Mixpanel Cohort Feed Integration

Mixpanel provides advanced event and user analytics, including funnel analysis and segmentation. The Mixpanel Cohorts feed integration allows you to ingest Mixpanel Cohorts into mParticle as user attributes, enabling you to build and activate Audiences based on behavioral segments defined in Mixpanel.

When Mixpanel syncs a cohort, it sets a user attribute on matching profiles in mParticle. You can use these attributes to power personalized experiences, targeted messaging, and audience suppression across the hundreds of downstream destinations supported by mParticle.

When to use this integration

This integration is designed to close the loop between initial data collection through mParticle, behavioral analysis in Mixpanel, and finally activation through mParticle’s Audiences.

1. Collect data: First, user and event data is collected across your customer touchpoints using mParticle’s SDKs and APIs before being forwarded to Mixpanel through the Mixpanel event data output.
2. Analyze & Segment: After sending your data to Mixpanel, your analytics team can analyze your users’ behavior and build cohorts — for example, “users who completed onboarding but haven’t made a purchase in 30 days.”
3. Activate: Using the Mixpanel Cohorts feed integration, you can then sync your cohorts back into mParticle as user attributes, where they can be used to build audiences.

For the sync to work, Mixpanel must be able to match cohort members to mParticle profiles. This depends on how your Mixpanel event output is configured — specifically, the External Identity Type setting. See Setting $mparticle_user_id in Mixpanel for details on how to verify your setup.

Prerequisites

Before you can configure the Mixpanel Cohorts feed, you must have:

• A Mixpanel project with at least one saved cohort. The user configuring the integration must be a Mixpanel project admin.
• User identity matching: Mixpanel user profiles must contain a $mparticle_user_id property or a $distinct_id that corresponds to the MPID. To confirm your setup supports this, verify that the External Identity Type setting in your Mixpanel event output configuration is set to mParticle ID. See Setting $mparticle_user_id in Mixpanel for details.

What data does Mixpanel send to mParticle?

The Mixpanel Cohorts feed integration sends user attribute updates only. For each cohort synced, Mixpanel creates or updates a user attribute on the matched mParticle profile:

For example, if a cohort in Mixpanel is named “Power Users”, mParticle profiles matched to that cohort will receive a user attribute called Power Users with a value of true. When a user exits the cohort, the attribute is updated to false.

Identity mapping

To match users between Mixpanel and mParticle, the integration uses the following identifier priority:

1. $mparticle_user_id — If this property exists on the Mixpanel user profile, it is used as the primary identifier to resolve the user in mParticle.
2. $distinct_id — If $mparticle_user_id is not present, Mixpanel will fall back to the standard Mixpanel Distinct ID as long as your Mixpanel event output configuration has the External Identity Type set to mParticle ID.

See Setting $mparticle_user_id in Mixpanel below to determine whether your current setup is sufficient or if you need to explicitly populate $mparticle_user_id on your Mixpanel user profiles.

Sync types

Mixpanel offers two ways to sync a cohort to mParticle, depending on whether you need a one-time snapshot or an ongoing, automatically updated audience:

• One-Time Export — A static snapshot of the cohort is sent immediately. Audience membership will not be updated in mParticle after this export.
• Dynamic (Recurring) Sync — Mixpanel initiates a sync approximately every 15 minutes, sending diffs (adds and removes) to keep the user attribute in mParticle in sync with the current cohort membership in Mixpanel.

Mixpanel Cohorts integration setup instructions

This connection requires setup in both mParticle and Mixpanel.

Step 1: Configure the feed input in mParticle

1. Log into your mParticle account and navigate to Data Platform > Setup > Inputs.
2. Click the Feeds tab and search for Mixpanel Cohorts.
3. Click Add Mixpanel Cohorts to Setup, then select the Input Feed integration type and click Add to Setup.
4. Enter a descriptive Configuration Name.
5. Set Input Protection Level to Only Update Profiles to ensure that only existing mParticle profiles can be updated and no new profiles are created from the cohort sync.
6. Click Save.
7. Copy the Webhook URL displayed after saving — you will need this for the Mixpanel configuration.

Step 2: Connect Mixpanel to mParticle

1. In Mixpanel, select Integrations under the Data Management tab in the top navigation bar.
2. Find mParticle in the integrations list and click Connect.
3. Paste the Webhook URL copied from mParticle into the URL input field.
4. Click Continue to establish the connection.

Step 3: Export a Cohort from Mixpanel

1. In Mixpanel, navigate to Cohorts under the Data Management menu.
2. Find the cohort you want to export, click the three-dot overflow menu (…), and select Export to… > mParticle.

3. Choose your sync type:

   • One-Time Export — for a static, immediate send.
   • Recurring (Dynamic) Sync — for ongoing, automatic updates every ~15 minutes.
4. Click Start Sync.

For more detail on managing cohort syncs in Mixpanel, see Mixpanel’s Cohort Sync documentation.

Setting $mparticle_user_id in Mixpanel

For the cohort sync to work, Mixpanel needs to identify which mParticle user each cohort member corresponds to. It does this by looking for a $mparticle_user_id property on the Mixpanel user profile, falling back to $distinct_id if that property isn’t present.

For most customers, no additional setup is required. Whether matching will work depends on how your Mixpanel event output is configured and when your data was sent.

Determine whether you need to take action

The matching logic works as follows:

• If External Identity Type is set to mParticle ID (the most common configuration): Mixpanel’s $distinct_id is already set to the MPID. The fallback identity matching in the cohort sync will work automatically — no additional setup needed.
• For events sent after January 15, 2026: $mparticle_user_id is automatically included as an event property on all events sent to Mixpanel, regardless of your External Identity Type setting.
• For events sent before January 15, 2026: Matching depends on whether External Identity Type was already set to mParticle ID when those events were sent. If it was, those users will match. If it wasn’t, those historical users cannot be retroactively fixed and will not be matched by the cohort sync.
• If External Identity Type is set to something other than mParticle ID: The fallback matching will not work for historical data, and you will need to explicitly set $mparticle_user_id as a user profile property in Mixpanel using one of the methods below.

To check your External Identity Type setting, open your Mixpanel event output configuration in mParticle and locate the External Identity Type field.

Confirm that $mparticle_user_id is on Mixpanel user profiles

If you want to verify the current state of your Mixpanel profiles before running a sync:

1. In Mixpanel, go to Users and open a few user profiles that are members of a cohort you plan to sync.
2. Look for a user property called $mparticle_user_id on each profile.
3. If the property exists and has a value, identity matching will use it as the primary identifier and you’re set. If it’s not present, matching will fall back to $distinct_id — see Determine whether you need to take action to understand whether that fallback will work for your configuration.

If your cohort syncs are running, but you’re seeing significantly fewer users in mParticle than expected, missing identifiers are the most likely cause.

How to set $mparticle_user_id as a user profile property in Mixpanel

If your setup doesn’t meet the conditions above — for example, if External Identity Type is set to something other than mParticle ID and you need to ensure the MPID appears on Mixpanel user profiles — use one of the following methods. You can also read more about this in Mixpanel’s documentation.

Both options require that you have the Mixpanel event output connected in mParticle; this is the pipeline that carries the attribute to Mixpanel. If you don’t yet have that output configured, set it up first.

Option 1: Set via mParticle SDK (recommended for developers)

Add a user attribute in your app’s code that writes the mParticle ID (MPID) as $mparticle_user_id. Since mParticle forwards user attributes to Mixpanel through the event output, this value will appear on Mixpanel user profiles automatically. For example: Web SDK:

const currentUser = mParticle.Identity.getCurrentUser();
if (currentUser) {
    const mpid = currentUser.getMPID();
    currentUser.setUserAttribute("$mparticle_user_id", mpid);
}

iOS (Swift):

if let currentUser = MParticle.sharedInstance().identity.currentUser {
    currentUser.setUserAttribute("$mparticle_user_id", value: currentUser.mpid.stringValue)
}

Option 2: Use mParticle Rules (No-Code)

If you can’t modify your app’s code, an mParticle admin can use Rules to automatically map the MPID to a user attribute before data is sent to Mixpanel:

1. Navigate to Data Plan > Rules in mParticle.
2. Create a new Rule scoped to the Mixpanel Output.
3. Configure the rule to copy the MPID into the user attributes object as $mparticle_user_id:

batch.user_attributes['$mparticle_user_id'] = batch.mpid;

Once the rule is active, every event sent to Mixpanel will include this attribute, and Mixpanel will update the user profile accordingly.

Required Mixpanel event output settings

Verify the following settings in your Mixpanel event output. Some settings live at the configuration level (shared across all connections using that output) and others at the connection level (per-connection settings).

Configuration settings

Connection settings

Verifying the Integration

Once a cohort sync has been initiated, you can verify data is flowing correctly in mParticle.

Check Data Trends

1. Navigate to Data Platform > Trends (or Live Stream if using development data).
2. Select your Mixpanel Cohorts input feed from the Inputs dropdown.
3. Confirm that user attribute update messages are being received.

Verify a Specific User Profile

1. In Mixpanel, locate a user in your synced cohort and note their $mparticle_user_id or $distinct_id.
2. In mParticle, go to Customer 360 > User Profiles and search for the user.
3. Confirm that the user has a user attribute matching the cohort name (e.g., Power Users = true).

Using Mixpanel Cohorts in Audiences

Once cohort data is flowing into mParticle, you can use the synced user attributes as part of the membership criteria for an audience:

1. Navigate to Segmentation > Audiences in mParticle.
2. Create a new audience or edit an existing one.
3. Add a User Attribute criteria, select the <Cohort Name> attribute, and set it equal to true (or false, depending on your use case and which user segments you’re targeting).
4. Connect the audience to any of mParticle’s supported downstream outputs for activation.

Troubleshooting

Discrepancies in User Count

The most common cause of mismatched user counts between Mixpanel and mParticle is missing identifiers. If a Mixpanel cohort member does not have a $mparticle_user_id or a $distinct_id that resolves to an existing mParticle profile, the sync will not update that user.

There are two things to check:

• External Identity Type — Verify that the External Identity Type setting in your Mixpanel event output configuration is set to mParticle ID. If it isn’t, the fallback $distinct_id matching will not work, which can significantly reduce the number of matched users.
• $mparticle_user_id on user profiles — In Mixpanel, go to the Users report, filter for your cohort, and add a filter to check if $mparticle_user_id is set. The filtered count represents the maximum number of users likely to match via the primary identifier.

See Setting $mparticle_user_id in Mixpanel for more detail on both checks.

Export is Paused

If your sync appears as Paused in the Mixpanel Integrations tab, hover over the status to see the error. Common causes include:

• An invalid or expired Webhook URL.
• A connection issue with the mParticle endpoint.

To resolve, disconnect and reconnect the integration in Mixpanel using a freshly generated Webhook URL from mParticle.

No Data Appearing in mParticle

If no user attribute updates appear in mParticle after initiating a sync:

• Verify the Webhook URL was copied correctly into Mixpanel, including the full API token.
• Confirm the Feed configuration in mParticle has a status of Active.
• Check Data Platform > System Alerts for any errors related to the Mixpanel Cohorts input.
• Ensure the cohort in Mixpanel has finished calculating before exporting.

Configuration Settings