{"id":18444,"date":"2020-08-03T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/?p=18444"},"modified":"2020-08-14T02:36:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T09:36:11","slug":"how-to-actually-take-action-on-your-saas-metrics-with-baremetrics-corey-haines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/how-to-actually-take-action-on-your-saas-metrics-with-baremetrics-corey-haines\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Actually Take Action On Your SaaS Metrics with Baremetrics\u2019 Corey Haines"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn how to make the most of your SaaS metrics with <a href=\"https:\/\/baremetrics.com\/\">Baremetrics<\/a> Head of Growth, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/corey-haines\/\">Corey Haines<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For SaaS founders, gathering a wealth of data is often the easy part. What\u2019s harder is knowing how to use it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/corey-haines\/\">Corey Haines<\/a> is the Head of Growth at <a href=\"https:\/\/baremetrics.com\/\">Baremetrics<\/a>, the fast-growing SaaS analytics and insights platform. Having consulted with hundreds of founders on how to best leverage the metrics it provides, Haines shares a few handy shortcuts on how to make the most of the metrics you see and steer your startup in the right direction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SaaS metrics are only valuable if you know how to use them. Learn how to slice and dice your metrics and discover where you need to take action.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventbrite.com\/e\/how-to-actually-take-action-on-your-saas-metrics-tickets-110709166096?aff=CoreyHaines\">Check out the full event here<\/a> as Corey breaks down the most important metrics every SaaS founder needs to master &#8212; and tips on how to leverage them &#8212; including:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Monthly Recurring Revenue<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quick Ratio<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Churn Rate<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn Conversion Rate<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Average Revenue Per User<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<span class='bctt-click-to-tweet'><span class='bctt-ctt-text'><a href='https:\/\/x.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoundersnetwork.com%2F%3Fp%3D18444&#038;text=%E2%80%9CAnalytics%20are%20only%20as%20useful%20as%20what%20you%20can%20take%20action%20on.%E2%80%9D%20-%20%40coreyhainesco&#038;via=foundersnetwork&#038;related=foundersnetwork' target='_blank'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u201cAnalytics are only as useful as what you can take action on.\u201d - @coreyhainesco <\/a><\/span><a href='https:\/\/x.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoundersnetwork.com%2F%3Fp%3D18444&#038;text=%E2%80%9CAnalytics%20are%20only%20as%20useful%20as%20what%20you%20can%20take%20action%20on.%E2%80%9D%20-%20%40coreyhainesco&#038;via=foundersnetwork&#038;related=foundersnetwork' target='_blank' class='bctt-ctt-btn'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAnalytics are only as useful as what you can take action on,\u201d says Haines. \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With many of the metrics, there&#8217;s a lot to actually look into so you can figure out what to do with the information.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In SaaS startups, your most important metrics tend to correspond with different points in the sales funnel, the financial picture of your business, and ways to optimize both. Your MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, is one of the most important focal points of a founder\u2019s dashboard. A related metric, quick ratio, offers a snapshot into the overall health of your balance sheet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe quick ratio basically compares all of your positive MRR inputs to your negative MRR inputs,\u201d Haines explains. \u201cIt usually gives you a number of between about 0.5 and 5.0. If you&#8217;re at 1.0, that means that your expansion and contraction is basically equal. If you\u2019re below 1.0, that means the business is contracting &#8212; and that\u2019s not a good thing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From there, you can dig down to try and identify the causes of the quick ratio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a SaaS founder, the churn rate is a metric you\u2019ll want to keep up with constantly. That will tell you how many customers are &#8212; and are not &#8212; returning to the product, and point to adjustments you may have to make.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2018d look at lead conversion rate, MRR, churn and average revenue per user, because that&#8217;ll kind of give you a full breadth of the funnel,\u201d Haines says. \u201cHow well are we turning interested people into customers, and what are we doing with these customers? What is the book of business worth, and how well are we retaining these customers?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those fundamental metrics, and a handful of others, will open up insight into where you and your team can improve. Lead conversion rate, for example, may give you a glimpse into how effective your marketing communications are. <a href=\"https:\/\/baremetrics.com\/\">Baremetrics<\/a> plugs into <a href=\"https:\/\/stripe.com\/\">Stripe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.braintreepayments.com\/\">Braintree<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/recurly.com\/\">Recurly<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=DChcSEwjCjJKkvvPqAhWKOCsKHe_wBbEYABAAGgJzZg&amp;sig=AOD64_3ymwJe-1CGWHdwd8YFOaNdyQOTJA&amp;q&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj5lomkvvPqAhVIE6YKHXGIDbYQ0Qx6BAgfEAE\">Google Play<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/appstoreconnect.apple.com\/\">App Store Connect<\/a> and a variety of other providers, and breaks down a wide range of metrics: New subscriptions, reactivations, trial conversion rate, cash flow and much more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s just as easy to get distracted by metrics that appear more important than they are, or that aren\u2019t totally relevant to the currency lifecycle of your SaaS startup.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere are a few popular ones that can get sort of overblown or overinflated. One of those is lifetime value,\u201d he adds. \u201cWhat happens, especially with a SaaS business, is that the metric itself is just a function of your average revenue per customer and your churn rate, both of which are moving numbers. So your lifetime value is going to fluctuate depending on how well each one of those is doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cLifetime value is often used to quantify how much your startup should spend on acquiring a customers &#8212; but it isn\u2019t always a good reflection of what you should take action on day to day, because it moves so quickly based on a number of inputs. Average revenue per customer weighted against customer acquisition costs is a much more useful metric in many cases,\u201d\u00a0 according to Haines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<span class='bctt-click-to-tweet'><span class='bctt-ctt-text'><a href='https:\/\/x.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoundersnetwork.com%2F%3Fp%3D18444&#038;text=%E2%80%9CIf%20your%20customer%20churn%20is%20higher%20than%20your%20revenue%20churn%2C%20then%20you%20know%20that%20it%27s%20probably%20from%20your%20smaller%20accounts%20or%20some%20customers%20who%20are%20paying%20you%20less.%E2%80%9D%20-%20%40coreyhainesco&#038;via=foundersnetwork&#038;related=foundersnetwork' target='_blank'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u201cIf your customer churn is higher than your revenue churn, then you know that it&#039;s probably from your smaller accounts or some customers who are paying you less.\u201d - @coreyhainesco <\/a><\/span><a href='https:\/\/x.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoundersnetwork.com%2F%3Fp%3D18444&#038;text=%E2%80%9CIf%20your%20customer%20churn%20is%20higher%20than%20your%20revenue%20churn%2C%20then%20you%20know%20that%20it%27s%20probably%20from%20your%20smaller%20accounts%20or%20some%20customers%20who%20are%20paying%20you%20less.%E2%80%9D%20-%20%40coreyhainesco&#038;via=foundersnetwork&#038;related=foundersnetwork' target='_blank' class='bctt-ctt-btn'rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ideally, SaaS metrics highlight specific ways of steering your startup towards longer-term gains &#8212; if you know how to properly interpret what you\u2019re presented with, and what it means for your customer base.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf your customer churn is higher than your revenue churn, then you know that it&#8217;s probably from your smaller accounts or some customers who are paying you less,\u201d Haines says. \u201cThat can tell you that you have a changing customer base, and that your smaller customers are less fit for the product. But in general, what you want to see is consistent expansion over time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn how to make the most of your SaaS metrics with Baremetrics Head of Growth, Corey Haines.\u00a0 For SaaS founders, gathering a wealth of data is often the easy part. &#8230; <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/how-to-actually-take-action-on-your-saas-metrics-with-baremetrics-corey-haines\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":18453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[7331,21],"table_tags":[],"class_list":["post-18444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-startup-advice","tag-saas","tag-san-francisco"],"acf":[],"featured_image_data":{"src":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Corey-Haines.jpg","alt":"Corey Haines","caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18444"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=18444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}