When it comes to SaaS business success, metrics and data are essential. Without a clear picture of past and present performance, you can’t effectively gauge and guide the future.
Tracking metrics also gets more difficult when comparing the new analytics options SaaS companies are presented with almost every year. How do you know what metrics to track and which ones are necessary for your business?
Lucky for you, we’re here to focus your SaaS analytics operations. Here is a 2024 updated list of all the sales analytics SaaS companies should consider tracking to compare sales and operations, and grow revenue.
Why Use Sales Analytics in SaaS?
SaaS sales metrics track various numbers along the SaaS sales pipeline. These include metrics like customer lifetime value, conversion rates, lead velocity rates, etc.
Analytics can answer key business health questions:
- Are our marketing and sales approaches working?
- How can we boost sales conversion rates?
- Is the business growth moving up or stagnant?
- Where are we losing leads?
With SaaS sales analytics, your business can create strategies for growth that are backed by data-driven insights: Strategies that optimize business operations, customer interactions, sales demos, and much more.
Sales Analytics SaaS: 7 Metrics to Track
There are dozens of sales metrics worth tracking, but keeping track of more than a handful can be, well… a handful.
We suggest tracking metrics related to your SaaS industry, which has data that can help with specific weak spots in your SaaS sales cycle. If your company is optimized, then track and use metrics related to sales areas in your business model you’d like to improve further.
With that out of the way, here are 7 sales metrics worth tracking.
- Recurring Revenue (RR)
Recurring revenue is the revenue your business brings in consistently, both monthly (MRR) and annually (ARR) – usually because of subscription services and loyal customers.
Knowing the RR rate of your business is important for multiple reasons.
- It provides an overview of your business health. The higher your RR, the better.
- It shows the minimum revenue your business earns. Even if you brought in no new customers, if you manage your RR and expenses, you could prepare for worst-case scenarios. It also reveals the funds available to invest in more research, development, marketing, etc.
- Recurring revenue is a great metric to show investors. Earning potential is huge, but your RR will let investors know whether you are a risky purchase or not.
- Lastly, use RR to track annual growth. Track and compare your RR from year to year to conceptualize your business growth.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition costs reveal how much you spend to gain customers. To determine the metric, you need to compare how much you’re spending on marketing versus how many customers you’re gaining from those marketing efforts.
The lower the CAC, the better.
If you’re spending too much on CAC, it’s a sure sign that you need to change up your marketing efforts because they aren’t providing a good return on investment.
- Lead Velocity Rate (LVR)
The lead velocity rate is the rate by which your lead acquisitions have grown. A steady uptick in leads is a good indicator of business health, especially when compared to conversion rates. Your business is growing, therefore your brand reach is increasing.
LVR plus your conversion rate will let you know if your sales demos and marketing tactics are working and if not, where they’re failing.
- Conversion Rate (CR)
The conversion rate measures how many leads are successfully converted into paying customers.
The conversion rate tells a lot about marketing strategies. Specifically, whether or not your marketing is effective, and if your sales reps are successfully demoing your software.
If your LVR is high but your conversion rate is low, it means there’s an issue. Use the data to objectively examine your sales process, sales demo, target audience, etc. This way you can determine where your marketing might be failing to convert customers.
- Monthly/ Daily Active Users (MAU/DAU)
Monthly active users (MAU) and daily active users (DAU) metrics track how many users are active on your software. The timeframe – monthly or daily – depends largely on your software and industry.
The active users metric can tell you a lot about your software engagement, and whether or not the software has the right features to retain customers.
If your number of active users is high, then you know your software is doing good. If the MAU or DAU isn’t looking good or suddenly fell, use the data to improve the software features, compare SaaS competition features, and install updates.
- Churn Rate
Churn rate, a metric most SaaS businesses dread, is nonetheless an important number to keep track of. The churn rate tracks how many people unsubscribe from your software service.
Every company has a churn rate (having none is virtually unheard of) but a sudden spike or steady increase can warn you of issues with your software.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
In the SaaS industry, no metric holds as much weight as customer lifetime value. As the name suggests, this metric determines how much income a customer brings to your company over their lifetime with your software.
It’s an especially important metric for SaaS businesses with tiered subscription services, as upgrading a subscription service with an existing customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one.
The CLV metric is an essential metric for learning about your existing customers and tailoring internal marketing toward increasing their CLV with your company.
Conclusion
The SaaS industry doesn’t sell physical products, which means companies rely solely on metrics to gauge growth. But collecting analytics on your SaaS sales isn’t all data is good for.
Use SaaS metrics to review your business performance and guide you to smarter and more effective marketing and operations decisions. Implementing these data-driven strategies will increase brand reach and revenue.
Increase revenue even more with effective sales demos. Saleo lets you create engaging and interactive sales demos guaranteed to improve your conversion rates. Get started by requesting a demo today!
