14 Company Activity Metrics SaaS Businesses Should Track
Tracking the right company activity metrics can help you measure and optimize your company’s performance, driving product growth.
It can also help you pinpoint areas where your products or services fall short so that you can adjust and improve the health of your business.
In this article, we will examine 14 of the most important activity metrics, how they function, and how you can monitor them closely.
Overview of company activity metrics
- Company activity metrics are data points that track a company’s progress level toward certain goals and objectives.
- Company activity metrics is a broad term that includes financial and operational performance, while sales metrics focus on sales-related activities like prospecting.
- You can determine the right metrics for your business by focusing on data points that are important to your goals, have potential for improvement, and drive action.
The 14 activity metrics to track for a SaaS product include:
- Active users
- Activation rate
- Feature adoption rate
- Product engagement score
- Customer acquisition costs
- Free to paid conversion rate
- Retention rate
- Churn rate
- Net Promoter Score
- Customer satisfaction score
- Monthly recurring revenue
- Customer lifetime value
- Net profit margin
- Net sales revenue
- You can track and analyze company activity and product usage metrics with Userpilot, and even create NPS surveys for better context. Book a demo to learn more.
What are company activity metrics?
Company activity metrics are quantifiable measures used to track a company’s progress level toward certain short- and long-term goals.
They, thus, provide actionable insights that can help business owners make informed decisions and monitor the effectiveness of their operations.
Company activity metrics vs. sales activity metrics
Although they are related, company activity metrics and sales activity metrics are very different.
Company activity metrics describe a wider range of activities within a company, including its operational, marketing, customer service, and financial performance.
Sales activity metrics, however, only focus on a company’s sales strategy-related activities, such as prospecting, lead generation, and conversion rate.
Examples of company activity metrics include customer satisfaction score, revenue, and profit margin. Key sales metrics include lead conversion rate, average deal size, and win rate.
How to define the right activity metrics for your business
Although there are lots of metrics out there, you don’t need to track all of them. To determine the right business metrics to track, you must consider:
- Business goals: What are your overall business goals? How can you measure your success in meeting those goals? Your chosen metrics should align closely with your goals and objectives.
- Measurability: Not all activities are measurable. Therefore, it’s important to determine activities that are quantifiable and trackable as anchors for your business metrics.
- Actionability: The right metrics will inspire you to ask the right questions, determine possible issues, and resolve them. Avoid vanity metrics that only provide a surface-level view of your business performance.
14 activity metrics to track for a SaaS product
Your SaaS company is unique, so it only makes sense that all metrics won’t have the same level of importance. However, several business metrics are important at different stages of the sales cycle.
Let us explore 14 of them in three different categories.
Activity metrics to track product usage
Product usage metrics measure user activity as they interact with your app or website. Tracking the right product usage metrics eliminates guesswork and helps you make data-driven decisions.
1. Active users
Active users are the number of unique users who engage with an app or website over a particular period.
An increased active users metric indicates that users are spending enough time with your product. A decrease in this metric indicates a loss of interest; this means your strategy likely requires some tweaking.
You can calculate your active users metric by determining the number of unique users over a period. For instance, your daily active users (DAUs) are the total number of unique users in a day.
To get more out of this metric, you can calculate the stickiness rate, which is the ratio of DAUs to MAUs (monthly active users).
2. Activation rate
The activation rate is the percentage of users who complete a particular desired action and as a result, experience the value of the product for the first time.
Tracking activation rates can help businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, customer onboarding process, and overall customer experience.
Calculating the user activation rate for a business involves dividing the number of users who completed a specific action by the number of users who signed up.
For example, a project management platform may define new user activation as when a user creates their first project. If 400 out of 1,000 users do that, the activation rate will be 400/1000 = 0.4 or 40%.
3. Feature adoption rate
Feature adoption rate refers to the number of users that habitually engage with features of your product.
It provides insight into how much value your customers place on your product’s features.
Thus, the higher your feature adoption rate, the less likely users are to abandon your product. This also means increased customer loyalty for your brand.
To calculate your feature adoption rate, divide the number of a feature’s monthly active users by the number of active users or logins over the same period, and multiply the ratio by 100.
4. Product engagement score
The Product Engagement Score (PES) is an aggregate score that measures user engagement with your product.
With your PES, you can quickly diagnose a product’s performance and understand your customer engagement levels.
To calculate your product engagement score, take the average of the adoption rate, stickiness, and growth rate.
SaaS business metrics to track product success
Product success metrics are data points that tell you how well your product is meeting its goals and achieving user satisfaction. They include key business impact, satisfaction, and retention metrics.
5. Customer acquisition cost
The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) refers to the costs and resources required to acquire a new customer.
CAC can help your SaaS company assess a customer’s overall value to your organization. It can also help you calculate the return on investment (ROI) of an acquisition.
You can calculate CAC by dividing the total sales and marketing expenses by the number of new customers acquired.
6. Free to paid conversion rate
Free to paid conversion rate refers to the percentage of users that upgrade from a trial or free version to a paid version of your product.
The free-to-paid conversion rate provides insight into the ability of your free trial to capture users’ interest. It can also provide insight into user behavior, product perception, and potential streams for sales revenue.
You can calculate this metric by dividing the number of free trial users that converted in a period by the total number of free trial users within that period.
7. Retention rate
The retention rate measures the percentage of users who continue using a company’s product or service over a given period.
In the long term, customer retention is more cost-effective than acquiring new customers as it does not require any marketing activities to earn their business.
To calculate the retention rate, subtract the number of users acquired over a given period from the number of paying users at the end of the period, divide the value by the total number of users at the beginning of the period, and multiply the value by 100.
For example, let’s say your data for the calendar year shows you had 1000 existing customers as of January 1, attracted 200 new customers by December 31, and closed the year with 900 customers. Using the user retention rate formula, your user retention rate is: 900 – 200 / 1000 = 70%.
8. Churn rate
The churn rate refers to the percentage of users lost over a given period. Tracking your churn rate provides clarity on how well your business is retaining its customers.
It is also an indicator of the quality and value of the service you are providing.
To calculate the churn rate, divide the total number of users lost over a period by the total number of users at the start of the period.
For example, if you had 1000 customers as of January 1 and lost 150 by the year’s end, your churn rate for the year is 150/1000 x 100 = 15%.
9. Net Promoter Score
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric that measures customer loyalty.
The NPS is usually measured using a one-question survey: “How likely are you to recommend us?” with a 0-10 scale. Then respondents are divided into three groups:
- Promoters (9-10): Loyal fans who are happy to spread the word about your product.
- Passives: Generally satisfied with your product, but will consider switching to a competitor if better offers are available.
- Detractors (0-6): Dissatisfied users who leave negative reviews about your product.
To calculate the NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
10. Customer satisfaction score
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is a customer experience metric that tracks how satisfied your customers are with your products and/or services.
Measuring your CSAT score can give you insights into your customers’ experience with your business. It can help you discover their pain points, ensuring you can effectively address them.
CSAT score is calculated by dividing the number of satisfied customers by the number of respondents and multiplying the ratio by 100.
Financial metrics to track profitability
Financial metrics are indicators that measure the financial health of a business. They include factors like accounts receivable, cash flow, revenue, and assets.
11. Monthly recurring revenue
The Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the total revenue generated by a business from active subscriptions over one month.
When combined with metrics like churn rate and potential growth, sales teams can predict the expected monthly revenue and make informed decisions for the future.
12. Customer lifetime value
The customer lifetime value is the average revenue a business can expect to earn throughout its relationship with a customer. It is one of the most important sales metrics that can tell you the average value of a customer to your business over time.
You can also learn about how long your customers stick around and how invested they are in your product or service.
You can calculate customer lifetime value by multiplying the customer value by the average customer lifespan.
13. Net profit margin
Net profit margin measures how much profit a company makes from its products and services after subtracting all expenses. It tells creditors and investors about the financial health of your business more than gross margin does.
Before investors commit their resources to any business, they refer to its net profit to determine whether it is worth their money.
Net profit margin can be calculated by deducting all company expenses from its total revenue; dividing the value by the total revenue and multiplying by 100.
14. Net sales revenue
Net sales refers to the total sales revenue generated by a company, excluding its returns, allowances, and discounts.
It can be used to track how well your sales team is managing returns and discounts, measure total sales growth over a given period, and identify parts of the sales process that require improvement.
How to track and analyze company activity metrics with Userpilot
Userpilot is a powerful no-code product growth solution that helps you to track and analyze essential product metrics. Amongst other things, it helps you to:
View product usage metrics at a glance with dashboards
Userpilot lets you track activation, core feature engagement, unique users, average session duration, stickiness, and other metrics at a glance with a simple dashboard.
You can refresh this data to view the latest updates and share it with other email addresses.
What’s more, users will soon be able to create custom dashboards with metrics of their choice.
Track retention rates with cohort tables
Userpilot has a powerful retention analysis feature that filters the retention data on a cohort table by the number of web sessions, price plans, browser language, etc.
This lets you analyze your retention data in detail and segment users according to their attributes, such as in-app behavior and date of sign-up.
Trigger microsurveys to measure customer satisfaction metrics
Userpilot offers an array of microsurvey templates (CSAT, CES, PMF, etc.) that let you measure customer satisfaction metrics throughout the user journey and also extract actionable insights.
You can also create a survey from scratch with a range of user survey elements, such as radio buttons and text inputs.
When your microsurveys come to life, you can use event triggering to send them based on in-app actions.
Take advantage of advanced NPS capabilities
You can create NPS surveys and add a follow-up question to get more context from users via Userpilot. You can also choose who sees the survey and when it should be triggered.
Userpilot also enables you to localize your NPS content to the user’s native language and analyze your NPS responses to get reports in a single dashboard.
Conclusion
Defining the right metrics your business should track plays a critical role in understanding your performance and achieving sales growth.
It is even more important to act on those metrics and drive your business in the right direction.
Book a demo today to learn how Userpilot can help track the right metrics for your business and improve them with contextual in-app experiences.
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