SaaS Marketing Metrics & KPIs You Must Track In 2025

Tamara Melkonyan
08 April 2025
20 min read

Introduction

Are you growing fast enough? Are you spending too much to acquire customers? Can your current growth patterns impress investors?

If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, you're not alone. Our industry has its unique rule implying that what gets measured gets improved and what doesn’t, gets ignored. There are dozens of SaaS marketing metrics for you to monitor. Knowing the ones that lead to growth can help you cut the noise and focus on making smarter decisions. 

Let’s take the guesswork out of your KPIs with our 101 extended guide on SaaS marketing KPIs.

What Are SaaS Marketing Metrics?

Simply put, SaaS metrics are a set of KPIs specifically designed to measure the effectiveness of your business development strategies.  

Compared to traditional business metrics, the data collected for a SaaS company focuses on the recurring revenue model, customer acquisition, retention, and engagement patterns. The non-SaaS metrics provide insights into sales revenue and profitability from one-time transactions or product sales, which are irrelevant for a SaaS business. 

Why Are SaaS Metrics Important?

Studies show that SaaS companies face an average of 5% customer churn rate, indicating how volatile the industry is. 

Tracking the right numbers ensures you always have answers to key questions like:

  • Do you have a trusted customer base that sticks around, or are people leaving you?
  • How much does it cost to acquire new customers?
  • Are your sales and marketing strategies aligned to generate a strong return on investment?

And these are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Whether you’re a startup or a well-established company, having answers to such questions is crucial for building a sustainable and scalable business.

Three Key Areas SaaS Marketing Metrics Impact 

Depending on your industry, game rules, and business model, different metrics might hold varying degrees of importance. That being said, there are five key areas where SaaS marketing metrics have a significant impact:

Measuring Revenue Growth

Metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), and MRR Growth Rate provide crucial insights into your financial health. Calculating and tracking these numbers helps identify the most profitable customer segments and determine the effectiveness of your pricing strategy.

Measuring Operational Efficiency and Investor Relations

Are you spending enough on acquiring new customers, or do your investments pay off? Metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) help monitor operational efficiency and allocate budget to efforts that yield the best results. Similarly, Lifetime Value (LTV) shows how much revenue each customer generates on average during their relationship with your company. 

Make Data-Driven Decisions

Higher customer churn rates often signal it’s time to reevaluate your customer retention strategies to find the gaps that need fixing. Calculating churn can also reveal whether your products or services meet customer needs and expectations, helping you make data-driven decisions to improve retention rates.

Let’s now dive into a more detailed overview of some key SaaS marketing metrics and how each contributes to your business growth.

15 B2B SaaS Marketing Metrics to Track in 2025

Data-driven decisions are no longer an option for SaaS companies. The industry is currently growing at a 13.7% CAGR and is expected to become USD 942.96 billion-worth by 2032. 

So, what if you’re already measuring some of the crucial metrics?

Our professional suggestion is to keep an eye on some industry benchmarks and compare your performance periodically against them. This way, you can identify areas where your business is lagging behind and make necessary changes to stay competitive in the market.

IWe've further collected the. top 10+ most important metrics for SaaS companies broken into 5 groups:

  • Acquisition Metrics
  • Platform Engagement Metrics
  • Retention Metrics
  • Growth Metrics
  • Revenue and Economic Metrics

1. Acquisition Metrics

Let’s start with the golden standards. 

Acquisition metrics provide essential insights into the amounts you spend to acquire customers and how effective your sales and marketing efforts are.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC shows how much you’re spending to gain one new customer. A high CAC rate can indicate inefficiencies in your sales funnel or expensive acquisition channels. 

💡Pro Tip: Try focusing on high-performing channels to optimize your CAC. The time to recover CAC should ideally be less than 12 months. If it’s longer, revisit your acquisition strategies or tpricing model.

Annual Contract Value (ACV) vs. CAC

ACV indicates the average annual revenue per customer, while CAC measures acquisition costs. The comparison of these two metrics provides insights into how long it takes to recover acquisition costs. Ideally, your ACV should outweigh CAC within 12 months.

💡Pro Tip: If your ACV is low relative to CAC, consider upselling or cross-selling additional features to existing customers to balance costs.

LTV/CAC Ratio

A healthy LTV/CAC ratio is typically 3:1, meaning your customer generates three times the revenue compared to their acquisition cost. Yet, it can vary depending on the industry and market requirements. Try tracking and analyzing recurring data patterns to find what works best for your company.

💡Pro Tip: Ratios below this suggest high acquisition costs or low customer retention. Ratios above 5:1 might mean you're under-investing in customer acquisition.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

The two no less important SaaS marketing metrics suggest the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts, showing who has shown enough interest to be considered potential customers.

How Do You Calculate MQLs?

Define what actions or behaviors qualify someone as an MQL.

Common criteria include:

  • Downloading gated content (e.g., eBook, whitepaper).
  • Subscribing to your newsletter.
  • Attending a webinar.
  • Visiting a pricing page multiple times.
  • Completing a lead form with relevant information.

How Do You Calculate SQLs?

Define SQL Criteria: Work with your sales team to identify the qualifications for an SQL.These criteria often include:

  • Budget: The lead has the financial resources to purchase.
  • Authority: The lead is a decision-maker or influencer.
  • Need: The lead has a clear problem your product solves.
  • Timeline: The lead plans to purchase soon.
    (Commonly referred to as the BANT framework: Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)

Filter MQLs into SQLs: Use a CRM to track and analyze MQLs that meet the SQL criteria. This typically involves:

  • Scoring leads based on their behaviors and demographics (e.g., using lead scoring in HubSpot).
  • Conducting an initial qualification call or email outreach.

Count SQLs: The number of MQLs that pass the SQL criteria becomes your total SQL count.

💡Example: If you have 500 MQLs and your sales team qualifies 200 of them after outreach, you have 200 SQLs. This means your conversion rate is 40%.

2. Platform Engagement Metrics

Tracking how users interact with product and website features helps measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and can also provide valuable insights for product development.

Let's start with a few key engagement metrics:

Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU)

As the names suggest, DAU and MAU measure the number of unique users who actively engage with your platform every day or month, respectively.

💡Example: social media platforms like LinkedIn or SaaS tools like Slack rely heavily on DAU because they need users to return daily. In contrast, a financial reporting SaaS platform may prioritize MAU since customers might only log in once or twice per month.

The DAU/MAU ratio, also known as the "stickiness ratio," measures how frequently users return to your product within a given month.

Industry Benchmarks & Best Practices

Healthy DAU/MAU benchmarks:

  • The average standard varies between 10-20%.
  • Social media apps can go above 50%.
  • E-commerce websites have an average of 9.8%.
  • SaaS products 13%, and B2B SaaS around 40%.

Recommended Reading: Understanding DAU/MAU by Statsig

How to Improve DAU/MAU?

  • Personalized User Experience: Provide recommendations based on user behavior.
  • In-App Notifications & Reminders: Encourage users to return through relevant alerts.
  • Gamification & Rewards: Offer incentives for frequent usage.

Customer Engagement Score (CES)

Unlike DAU and MAU SaaS marketing metrics that show more general activity, customer engagement score measures user behavior specific to your business goals. CES is typically calculated by assigning weights to different user actions that indicate engagement, such as:

  • Frequency of logins
  • Feature adoption
  • Time spent on the platform
  • Number of support interactions
  • Subscription renewal likelihood

Each of the factors influences the engagement score.

Why Does CES Matter?

  • A dropping CES score can signal disengagement before a customer cancels their subscription.
  • Makes customer segmentation easier by identifying highly engaged users who may be ready for an upgrade.

How to Calculate CES?

Since CES is custom to each SaaS company, there's no universal formula, but a common method is:

Where:

  • X represents key engagement factors (e.g., logins, feature usage, support interactions).
  • W represents the weight assigned to each factor based on importance.

💡Example: If your product's core feature usage is the strongest predictor of retention, you might assign it a higher weight than logins.

Industry Best Practices for CES

  • Monitor Trends, Not Just Absolute Scores: Track CES changes over time rather than focusing on one-time values.
  • Segment Your Users: Compare CES across different customer segments (e.g., enterprise vs. SMB) to refine engagement strategies.
  • Combine CES With Other SaaS Marketing Metrics: Use CES alongside churn rates, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and customer support data for deeper insights.
  • Act on the Data: Use CES scores to trigger automated customer success actions, like targeted onboarding emails or personalized outreach for disengaged users.

3. Retention Metrics

What factors do you think contribute most to keeping your customers engaged and loyal over time, and how do you measure whether your efforts are truly driving long-term retention?

The answers can vary depending on your definition of success. For some companies, retention may mean simply keeping customers subscribed for as long as possible. Others may prioritize customer satisfaction or specific engagement metrics. The key here is to identify the metrics that align with your company's goals and track them consistently to measure retention accurately.

Here are some common retention metrics used by SaaS companies:

Customer Churn Rate

This is the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions over a given period. It shows the number of people directly dissatisfied with a given product or service, and it's often used as a primary retention metric.

💡Example: If you started the month with 1,000 customers and lost 50, your churn rate would be 5%.

For B2B SaaS companies, the churn can be higher (5-7%), but keeping it below 3% is optimal.

How to Reduce Churn?

  • Conduct customer exit surveys and analyze cancellation reasons. Sometimes, people can leave for reasons that could be easily resolved, like a misunderstanding or lack of awareness about certain features.
  • A smooth onboarding experience helps users realize value faster, reducing early churn. Create a knowledge base with help articles or video instructions to guide your new customers.
  • Use AI-driven support tools or customer success teams to engage with users before they consider canceling.
  • Offer incentives like discounts, loyalty programs, or contract extensions to encourage renewals.
  • Talk to your users before they start thinking about leaving. Most SaaS companies spend time building nice-to-have features while ignoring their users’ actual needs. Collect feedback, prioritize user requests, and add them to your product roadmap to prevent churn

Revenue Churn Rate

Compared to the customer churn rate, the revenue churn rate shows the percentage of lost revenue due to cancellations or downgrades. It's more relevant analytical data for SaaS businesses with tiered pricing as it reflects the actual impact on your bottom line.

Best Practices for Revenue Churn Rate

  • Aim for negative revenue churn, suggesting that upsells/cross-sells bring more revenue than losses.
  • If negative doesn't work, keep the revenue churn of <1%.
  • Focus your retention efforts on customers who bring the most revenue.
  • Create unique offers, encouraging customers to upgrade or purchase add-ons.
  • Provide time-limited discounts on annual subscriptions to keep customers at a higher-tier plan.

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

This retention metric measures the percentage of revenue retained after accounting for both churn and expansion. It's a comprehensive approach to tracking changes in customer spending across different segments, factoring in upgrades, renewals, downgrades, and cancellations.

💡If the NRR appears over 100%, then you are driving revenue growth with the existing customers even without acquiring new ones.

How to Improve NRR?

  • Introduce Tiered Pricing: Give customers clear upgrade paths.
  • Increase Expansion Revenue: Offer feature add-ons, premium support, or additional seats.
  • Improve Retention: Strong retention automatically improves NRR.

4. Growth Metrics

Knowing if a business has the potential to scale, attract investors, and maintain financial health is crucial for any entrepreneur. For SaaS companies, it's not only about acquiring new customers but ensuring they are upgrading, expanding their usage, and staying engaged. If you neglect to expand your market share, your competitors will outgrow you. Unlike other industries where businesses can grow at a steady pace, SaaS companies should opt for rapid expansion.

SaaS growth metrics help businesses gain insight into critical data like the annual and monthly recurring revenues, customer lifetime value (CLV), payback period, etc. Knowing how each of these metrics is performing can help you make better decisions in your growth strategy. Moreover, these are the numbers potential investors analyze when evaluating a SaaS business. Even if your company doesn’t bring revenue yet, but has exponential growth, you can opt for a strong funding round.

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Showing the projected yearly revenue generated from subscription-based services ARR is a key indicator of financial stability and long-term revenue predictability. Comparing your year-over-year data shows whether the current growth strategy works or not.

Pro Tips for ARR

  • To scale ARR, focus on consistent acquisition, upselling, and reducing churn.
  • Aim for an ARR growth rate of at least 40% year-over-year.
  • Offer incentives for customers who commit to yearly plans.
  • Upsell additional features, premium tiers, or enterprise solutions.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

MRR projects the total revenue generated monthly from subscription-based services. Unlike ARR, MRR gives more granular and real-time insights into a SaaS company's financial state and customer retention success.

Calculating MRR is crucial as it:

  • Helps businesses track recurring revenue streams and identify fluctuations.
  • Guides business expansion decisions.
  • Indicates whether acquisition and retention strategies are effective.

💡Example Calculation

Let’s break this down with different customer scenarios:

  • 50 subscribers paying $100 per month:
    50×100=5,000
  • 80 subscribers on annual contracts paying $900/year:
    1.Convert to monthly revenue:
    900÷12=75
    2.Then calculate MRR:
    80×75=6,000
  • 30 subscribers on a $100/month plan + 40 subscribers paying $600/year:
    1. Convert annual subscribers to monthly revenue:
    600÷12=50
    2. Then calculate MRR:
    (30×100)+(40×50)=3,000+2,000=5,000

Industry Standards for MRR

  • Top SaaS companies target MRR growth of 5-15% month-over-month.
  • MRR is more useful for short-term decision-making compared to ARR.
  • To scale MRR, focus on customer acquisition, expansion revenue, and retention.

Achieving a steady MRR requires more than just tracking the right metrics. You’ll need data-driven performance monitoring strategies and professional guidance to ensure your growth is steady. If you're looking to maximize MRR efficiently, WeScale’s tailored approach can help you achieve the desired results. From optimizing paid acquisition channels to increasing conversion rates, our years of expertise can scale your profits while maintaining a healthy revenue stream.

Breaking Down MRR Sub-Metrics for Deeper Insights

MRR helps businesses optimize their financial performance in the right direction. To be able to understand the real growth patterns, you should go beyond just tracking total MRR. Sub-metrics like new MRR, churned MRR, and MRR growth rate lead to actionable insights that help you make informed decisions.

Here's a more detailed overview of these performance metrics:

New MRR: Tracking Revenue from New Customers

New MRR refers to the monthly recurring revenue generated from newly acquired customers. It’s a key indicator of sales performance and acquisition efficiency.
New MRR matters because it allows SaaS business owners to:

  • Measure acquisition success. A decline in New MRR may indicate issues in your marketing or sales pipeline.
  • Forecast future growth. Steady increases in New MRR mean a scalable acquisition strategy.
  • Introduce your business to investors. They assess New MRR to determine if the company can sustain customer growth.

MRR Growth Rate: Measuring Revenue Expansion Over Time

MRR Growth Rate measures the percentage increase or decrease in monthly recurring revenue over time. It shows how effectively your business is scaling and whether revenue is growing at a sustainable rate.

Why MRR Growth Rate Matters

  • A key benchmark for business health—SaaS companies with high MRR growth attract more funding.
  • Indicates whether sales, retention, and expansion efforts are effective.
  • Helps predict long-term revenue trends and scalability.

How to Improve MRR Growth Rate?

  • Focus on customer expansion (upsells, cross-sells).
  • Reduce churn through proactive customer support.
  • Implement pricing strategies that increase ARPU (average revenue per user).

Active MRR: Measuring Revenue from Paying Customers

Active MRR represents the total monthly revenue generated from all active paying customers. This excludes trial users, inactive accounts, or paused subscriptions.

Tracking active MRR allows SaaS businesses to:

  • Get a realistic revenue snapshot, excluding trials and non-paying users.
  • Measure the impact of free-to-paid conversion strategies.
  • Learn how stable and reliable their revenue stream is.

Churned MRR: Measuring Revenue Loss Due to Cancellations

Finally, the churned MRR defines the amount of recurring revenue lost due to customer cancellations or subscription downgrades. A high churned MRR can be a major red flag, signaling retention issues.

How can you reduce churned MRR?

  • Identify why customers leave through exit surveys and customer feedback.
  • Introduce win-back campaigns offering discounts or feature incentives.
  • Improve customer engagement with proactive support and personalized onboarding.

5. Economic Metrics

Unlike acquisition and engagement metrics, economic metrics go deeper into cost efficiency to predict the scalability of your business. Investors and SaaS leaders closely monitor these metrics to ensure profitability without excessive customer acquisition costs (CAC) and to determine whether the business can sustain growth over time.

Let's start with the basics:

Gross Margin

This is the percentage of revenue retained after deducting the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). For a SaaS business, COGS typically includes hosting costs, customer support, development expenses, etc.

  • SaaS businesses should aim for a gross margin of 75%+
  • If the gross margin is below 70%, review infrastructure, support costs, and pricing models.
  • To improve gross margin, optimize cloud computing costs, and increase automation.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

LTV refers to the total revenue a customer brings to your business during their entire lifetime. It helps SaaS businesses find answers to questions like:

  • How much can they afford to spend on acquisition (CAC)?
  • Which customer segments generate the most long-term value?
  • How do retention efforts impact revenue?

💡Where:

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) = Total revenue / Total customersAverage

Customer Lifetime = 1 / Churn rate

A strong SaaS business has an LTV-to-CAC ratio of at least 3:1. This means that for every dollar spent on customer acquisition, the business generates $3 in lifetime value. A higher ratio indicates a healthy and profitable business. However, if the LTV is high but CAC is too high, it's not a sustainable business model. Consider optimizing marketing and sales spending.

Final Thoughts

Customer Lifetime ValuMoral of the story: Track only the SaaS marketing metrics that correspond to your business goals and aspirations.e (LTV)

Every data point tells a story about your customers, revenue, and business potential. Your job is to understand which insights truly matter and how to act on them effectively. At WeScale, we help SaaS companies go beyond the guesswork by cutting the noise of vanity metrics and focusing on the key business drivers. Whether it's optimizing acquisition costs, improving customer retention, or scaling revenue growth, our tailored approach ensures you're focused on the SaaS marketing metrics that matter most.

Wondering how these promises turn into reality for your SaaS business?

Book a free demo with our industry experts for a sustainable and data-driven partnership.