[Week 5] Learning Mixpanel: User Profiles

Introduction

Welcome to Week 5 of Learning Mixpanel. I'm Ansh, a Mixpanel Certified Partner. I’ve had the privilege of working with 60+ startups, helping them set up their analytics infrastructure and gain actionable insights using Mixpanel.

Curious about my work? Check out my website for case studies, testimonials, and more details about what I do.

Today, I’m going to talk about user profiles in Mixpanel.

Let’s get into it

User Profiles

If your preferred consumption is audio visual - access the video on Youtube.

User profiles are created when Mixpanel identifies a new user. Each profile stores data on user events and properties.

Using the Users Tab, you can:

• Filter users based on specific events, cohorts, or property values.
• Customize the columns you see on the screen.
• Export users along with their properties.

Creating/ Updating a User Profile

There are 3 ways to create or update user profiles:

Create a profile

You can manually create a new user profile by specifying their distinct_id and name (required properties). You can also add other properties and their values. Once created, any event with this distinct_id will be linked to this user profile.

Update a profile

Updating a profile is similar to creating one. You can add new properties or update existing ones. For example, if a user profile has number of purchases as 100, you can update it to 200 and add a new property like number of searches.

Import from CSV Create/ Update a profile

You can create or update multiple user profiles by uploading a CSV file. The file must include a column with distinct_id for Mixpanel to recognize the users.

The CSV doesn't need headers; otherwise, Mixpanel will treat them as data.

After uploading, assign names to each column (e.g., $name, $phone). If no $distinct_id column is present, Mixpanel will generate one.

Mixpanel will create new profiles for IDs that donʼt exist, and update the ones that do.

Updating/ Deleting a User Property

You can go to a specific user's profile and manually update their property value or delete a property from their profile as needed.

Mixpanel learning course

Every week, I’m going to talk about one topic from Mixpanel. If you’d like to access everything at once, take a look at my course on Mixpanel.

The course is a comprehensive deep dive into Mixpanel, covering each feature with relevant, practical examples.

By the end of the course, you'll become a Mixpanel expert—equipped with the knowledge and confidence to navigate and use the platform like a pro.

Having worked with 60+ startups, I’ve structured this course to focus on what actually gets used in Mixpanel and how.

Each chapter includes a video tutorial and a written document (with visuals) so you can choose the learning format that suits you best—video, text, or both!