A funnel can improve at the top and get worse everywhere else.
Signups, activation, conversion and churn each have an owner and a chart. The number that decides whether the business works is the one nobody owns: what a cohort is worth against what it cost to acquire.
Three questions a subscription business rarely gets a straight answer to.
Each of them spans product analytics, billing and the ad account at once.
Which acquisition source produces customers who stay?
Not which one converts a trial. Cost per retained customer at month six, by source.
What is actually causing churn?
The cancellation reason is a dropdown. The cause is usually something that happened in week one and went unnoticed.
Is our pricing change working?
It moves signups immediately, mix within a month, and revenue two quarters later - which is when most teams stop looking.
Signups up 26%. Payback further away than before.
Three readings, three teams, three dashboards that all look healthy.
Illustrative example
- Acquisition
Trial signups up 26% after the pricing page change
Looks like the change worked.
- Product
Activation within seven days down from 48% to 31%
Looks like an onboarding problem.
- Support
Setup tickets per hundred trials up 80%
Looks like a busy support week.
The new pricing page removed the qualifying detail that used to filter out a segment your product does not serve well. You are acquiring more trials, of a worse fit, that consume more support and convert less - so blended payback has moved out by roughly five weeks. Reinstate the qualifier and the funnel gets smaller and healthier at the same time.
Growth, product and support each held one third of that conclusion, and none of the three had a reason to compare notes.
What Aptic reads in a subscription business.
Read-only by default, and nothing changes in any of them without your approval.
- Product analytics: activation, usage, the events that predict retention
- Billing and subscriptions: plans, upgrades, involuntary and voluntary churn
- Acquisition: spend and source, joined to cohorts rather than to trials
- Support: ticket volume and topic as a leading indicator of churn
Who looks at what first.
All six offices read your business. In SaaS and subscription, these three set the agenda.
Marketing
Cost per retained customer by source, and which channels flatter themselves on trial conversion.
Strategy
Pricing, packaging and which segment the product actually serves best.
Finance
Payback, cohort contribution and the point at which growth stops paying for itself.
What the first thirty days produce.
- 01
Cohorts joined to acquisition cost
What each source is worth at month three and month six, rather than at signup.
- 02
A churn read that names causes, not reasons
The week-one behaviours that precede cancellation, ranked by how much revenue sits behind them.
- 03
One pricing or onboarding change, measured
A single change, made deliberately, with a verdict two weeks on and a note of what it moved that you were not expecting.
Find out which growth is worth having.
Aptic is in private beta. Tell us what you sell and what you have connected, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a fit.