Story Highlights:

  • There are MANY SaaS metrics to consider these days. Today we will review "C4"—which includes CLV, CAC, CRC, and Churn—and explain why they matter to a SaaS subscription revenue model.

  • Any one of the C4 elements can blow up a business.

  • Therefore, we must have a deep understanding of C4, how each element is calculated, and what we can do to manage and improve them.

Want to confuse your board along with all your employees? Start by showing them the below table of 59 different SaaS metrics.

These days, SaaS metrics are abundant if not overgrown. Similar to the investment industry, you can go down the metric rabbit-hole pretty quickly before you realize, "Wait a minute, what are we actually trying to accomplish here?"

But there are four key metrics that rule them all. You guessed it: C4. What is C4? 

This explosive composite combines four vital SaaS diagnostics:

  1. CLV: Customer Lifetime Value

  2. CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost

  3. CRC: Customer Retention Cost

  4. Churn

Churn—which typically garners most of the limelight—is the most cancerous, yet easiest to calculate. Churn is typically expressed as either a dollar figure or a percentage of revenue over a certain time period.

For example, let's say a SaaS startup has $1MM in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Last month, a customer paying $10k/mo churned. Therefore, churn could be expressed as:

  • $10,000 MRR

  • Gross churn = 1%

Simple enough, right?

Churn is insidious, even maddening at times. But once properly understood and effectively managed, churn can materially improve how your run your business. The key is to treat every churned customers as an archeologist might approach a dig. The good stuff is down below, and you'll have to institute a process to have these conversations, diagnose root cause, and ultimately arrive at a LEARNING that will improve how you do business.

For example, you will likely lose a customer for product reasons. Perhaps you lacked the feature, functionality or performance they seek. This information MUST reach the ears of the Product and Engineering teams so that they can prioritize such items in their release planning.

Is there anything worst than a churned customer? Yes: when you fail to learn something as a business. That, in other words, is the greatest disservice of all.