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The Product Manager’s Ultimate Trio of SaaS Metrics

August 26, 2015

3 minute read

As SaaS product managers, we always worry about what metrics we should be keeping our eye on. KPI’s are important, but measuring the success of your product goes well beyond that. Having a product vision – along with KPI’s – is a great starting point to give you focus on what your goals are, but priorities and needs will fluctuate as users are come onboard. So which SaaS metrics should you focus on to ensure that your users are getting the most out of your product?

1. Churn

Churn isn’t just a metric for your Sales or Success team. At the end of the day, it all links back to the usability, performance, and how easy it is to use your product. Measuring the rate at which your clients are subscribing and leaving will not only give you an idea of what your expected customer life cycle is, but will also allow you to understand the reasons as to why they’re deciding to leave, allowing you to make the appropriate changes… which leads me to my next point.

2. Retention

Why are your customers leaving? Is there a competitor that’s offering different functionality? Is it lack of integrations? Once you figure out the ‘why’, it’s time to figure out the ‘how’ – how to keep them. Of course some issues are beyond what a product manager can do (especially when it comes to lack of funds or resources), but sometimes ‘retention’ can be implementing changes as simple as offering a public roadmap to open transparency and communication between your team and your clients. I guarantee that your customer-facing teams will appreciate this! Once you’ve got this nailed down, you’ll be able to tell which techniques work and which areas need further development.

3. Usage

Usage is a tricky one, and will most certainly differ on your app and the nature of it. Is your product meant to be used on a daily or weekly basis? Are you looking to increment the use of it with large teams, or is it a tool that is meant to reduce the amount of time and work other tools simply don’t offer? Identify your power users and learn from them. Whatever your niche market, your product is still meant to be useful in some way – and with the correct usage comes the correct retention rates and strategies, and most importantly, reduced churn!

Add context with customer feedback

It’s not a metric in itself, but Customer Feedback is the mechanism by which you can add context to the data you’re seeing. The best way to learn from your customers is by actually listening to them. Using ProdPad, you can easily integrate your favourite apps to gather your customer feedback and store it all in one place, where it can then be assessed and linked to the correct products. You may even get a new idea or two!


Do you agree? Are there any other SaaS metrics you use as a product manager? Or in other industries? Let us know in the comments, or start your free trial of ProdPad today and see why it’s the best loved product management software.

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