Subscription-based companies have a whole extra layer of complexity in terms of measuring business performance, by comparison to traditional ones. From acquiring customers to onboarding them, from increasing their revenue stream to getting them to stick around with your brand, a SaaS’ funnel offers challenges at every step.
Knowing what KPIs to track can dismiss uncertainty and allows for the development of growth plans based on actual company data. We’ve set about trying to simplify performance tracking for your SaaS business with an inclusive set of resources on the most important SaaS metrics to track.
Our first installment, the newly published Definitive Guide to SaaS Metrics: Acquisition, will guide you through the customer acquisition process and show you what metrics you should be measuring. See a quick summary below on which indicators are important when you’re assessing the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts in SaaS acquisition. To note that some will be more relevant to your business than others, and particular components can be defined in several ways. The key thing is to aim to make it clear what each component means for your business, and be consistent all the way.
Site Visitors – Track this and other related metrics to understand where visitors came from, what they’re doing on your site and why they keep coming back. Split by returning customers and prospects.
Sign Ups – Find out who’s trying your product in order to more effectively market to them. Track signups, be they freemium, free trial or other forms of enrollment.
Cost Per Conversion – How much does it cost you to get a customer to try or buy your product? Uncover your Cost per Conversion so you can benchmark it against a client’s worth.
Viral Coefficient – This metric can show you how quickly and how widely your marketing message spreads online.
Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) – Find out how fast your lead database is growing; this metric will tell you if you’re constantly attracting more new people to your product or if interest is waning.
Funnel Conversion Rate – Find out how many leads are moving down your funnel. Defining and tracking every step in your conversion funnel is also useful, as it will show where customers are falling off and where you have an opportunity to make improvements.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Track how much you’re spending to attract a customer via the CAC indicator. On its own, it doesn’t mean much, you need to look also at Customer Lifetime Value in conjunction with it and to understand how fast you are recovering this cost.
Bookings – The holy grail: how much business did you book this period? Counted as the total value of all contracts signed over a year. Can include new contracts, renewals, upgrades, and more – anything that leads to new revenue for your organization.
Read 2Checkout’s Definitive Guide to SaaS Metrics: Acquisition eBook to understand more about these metrics, and how they are calculated, and finetune your SaaS’ marketing and sales strategies.
