Our Metrics REVEALED: Revenue, Churn, Conversions and More

Last week, we invited you to take the 2013 SaaS SMB Conversion Survey. Today, we’re putting our own cards on the table…

If we’re trying to promote transparency, why don’t we pull back the curtain on our own responses to the survey?

I’ll admit that the challenge one of our developers issued threw me off at first. I think most founders have an instinctive gut reaction to keep their private data private.

But my goal is to overcome that reaction in my own mind, and convince other founders that by sharing more than we hide, we can all become better at business.

One of the ways I’ve been doing that is by forcing myself to be very open with Groove’s numbers on this blog.

Hell, you can find our monthly revenue by scrolling down to the bottom of every post.

But I know that the data we’re trying to collect in our survey can be even more sensitive than that. Revealing metrics like churn and average revenue per user — the sorts of details that competitors would love to get their hands on — isn’t that easy for me.

But, in the interest of drinking my own Kool-Aid, I’m doing it anyway. And I hope that doing so will help convince you to do the same (albeit anonymously, of course).

In case you missed it, we’re asking SaaS startups and small businesses to anonymously share data on conversion rates, user acquisition strategies and other facets of their businesses, to make us all more educated, more savvy and more successful.

Plus, we’ve partnered with KISSmetrics, Unbounce, Mixergy, Clarity.fm, Buffer and the Business of Software Conference to offer more than $7,000 in prizes. All you have to do for a chance to win is fill out the survey.

The deadline for completing the survey is midnight on December 31st.

Let’s get into the details, shall we?

Has your business reached Product/Market Fit?
Yep. I covered how we determined that in this post.
What kind of SaaS business are you?
B2B.
How long have you been in business?
1-2 years. 26 months, to be exact.
How many full-time employees does your business have (including founders)?
7.
What is your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)?
$35,167. This one is no secret. After all, it’s what this blog is about.
What is your Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)?
$40.51. Our average customer has just under three support agents.
Which of these user acquisition strategies did you benefit MOST from this year?
Content marketing, email marketing and customer/user referrals. The first one shouldn’t surprise anyone — I wrote about how we’ve managed to succeed in content here and here.
Do you offer a free trial (or free version) of your SaaS product?
Yep, 14 days free.
Do you require a credit card for free trial signups?
No. We’ve tested it, and for us, requiring a credit card wasn’t particularly helpful.
What is your website visitor-to-free trial conversion rate?
2.3%. Pretty terrible at the moment, actually. We’ll be releasing a post soon about this one, but it has a lot to do with the value of your traffic sources — for example, Hacker News traffic converts at a far lower rate than organic blog traffic.
What is your free trial to paid customer conversion rate?
8%
What is your churn rate?
1.6%. I published a post on the KISSmetrics blog this week about how we reduced this from 4.5%.

Now It’s Your Turn

While our numbers alone won’t be that helpful to you, collecting thousands of data points will be valuable. We’ll use that data to answer questions like:

What user acquisition strategies are SaaS startups and small businesses getting the most value from?
What are average website conversion rates for SaaS companies?
What are the average churn rates for SaaS businesses?

We want to bring the community together to build benchmarks and lessons for all of us, and I’d appreciate it if you took five minutes to be a part of our survey.

As a reminder, by filling out the survey, you’re entering to win: