saas metrics: the secret to subscription success

Post on 08-Aug-2015

9.019 Views

Category:

Software

4 Downloads

Preview:

Click to see full reader

TRANSCRIPT

An Introduction to SaaS Metrics & Churn:The Secret to Subscription Success

chartmogul.com

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

We’re a SaaS business too. Here’s how we measure ourselves and

update our investors

Marketing Funnel

Inside Sales

SaaS Revenue Metrics

Financials

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

KPIs We Care About (and you should too)

Customers

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA)

MRR/Customer churn rate

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

SaaS Revenue Metrics:

• Differ from traditional accounting in that they

are mostly interpreted forward projections

• Don’t make standard financial reporting

(gross/net revenue, etc) any less relevant

• Are more relevant to the management team

on a day-to-day basis.

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

MRR is the backbone of any subscription business.

“The amount of revenue you would generate next month if all customers are paying monthly and you had no new customers, cancellations, upgrade or downgrades.”

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Breaking Down MRR Into “Movements”

New business MRR - A lead that converts into a paid customer

Expansion MRR - Any increase in the MRR of an existing customer

Contraction MRR - Any decrease in MRR of an existing customer

Churn MRR - Decreases in MRR from customer cancellations

Reactivation MRR - Previously churned customers resubscribing

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Customer Churn Rate (B2B)

What is it?The rate at which you are losing customers through subscription cancellations.

Calculation

Segmentation is key to getting meaningful Churn metrics.

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

MRR Churn Rate (B2B)

What is it?The rate at which you are losing revenue through subscription cancellations.

Calculation

Segmentation is key to getting meaningful Churn metrics.

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Positive Churn vs. Negative Churn

Many of the best known public SaaS companies have negative churn, e.g. New Relic, Zendesk, but not a requirement to be a unicorn, e.g. HubSpot.

Image credits to Tomasz Tunguz

:( :D

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Churn Rate (B2C)

A B2C formulaDevin Brady (Recurly) wrote about a better way to calculate churn which we think is more useful for B2C companies (e.g. Netflix)

CalculationIterating through each day in the selected period (e.g. month/quarter) we calculate as follows:

SUM(1 - #_active_customers_at_end_of_day / #_active_customers_at_the_start_of_day)

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Churn Recognition

Best practice is to recognise churn at the end of the paid up billing period.

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Churn classificationPro-active churn - Customer chose to cancel Passive churn - Customer didn’t update credit card Happy churn - Finished using your product (subset of pro-active churn) Churn that isn’t really churn - Money-back guarantees, etc.

What is a reasonable level of Churn?Most SaaS companies selling to SMBs have quite high monthly churn (3-5%)The more up-market you go the lower the churn rate (usually)Many public SaaS companies have negative net churn, as high as 20%

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Cohort Analysis - Identifying “Risky” Months

Cohort analysis is the best way to truly understand how your subscriptions evolve over their lifespan.

Cus

tom

er C

ohor

ts

Months Since Signup

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

What is it?An estimate of the total subscription value of an average customer.

Calculation

Helps with decisions on CAC spending, growth predictions.

ARPA

Customer churnLTV =

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

This simple formula is a good starting point, but it doesn't take into account two important factors:

1. Churn doesn't occur linearly

2. Many companies experience significant account expansion following an initial purchase.

The blue line results in 10% less revenue over the same period.

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

A Modular LTV Formula

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Learn more from the leaders in SaaS thinking…

Jason M. Lemkin@jasonlk

saastr.com

Christoph Janz@chrija

theangelvc.net

David Skok@BostonVC

forentrepreneurs.com

Tomasz Tunguz@ttunguz

tomtunguz.com

+ chartmogul.com/blog

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

ChartMogul Loves SaaS Metrics

The ChartMogul SaaS Cheat Sheet Trilogy

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

An Analysis of B2B SaaS Pricing Pages

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Webinar – April 29, 2015

An Analysis of B2B SaaS Pricing Pages

Even More Resources(!)• A Better Way to Calculate your Churn Rate• Ultimate SaaS Metrics Cheat Sheet• Ultimate Churn Metrics Cheat Sheet• Ultimate Cohort Analysis Cheat Sheet• Ultimate Guide to SaaS Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)• Why SaaS startups should aim for negative MRR churn

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

Thank you.

@chartmogul

support@chartmogul.com

© 2015 Chartmogul Ltd

top related