, entrepreneurs need more detailed reporting tools which provide better KPIs (key performance indicators) than just measuring conversion rates from visits to customers. This is because there are so many variables affecting those numbers now that weren’t around when the Pirate Metrics were first developed over ten years ago!

It has already started losing its value in today’s market because no one wants to wait six months or more to see whether they’re on the right path. And that is why we end up seeing many companies falling behind competition even though they’re using best practices!

Final Words

Remember, “the customer may not know what they want, but they’ll tell you when they see it”. This is the fundamental principle behind AAARRR pirate metrics. It’s up to your business to understand how people interact with your site and products to provide them with exactly what they need without being asked. What does this mean for marketing? We’re here to help! Regardless of where a potential customer is in the process, we have an expert ready and waiting who understands their needs and wants better than anyone else. Give us a call or send us an email today if any part of these metrics has been unclear–we would love to chat about how we can work together on your next project!

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