How Product Engagement Scores Drive ROI in Manufacturing

Manufacturers rely on clear, reliable indicators to understand how customers use their products, how adoption improves over time, and where product teams should focus their efforts. The product engagement score, often called PES, is one of the most valuable tools for capturing how many users engage with the product, how users interact with key features, and whether engagement trends support long-term growth.

The product engagement score measures adoption, stickiness, and expansion by combining three key metrics into a single view. This helps manufacturers evaluate user engagement with core features and understand whether users consistently return during a defined time period, such as daily, weekly, or monthly cycles.

What the Product Engagement Score Measures

The product engagement score measures how often users engage with the product, how frequently they use core events or key features, and how active the user base is over a given time period. As a composite metric, PES combines the average number of daily active users, weekly active users, and monthly active users with feature adoption indicators and growth metrics tied to new and recovered accounts.

Why PES Matters in Manufacturing

Many manufacturers now offer digital layers across their product lines, such as software dashboards, subscription-based services, firmware portals, and collaboration tools. Understanding user behavior and customer experience across these digital extensions is essential for improving adoption and shaping future releases.

The product engagement score provides visibility into:

• How many users interact with core product features

• Whether users consistently return and remain active visitors

• Feature discovery trends across different user groups

• Product-qualified leads emerging from product activity

• Whether net growth is positive or negative during each time period

• How customer success teams should target re-engaging users who have dropped off

For manufacturers with specialized hardware, a specially configured version of the product may include software workflows, reporting dashboards, or premium features. PES helps determine whether these digital features represent meaningful value and whether users engage often enough for long-term retention.

Key Metrics that Shape the Product Engagement Score

The product engagement score uses three metrics to measure product engagement and adoption:

1. Adoption

2. Stickiness

3. Growth

These three metrics capture the health of the active user base, including new users, returning users, and recovered accounts.

1. Adoption: How Many Users Interact with the Product

Adoption shows how quickly new users engage with the product and how many users interact with key features after onboarding. It reflects whether the product’s feature set aligns with customer expectations and whether the onboarding process helps users discover value early.

Adoption is shaped by:

• How quickly new users complete core events

• How many active users appear during each time period

• Whether users engage with high-value product features

• How easy it is for users to navigate the product’s structure

Common adoption indicators include the average number of daily active users and weekly active users, which reflect initial product activity.

2. Stickiness: How Often Users Return

Stickiness measures whether users consistently return and continue to rely on the product. This metric answers whether the product has become essential to the user’s workflow.

Stickiness evaluates:

• Daily active users compared to weekly or monthly active users

• Whether core events adopted early continue to be used

• Whether active visitors return during the same time period

• How effectively the product retains loyal customers

Products with high stickiness create more loyal customers and predictable usage patterns.

3. Growth: How Fast the User Base Expands

Growth metrics evaluate how the user base changes over time. This includes new and recovered accounts, dropped accounts, and net growth across a defined period.

The growth metric highlights:

• Active visitor growth

• New users added during the period

• Recovered accounts returning after previous inactivity

• Dropped accounts that may require outreach

• Whether net growth is positive or negative

Together, these three metrics allow product teams to measure engagement, evaluate trends, and refine both product features and customer engagement strategies.

How to Calculate the Product Engagement Score

To calculate product engagement score metrics, teams assign equal weighting to adoption, stickiness, and growth. Each metric receives a score between 0 and 100. Then, the three scores are averaged to produce a single PES value.

Formula:

Product Engagement Score = (Adoption + Stickiness + Growth) / 3

This calculation helps product teams measure positive trends and identify areas that require improvement. In addition, separate PES components highlight how product features support the user journey and where engagement tools or customer success workflows should be deployed.

The PES is also a valuable tool for comparing performance across different segments, versions, or device types. For example, a specially configured version of the product used by enterprise customers may show different patterns than a standard version used by smaller organizations.

What is the PES Overview Chart?

Many product teams visualize engagement using a PES overview chart. This chart shows:

• Daily, weekly, and monthly active users

• Feature adoption across core events

• Trends in new and recovered accounts

• Net growth compared to dropped accounts

A PES overview chart often includes quick ratio components for evaluating growth versus churn. This provides a clear view of whether the user base is expanding or contracting.

Charts can also visualize adoption stickiness and growth over time to help customer success teams identify groups that need additional support.

How Product Engagement Score Supports Customer Experience and Product Strategy

The PES fosters the customer experience and product strategy in several ways.

1. Improves the Onboarding Process

PES helps measure how effective the onboarding process is. Low adoption scores may suggest that users do not discover core features quickly enough or that they face friction during setup.

Using PES, teams can:

• Identify where users drop off

• See which core events adopted early lead to long-term usage

• Tailor onboarding for different user groups

• Improve documentation for feature discovery

A strong onboarding process increases the likelihood that users engage early and remain active visitors.

2. Increases Product Adoption across Digital Features

Manufacturers with digital extensions often include dashboards, reporting tools, or premium features. Understanding feature adoption helps determine which features represent value and which create friction.

PES helps evaluate:

• How many users engage with software dashboards

• Whether product features are intuitive

• How user behavior changes after new releases

• Which premium features encourage retention

High adoption creates more loyal customers and supports the product’s success long-term.

3. Supports Customer Success Teams

Customer success teams rely on clear product engagement metrics to understand how users engage across the user journey. PES provides actionable insights for identifying risk and prioritizing outreach.

Key applications include:

• Identifying dropped accounts

• Tracking recovered accounts

• Detecting negative net growth

• Prioritizing high-value accounts with declining usage

• Tailoring self-service support resources

Customer success teams can use PES to re-engage users, improve customer retention, and support more loyal customers.

4. Identifies Product Qualified Leads

In a SaaS business model layered onto manufacturing products, product-qualified leads (PQLs) emerge when users engage deeply with digital features. High engagement score metrics often indicate a strong likelihood to upgrade or expand usage.

PQL detection helps product teams:

• Identify power users

• Target marketing offers

• Promote premium features

• Strengthen the customer experience

PES ties these efforts to measurable usage patterns.

How Manufacturers Use PES to Drive ROI

Additionally, global manufacturers use the product engagement score to make better, data-driven decisions. 

1. Strengthen Product Decisions with Product Data

Product engagement score metrics give leaders confidence in decisions tied to updates, new releases, and pricing. When PES insights show high usage of key features, teams can invest further in those areas. When usage drops, teams can refine or retire features.

2. Reduce Churn and Improve Customer Retention

Understanding which users return regularly is central to reducing churn. PES highlights risk signals early, giving customer success teams the ability to intervene before churn occurs.

3. Improve Feature Adoption across Complex Product Lines

Manufacturers with software-enabled equipment rely on strong feature adoption rates to justify digital investment. PES reveals whether adoption is growing or if friction is preventing engagement.

4. Guide Roadmaps with Connected Intelligence

Portfolio roadmaps that include PES metrics help leaders evaluate whether adoption trends support long-term strategy. Tools like product roadmap software for manufacturing help organizations map dependencies, track progress, and ensure alignment across engineering, product teams, and operations.

Product Engagement Metrics for Cross-Functional Teams

The product engagement score supports cross-functional teams involved in the product lifecycle:

Product Teams

Use PES to measure engagement with core events, evaluate feature discovery, and refine product features based on user feedback.

Customer Success Teams

Use PES to identify users who may require support, detect dropped accounts, and build more effective referral programs.

Marketing

Use PES to understand how many users interact with features during campaigns and determine which messages support product adoption.

Operations and Engineering

Product Operations teams can use PES insights to prioritize areas where product improvements drive the most value.

Use Product Engagement Score to Strengthen Your ROI

The product engagement score helps manufacturers measure product engagement clearly, understand how many users rely on product features, and identify trends that shape customer experience. By combining adoption, stickiness, and growth into one score, PES provides a full view of how users engage with digital features.

With strong product engagement, manufacturers improve customer retention, encourage feature adoption, and support more loyal customers. When combined with connected roadmap intelligence through tools like Gocious product roadmap software, PES becomes a powerful method for aligning product decisions with long-term ROI.

If you want to explore how PES can strengthen product engagement across your digital and hardware product lines, you can request a custom demo through Gocious.

Frequently Asked Questions