14 Critical SaaS Marketing Metrics to Track Success

You’ve launched your SaaS product, run ads, sent emails, and watched traffic roll in. But conversions? Not as impressive.

You’re not alone—many SaaS brands pour resources into marketing but struggle to track the right metrics to understand what's truly working for them. Tracking the metrics also allows you to get an idea of the performance and growth of your SaaS company as a whole.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at the 14 saas marketing metrics that you must track to understand what strategies or campaigns work for you and how your SaaS company is doing as a whole.

What are SaaS marketing metrics?

SaaS marketing metrics refer to metrics that help track and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. They assist you in understanding whether your marketing strategies are successfully attracting leads, converting them into customers, and generating revenue.

14 key saas marketing metrics to track

There are multiple aspects involved in the growth of a SaaS company. We've categorized the SaaS marketing metrics into three distinct groups.

Product and marketing metrics

These metrics give you an understanding of the effectiveness of your SaaS marketing efforts by analyzing the metrics related to the product.

1. Unique visitors: Unique visitors refer to the number of distinct users visiting your website or your product within a specific time frame. It gives you an idea about the number of people you’re able to reach and the number of people who actually know about you.
   One key point to note here is that it refers to unique users, so if one user visits 5 times, it’ll only be counted as 1 user.
   You can use Google Analytics to track how many unique visitors you have on your website within any specified timeframe.

2. Demo requests: Demo requests help measure the number of people interested in your product and the effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns.
   You can connect demo booking forms on your website with a CRM to track how many users are landing on the demo request page and filling up the form.

3. Activations: This metric measures the number of users who complete critical onboarding steps, such as setting up an account or using a core feature for the first time. Activations show whether the user is actually engaging with the product or not.
   You can use tools like Mixpanel, Amplitude or Heap to define and track key events and optimize the onboarding experience to improve user retention.

4. Number of active trials: This metric measures the number of users who are currently in an active trial period. It helps assess the impact of free trial campaigns and user engagement before purchase.
   You can use a subscription tracking tool like Chargebee, or Pipedrive to start tracking this. Integrating them with product analytics tools to monitor trial activity, you can even predict conversion likelihood.

5. Sign-up to paid conversions: This measures the percentage of users that transitioned from free trials or freemium models to paid plans. It gives you an insight into the quality of the onboarding experience, pricing compatibility, and overall product experience and usefulness.
   You can track this metric using a subscription management tool like Stripe.

Revenue and marketing metrics

These metrics measure changes in overall revenue, helping SaaS businesses assess financial stability, growth trends, and customer retention effectiveness.

1. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): MRR measures the predictable revenue generated from subscriptions each month. It is crucial for understanding financial stability and growth trends.
   A steadily growing MRR indicates that you’re able to retain existing customers and also acquire new ones. You can also measure MRR using the same subscription management tools we’ve listed above.

2. Churn rate: This metric measures the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions within a given period, directly impacting revenue stability and growth.
   A high churn rate suggests poor customer experience, customer dissatisfaction or a poor product-market fit. It also allows you to implement proactive measures to reduce customer attrition.

3. Net revenue retention (NRR): The metric evaluates revenue growth from existing customers, accounting for upsells, cross-sells, and churn. A high NRR signals strong customer retention and expansion.
   You can track NRR using revenue analytics platforms like Baremetrics or ProfitWell to track customer account changes over time and analyze long-term customer value.

4. Annual contract value (ACV): This metric calculates the average yearly revenue per customer. It helps you in revenue forecasting, refining pricing models, optimizing customer acquisition costs and focusing on high-value accounts.
   Subscription-based businesses track ACV through billing platforms like Chargebee and Stripe.

5. Customer lifetime value (CLV): The metric predicts the total revenue a business can generate from a customer throughout their relationship.
   A higher CLV indicates stronger customer retention and profitability. Tracking CLV helps businesses optimize acquisition costs, retention strategies, and long-term revenue growth.

Sales and marketing metrics

These metrics help SaaS businesses measure the effectiveness of their lead generation, sales pipeline, and customer acquisition strategies.

1. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): MQLs are leads that meet predefined engagement and demographic criteria, signaling a strong potential for conversion. This engagement could be downloading a resource, attending a webinar or filling out a form.
   Tracking MQLs ensures marketing teams focus on generating high-quality leads by filtering out unqualified prospects early in the funnel.
   You can identify MQLs using lead scoring models with predefined criteria.

2. Sales qualified leads (SQLs): SQLs are basically MQLs that have been validated by sales teams.
   Tracking SQLs involves CRM systems like Salesforce and monitoring of conversion rates of MQLs to SQLs.

3. Lead velocity rate (LVR): This metric measures the rate at which qualified leads increase on a monthly basis, indicating future sales pipeline health.
   A consistently high LVR suggests strong demand generation and a growing customer pipeline, ensuring sustainable revenue growth. If LVR stagnates or declines, it may signal issues in lead generation efforts.

4. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This metric calculates the total marketing and sales cost incurred to acquire a new customer, helping assess marketing efficiency.
   A high CAC indicates inefficiencies in marketing campaigns or sales processes and the need for optimization. Tracking CAC helps businesses optimize budget allocation, refine targeting strategies, and improve ROI.

Final words

Tracking the right SaaS marketing metrics helps optimize growth, improve customer acquisition, and drive revenue. By monitoring these key metrics across marketing, sales, and products, businesses can make data-driven decisions to enhance performance and long-term success.