SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2025

Churn : Low or negative churn is critical. If you’re selling to SMBs, low churn is expected. If you’re selling to mid-market or enterprise, negative churn (expansion revenue outpacing churn) is a strong signal. CAC Payback : Your customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback period should ideally be under 12 months.

Benchmarks 259

Benchmarks Scale Generative AI Churn 259

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Can a SaaS Business Reactivate Churned Customers? This may sound simple, but the #1 thing you can and should do is create a series of marketing campaigns targeted only to churned customers. And also send that to your “lost” and churned customers. That will keep you top enough of mind. #2.

Churn 313

Churn Business SaaS Mobile 313

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Best Prevent Churn? You can’t eliminate churn. You can hide churn (e.g., My top suggestion is: Measure churn carefully, and consistently. Usually, your smallest customers will churn at the highest rate. And set a big annual goal to drive churn down say 20%. Instead, you drive it down.

Churn 273

Churn Revenue Sales Business 273

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2024

Inherent Churn vs. Fixable Churn: You Have to Attack Both #2. But Not Always a Great Win for Their Late Stage Investors Inherent Churn vs. Fixable Churn: You Have to Attack Both Top Videos and Podcasts: #1. We Just Left a Vendor Weve Used for 5+ Years. They Dont Even Know It Yet. #3. Is SaaS Back? (TL;DR:

Churn 274

Churn AI B2B Engineering 274

SaaStr

JULY 4, 2025

The Numbers Tell the Story: Monday.com Q1 2025 : 30% growth, $282M revenue Asana 2024 : Single-digit growth, struggling with churn Mostly Same Product Category, Mostly Different Customers Both companies build “work management” software. Look at Monday.com vs Asana. Both help teams organize projects and collaborate.

Merchant Services 323

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments 323

Stax

MARCH 16, 2025

The average churn rate for the software industry as a whole is 14%. Thats actually one of the lowest churn rates across all industries. That said, industry experts agree that your SaaS companys goal churn should be below 2%. TL;DR The average software industry churn rate is 14%, but SaaS companies should aim for under 2%.

Payment Solutions 88

Payment Solutions Software Review Churn SaaS Payments 88

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2024

SaaStr ) And once you have at least a little revenue ($1m-$2m ARR or so), net revenue retention / churn. NRR and churn aren’t necessarily statistical significant before Year 2-3 and before $1m-$2m in ARR). Churn is important, but in the early days, just drive it down. Probably, measured as NPS (more here: I Was Wrong.

Metrics 283

Metrics Venture Capital SaaS Churn 283

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

So lately I’ve listened to a few calls from churned customers from portfolio companies. Get on the phone with all your churned customers, if you can. Image from here ) The post When a Struggling Customer Churns, You Learn How Important You Are appeared first on SaaStr. How much of a vitamin vs. a painkiller are you?

Churn 276

Churn Market Segmentation Cloud AI 276

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2025

Customer Churn: Retaining customers is just as important as acquiring them. Founders worry about churn, especially in the early days when every customer matters. 11 Basic Tips to Lower Your Churn Rate (Updated) 9. Except Maybe Your Existing Investors. Investing in customer success early can make a huge difference here.

Scale 235

Scale Part-Time VPE Scaling Sales Hiring 235

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

Average Monthly Self-Serve (“Online”) Churn Hit New Low of 2.7% a Month Churn especially SMB churn remains Zoom’s biggest challenge at its mature state, but it’s been pushing customers to annual and longer contracts and more. It’s seen churn fall to 2.7% And it still trades at 5x ARR. #1.

SMB 274

SMB Churn Enterprise Acquisition 274

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2025

Here’s how early-stage founders should approach it: Hire Early, Even Before It Feels Necessary Don’t wait until churn becomes a problem. Early on, your CS hire should focus on onboarding customers effectively, reducing churn, and ensuring customers are successful with your product. But expansion can wait.

Sales Hiring 199

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Churn 199

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

Annual contracts combined with prepaid cash are a huge benefit, when done right: You get all the cash up-front (this is how I went cash-flow positive in fact) — IF you can collect it a timely fashion; and Your churn almost by definition goes down, at least nominal churn.

SaaS 261

SaaS Payment Features Churn Pricing 261

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2024

Should I just mark them as churned? Should I Count Them as Churned? Dear SaaStr: A big customer payed for a year but doesn’t use the product. Instead, what you should try to do is renew them, especially in the enterprise. Many of them never used the product at all in Year 1. appeared first on SaaStr.

Churn 293

Churn Enterprise Branding Business 293

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Third, contracts mitigate churn rates because the customer is only making a renewal decision once per year, instead of 12x per year. Similarly, Salesforce began with a usage-based approach before shifting to annual seat contracts when churn rates became significant and revenue predictability faltered.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2025

Track churn, retention, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), GRR and upsell rates. Learn to Drive Net Negative Churn : The best SaaS companies achieve net negative churn, meaning they grow revenue from existing customers faster than they lose it. Focus on Metrics : Customer Success is all about the numbers.

Customer Success 200

Customer Success Management Scale Retention 200

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 17, 2025

It is calculated by taking the annual recurring revenue of a cohort of customers from 1 year ago, and comparing it to the current annual recurring revenue of that same set of customers (even if you experienced churn). I consider >120% best in class for companies selling to SMBs (like Bill.com).

Cloud 277

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 277

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2025

Subtract Churned ARR : This is the revenue lost from customers who canceled their subscriptions during the period. Here’s the best-practice way to calculate it: Start with your Beginning ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) : This is the ARR from your existing customers at the start of the period you’re measuring. moved to a lower-tier plan).

Retention 185

Retention SMB Benchmarks Churn 185

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2025

Customer Succes s: If youre seeing churn or struggling with renewals, or have larger customers that are high touch, consider hiring a VP of Customer Success around 2 M 3M ARR. 2 M 3M ARR : Bring on a VP of Customer Success especially if you have larger customers and/or churn is an issue. $5M A head of Product. And often, a VP of Eng.

Sales Hiring 250

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Scale 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong The standard playbook is: Hire sales Hit growth targets Eventually add CS when churn becomes painful But that’s backward. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn. The best customers are ones your CS team fights to work with. Way earlier. Build it into your DNA from the start.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2025

What’s your churn rate? Acknowledge potential challenges—like longer sales cycles or higher churn—and explain how you’ll address them. For example, “If our churn rate exceeds 10%, we’ll invest in a dedicated customer success team to improve retention.” That’s lazy. What’s your average deal size?

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring Benchmarks Churn 235

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

If these teams arent working together, deals will stall, and churn will rise. Ignoring Churn : Closing deals is great, but if customers dont renew, youre in trouble. Misaligned sales incentives can lead to churn, which kills enterprise SaaS businesses.

Outsourcing Services 194

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 194

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Churn and Expansion : For existing customers, analyze churn rates, upsell/cross-sell performance, and NRR (Net Revenue Retention). AI can help predict churn and identify expansion opportunities. If so, why? Metrics like time spent in each stage and reasons for lost deals can provide clarity.

Technical Review 185

Technical Review Sales Forecasting AI 185

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2025

The key is to align their incentives with the outcomes you want: happy customers, low churn, and growing accounts. Clawbacks for Churn : To avoid rewarding AMs for short-term gains that lead to long-term churn, implement clawbacks. For example, if an AMs accounts average an NPS of 70+, they get a quarterly bonus.

Scale 200

Scale Management Churn Finance 200

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2025

Your customer success team should be experimenting with AI-powered sentiment analysis and churn prediction. Offer $5K for an AI solution that reduces customer churn by 2%. The same applies to AI today. Your sales team needs to understand how AI can improve lead scoring and outreach. Not it being a feature line.

Sales Hiring 249

Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence AI Sales Recruiting 249

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Here’s how Notion crushed it: The Hard Metrics: 49-51% open rates (2x industry average) 1-1.5%

Scale 271

Scale SaaS B2B Scaling 271

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

It combines renewals, churn, and upsells. Track metrics like churn, NRR, time-to-value, and customer health scores. The goal is to act before customers even realize theyre unhappy 2 3. Focus on Net Retention Net retention is the ultimate metric for customer success. Everything your team does should drive toward improving this number.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Retention 232

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

Churn is all over the place with SMBs. Toast and Shopify and Bill are really more payments companies today than SaaS companies. You probably have to go multi-product much earlier. Many Vertical SaaS leaders do payroll, finance, accounting, and much more — not just the core software. So be honest.

Payment Solutions 261

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 261

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

A strong GRR (80-90%) ensures your base is solid, and youre not just masking churn with upsells. They need to own metrics like DAU/MAU ratios , feature adoption rates , and churn reduction tied to product improvements. VPP Quotas : Product adoption, feature stickiness, churn reduction, and roadmap execution.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 162

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Customer Success Churn Retention 162

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2025

For example, at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, we aligned the VP of Sales’ comp with the company’s total ARR goal, including churn and upsells, to ensure they worked cross-functionally with customer success and other teams. The comp plan should incentivize the VP to hit the company’s overall revenue goals, not just net new bookings.

Sales Hiring 209

Sales Hiring Compensation Sales Benchmarks 209

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2024

Worst case, they still use it and are happy, and churn less. Force yourself to at least grow +20% more than your NRR. #5. Launch a truly great second product. Best case, your happy customers buy more from you. All the best are now multi-product. And most of us regret not having gone there a bit earlier. A related post here. #6.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring SaaS Venture Capital Healthcare 280