The Ultimate Guide On Churn Reporting (And Its Technicalities) - Issue 138

Everything about churn in SaaS - how to calculate churn rate, the best way to report it, how it is connected with retention, and how not to get lost in SaaS.

I am back home in San Francisco this week, and while I have too many messages, questions, and topics to respond to and catch up on, I simply couldn’t wait any longer and had to address churn. Again. Because it’s on everyone’s mind right now.

During the recession, the first thing you’ll notice is an increase in the churn rate. You may spend many hours cohorting it, segmenting by every attribute, re-calculating, and rematching with every data source you can access. I wish I could save you days of work and assure you that it’s increased for every business, and it’s a known and expected pattern that you’ll have little control over. But it doesn’t mean your marketing initiatives are not also making it even worse.

Since it’s up for everyone, people panic. They recalculate their marketing budgets, blame product owners, and question analysts. I have seen a few publications recently with incorrect or flawed churn definitions that inspired/forced me to write this piece. In this hot mess, let’s align on SaaS basics, on what churn should be for your product or business, how to measure it, and how to report it.