Table of Contents
For many B2B SaaS businesses, it’s been quite challenging to determine what SaaS marketing metrics to track.
“What metrics matter? What don’t? What is important for my business? Is this a vanity metric? Then which one of these is my KPI?” – and so on, and so on.
In 2025, when the market is as competitive as never, the importance of tracking the right SaaS marketing metrics has become even more – shockingly – higher. Not only for understanding the health of your SaaS business but also for the best efficiency of your marketing activities. If you’re here, you most likely already know – metrics can help, and they can help a lot. By correctly defining and tracking key performance indicators, you can get some truly valuable marketing insights, as in: measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, realize which one of many different marketing channels performs the best, and, ultimately, steer your SaaS business in the right direction, doubling your revenue and becoming the leader among competitors!
Okay, let’s get down to earth. No matter how crucial metrics might seem, simply tracking them is not enough. Why? Let us answer your questions. Growth Kitchen is here; we know how to cook.
Table of Contents
Key Categories of SaaS Marketing Metrics You Need to Know About
There are 5 primary categories of SaaS marketing metrics that every B2B SaaS company should be aware of:
- Customer Acquisition Metrics
- Customer Retention Metrics
- Revenue Metrics
- Marketing Performance Metrics
- Product Engagement Metrics
In this article, we’ll explore the most important SaaS metrics to measure your digital marketing success and help you choose the best ones for your specific goals!
Customer Acquisition Metrics
Provide insights into the effectiveness of your marketing in attracting and converting new customers. By tracking these metrics, you can understand:
- how much does it cost to acquire a customer,
- the time it takes to recoup your investment,
- and the overall efficiency of your sales funnel.
So, starting with the most popular and known one:
1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing, sales, and other related expenses. Or, simply put, the hidden price tag of each new buyer.
The formula for CAC is:
| CAC = (cost of sales + cost of marketing) / (number of customers acquired) |
What is a good customer acquisition cost? The lower the CAC, the better. Ideally, CAC should be 3 times lower than your customer lifetime value (CLV). For example, if your customer lifetime value is $30, an ideal customer acquisition cost would be $10 or less.
2. CAC Payback Period
Customer Acquisition Cost Payback Period measures how long it takes for a new customer to generate enough revenue to cover their acquisition cost. Basically, it’s the time it takes for a new customer to “pay for themselves.”
Calculating CAC Payback Period:
|
CAC Payback Period = CAC / Average Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) |
For example, if your CAC is $1,000 and your average MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is $100, your CAC payback period would be 10 months. This means it takes 10 months for a new customer to generate enough revenue to cover the cost of acquiring them.
3. Lead-to-Customer Rate
Lead-to-Customer Rate measures the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. It’s a clear indicator of whether your marketing team is nailing their job and if your marketing efforts are attracting the right people.
Calculating Lead-to-Customer Rate:
|
Lead-to-Customer Rate = (Number of Customers / Number of Leads) * 100 |
Customer Retention Metrics
For long-term success, customer retention is a critical factor. Why? Generally, retaining existing customers is much less expensive than acquiring new ones. So, by focusing on retention, you can build a loyal customer base (who tend to spend more over time), and therefore – increase your revenue, reduce churn, and improve your brand reputation! After all, word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing tool you can have.
Key customer retention metrics include:
4. Churn Rate
Customer churn — indeed a vital SaaS marketing metric — is the percentage of customers who stop using your product or service over a specific period. Of course, it’s on the list. Churn is a metric that should keep you up at night.
| Churn = (Customers at the Start of the Time Period – Customers at the End of the Time Period) ÷ Customers at the Start of Time Period) x 100 |
A low churn rate signals high customer satisfaction and loyalty, while a high one can be a major red flag. If you’ve ruled out product or pricing issues, it’s time to take a hard look at product marketing. A stagnant or ineffective marketing approach could be driving customers away. Consider partnering with experts who can provide the focus and expertise needed to reduce churn and improve customer retention 😉
5. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
This metric represents the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer throughout their entire relationship.
At its simplest, customer lifetime value can be calculated as:
| CLTV = (Average Revenue per User * Gross Margin) / Churn Rate |
For example, if your average customer pays $100 per month, your gross margin is 70%, and your monthly churn rate is 5%, the CLTV would be:
CLTV = ($100 * 0.7) / 0.05 = $1,400
This means that, on average, each customer is worth $1,400 to your business over their entire relationship with you.
A vital metric, deeply intertwined with CAC, one of the must-haves for every SaaS business.
6. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Or your customer loyalty barometer – shows how loyal and satisfied your customers are on a scale of -100 to 100.
How Does NPS Work?The Net Promoter Score survey typically consists of a single, simple question:
“On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?”
Based on their responses, customers are categorized into 3 groups:
1. Promoters (9-10): Your brand advocates
2. Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic customers
3. Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who may damage your brand
The formula is quite simple:
| NPS = the Percentage of Promoters – the Percentage of Detractors |
Why NPS Matters in 2025: provides quick insights, has powerful predictive power, and is a good benchmark tool.
Revenue Metrics
The lifeblood of B2B SaaS marketing. They provide insights into your company’s financial health and help you measure the success of your marketing and sales efforts.
Key revenue metrics you need to track:
7. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Monthly recurring revenue – a crucial metric that measures the predictable and recurring revenue generated by your SaaS business each month.
MRR provides a snapshot of your company’s financial health and growth trajectory, helps you track short-term progress, and decides wisely your marketing spend and resource allocation.
How to calculate MRR?
| MRR = the Total Number of Paying Subscribers * the Average Subscription Fee |
8. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
Annual Recurring Revenue represents the value of your recurring revenue for a single calendar year. In contrast to MRR, ARR offers a longer-term view of your company’s performance, which is particularly important for B2B SaaS companies with longer sales cycles and higher-value contracts.
How to calculate: Multiply your MRR by 12, or sum up the annual value of all your customer contracts.
| ARR = 12*MRR |
Benchmark: Successful SaaS companies often target 100% year-over-year ARR growth in their early stages.
9. Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
ARPU measures the average revenue generated by each customer or user of your SaaS product.
Why it matters: This metric helps you understand the value of your customer base and informs pricing strategies. It’s also pretty useful for identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
How to calculate: divide your total revenue by the number of users or customers.
| ARPU = Total Revenue / the Number of Users |
Marketing Performance Metrics
Marketing performance metrics reveal how effective your marketing campaigns are and how well your strategies resonate with your target audience.
Key metrics to track:
10. Conversion Rate
Measures the percentage of visitors to your website who take a desired action. This action could be anything — from making a purchase to signing up for a newsletter.
| Conversion Rate = Number of Conversions / Number of Visitors * 100 |
So, if 100 people visit your website and 10 make a purchase, your conversion rate is 10% (10/100).
11. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
Marketing qualified leads are potential customers who have shown a significant interest in your product or service and meet specific criteria set by your marketing team.
Lead criteria are typically based on factors such as:
- Engagement: How often and how deeply a potential customer interacts with your marketing materials (e.g., website visits, email opens, content downloads, sign-ups for webinars, etc).
- Fit: How well a potential customer aligns with your ideal customer profile (ICP) in terms of demographics, industry, and needs.
- Intent: How likely a potential customer is to make a purchase or become a customer.
MQLs are higher-quality leads, simply because they are more likely to convert. Tracking MQLs reveals which marketing channels and tactics are most effective at attracting potential buyers.
! Don’t confuse MQLs and SQLs: While both represent potential customers, they represent different stages in the buying journey.
Marketing Qualified Leads VS Sales Qualified Leads
12. ROMI & ROAS
ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) measures the financial return from your marketing efforts, showing exactly how well your campaigns help meet business goals.
Formula:
| ROMI = (Revenue from Marketing – Marketing Expenses) / Marketing Expenses |
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), on the other hand, focuses specifically on the efficiency of your advertising spend. It calculates the revenue generated for every unit of currency spent on ads. The formula is:
| ROAS = Total Campaign Revenue / Total Campaign Cost |
Understanding both metrics helps you optimize your marketing and advertising investments.
Product Engagement Metrics
Product engagement metrics are a window into the minds of your customers. They reveal how they’re interacting with your product, how often they use it, and what features they find most valuable.
13. Daily/Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU)
Measures the number of unique users engaging with your platform on a daily or monthly basis.
Of course, a growing DAU/MAU ratio = strong user retention and habitual usage, while a declining trend may signal engagement issues that require immediate attention, such as usability problems or unmet expectations.
14. Product Adoption Rate
Product Adoption Rate measures how many new customers adopted your product and how effectively they are using it.
| Product Adoption Rate = (New Engaged Users / Total Signups) * 100 |
By calculating it, you can see how many new users are actually using your product. A low rate may indicate a misalignment between your product’s capabilities and user expectations.
15. Feature Usage
Perhaps there are some useful features your customers might have missed, don’t let them go unnoticed. Change your marketing messages to highlight the most valuable aspects of your product. This can drastically improve user experience and customer retention.
Emerging SaaS Metrics for 2025: Essential KPIs for B2B Growth
Tracking the right B2B marketing metrics is key to staying ahead in the SaaS business model. While traditional KPIs like churn and CAC still matter, new critical SaaS marketing metrics are emerging to give even deeper insights into customer health, revenue retention, and growth potential. These important SaaS marketing metrics help companies measure not just how many customers they gain or lose, but how effectively they maximize revenue from existing relationships.
Here are three top SaaS marketing metrics you need to watch in 2025:
Customer Health Score
Customer satisfaction is no longer enough — you need to understand the overall health of your customer relationships. That’s why the Customer Health Score exists. It’s an important metric that takes into account various factors, including product usage, engagement, support interactions, and customer sentiment.
Measure customer health in 3 steps:
- Determine the most important factors that reflect your customers’ satisfaction and engagement.
- Assign a score to each indicator based on its impact on the customer relationship.
- Add up all the scores to get your overall customer health score.
With a customer health score you can identify at-risk customers and foster long-lasting relationships.
Revenue Retention Rate: Beyond Churn
While churn rate is undeniably important, it just doesn’t tell the whole story—you gotta look at the other side of the coin, too. Revenue Retention Rate offers a better view by measuring the percentage of revenue retained from existing customers.
| Net Revenue Retention (NRR) = Starting MRR + Expansion MRR – Churned MRR / Starting MRR |
This metric takes into account factors like contract renewals, upgrades, and downgrades. By focusing on revenue retention, you can identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, ultimately driving growth and profitability.
Expansion MRR: The Power of Upselling and Cross-Selling
Customer acquisition costs can be astronomical. So, instead of pouring all the resources into chasing new leads, expansion MRR focuses on nurturing existing customer relationships and maximizing their present value.
Expansion MRR measures the growth in revenue from existing customers, without considering revenue from new sign-ups.
| Expansion MRR = Revenue from upsells, cross-sells, and add-ons – Revenue from New Customers |
By upselling and cross-selling additional products or services that complement their current subscription, you can significantly increase customer lifetime value and boost your revenue without the need for constant (and costly) customer acquisition.
The Best Tools for Tracking SaaS Metrics
Here are some of the top tools for SaaS metric tracking:
- HubSpot: A marketing automation platform that offers a suite of tools for tracking various SaaS metrics, including website traffic, lead generation, customer engagement, and sales performance.
- Mixpanel: A powerful analytics tool that specializes in tracking user behavior and product usage. It’s ideal for understanding customer journeys and identifying areas for improvement.
- Amplitude: Similar to Mixpanel, Amplitude focuses on product analytics and user behavior. It’s a great choice for understanding how customers interact with your product.
- Pendo: A product adoption platform that helps you measure user engagement, identify pain points, and optimize your product experience.
By using the right tools, you’ll gain a clearer picture of how your SaaS business model is performing and where to adjust your marketing and sales spend for better results.
Best Practices for Tracking SaaS Metrics
There are countless metrics and KPIs out there—but which ones actually matter? To get expert insights, I turned to our experienced CMO, Nazar Dziadyk, to get some of his expert advice on the best practices for tracking SaaS metrics that matter. Here are the 4 golden rules he dropped:
-
Regularly Update and Review KPIs
Market conditions, customer behavior, and business goals can change rapidly, so make sure your metrics reflect the current state of your business. Set a regular check-up—weekly, monthly, or quarterly—to analyze and update (if needed) your B2B SaaS metrics.
-
Align Metrics with Business Goals
Every SaaS business should be tracking metrics that directly tie into their overall objectives. When selecting which marketing metrics to track, consider how each one aligns with your company’s goals. Are you focused on customer acquisition, revenue growth, or product adoption? By tracking metrics that directly correlate with your objectives, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives and make sure that your marketing and sales efforts are driving results you want and need.
-
Benchmark Against Industry Standards
While tracking your own progress is crucial, it’s also important to understand how you measure up against the industry standards for SaaS. Regularly benchmark your metrics against top SaaS companies in your sector, this will highlight areas where you’re excelling or lagging.
-
Use Metrics For Strategy
The true power of B2B SaaS marketing metrics lies in their ability to improve your marketing strategies. Remember, the goal isn’t just to collect data, but to get actionable insights that will drive your B2B SaaS marketing strategy forward.
Common Mistakes in SaaS Metric Tracking
Many SaaS marketing teams get lost in vanity metrics, track too much data without clear insights, or misinterpret numbers that don’t tell the full story.
If you want to make your SaaS marketing efforts count, you need to focus on metrics that matter—the ones that actually inform your marketing and sales decisions. Whether you’re refining your B2B SaaS digital marketing strategy or measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, avoiding these common mistakes will help you stay on track.
Let’s break them down.
Relying on a Single Metric
While it’s tempting to focus on one standout KPI, remember that no single metric tells the whole story of your SaaS marketing performance. For instance, a high customer acquisition rate might seem impressive, but if it’s coupled with a high churn rate, your business could be in trouble. Tracking one metric alone is nothing. To get a comprehensive understanding of your performance, a combination of metrics is a must.
Metric Overload: Quantity ≠ Quality
And vice versa, overloading on metrics is not good, either. Don’t fall into the trap of tracking every possible metric just because you can. Too many metrics can create confusion. Instead, identify the key SaaS marketing metrics that align closely with your business goals and focus specifically on them. Remember, it’s not about how many metrics you track, but how effectively you use them to drive your marketing strategy.
Misinterpreting Data: “We Exist in the Context”
Numbers don’t lie, but they can be misleading without proper context. For example, a sudden spike in website traffic might seem positive, but if it’s not translating to increased conversions or sign-ups, it may not be as valuable as it seems. Always dig deeper to understand the story behind your metrics.
Ignoring Customer Feedback in Favor of Numbers
As we have established, metrics ARE crucial, and still, don’t let them overshadow the insights you can gain from customer feedback. Metrics can tell you what is happening, but customer feedback can tell you why it’s happening. Regularly collect and analyze customer surveys and reviews alongside your numerical data. That’s how you don’t miss valuable insights that pure numbers might not capture.
Tracking Metrics just to … Track Metrics?
Don’t just collect data—use it. Transform your metrics into actionable strategies that drive growth, improve customer satisfaction, and boost your bottom line.
From tweaking your email marketing based on open rates to optimizing your social media marketing approach based on engagement, let data drive your decisions and help you create THE content marketing strategy.
For many SaaS companies, especially those in growth phases, managing this process in-house can be quite challenging – and for obvious reasons. It requires dedicated resources, specialized tools, and lots of knowledge and experience.
If you are struggling, why waste time and effort trying to figure out what to do and how to act with the metrics? Growth Kitchen can help you optimize your sales. Book a free audit to learn more!
Crucial B2B SaaS Marketing Metrics and KPIs: Conclusion
As we’ve explored throughout this article, tracking the right SaaS marketing metrics and KPIs is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity for survival and growth in the competitive B2B market of 2025. We’ve covered the most critical marketing metrics for SaaS companies, by tracking which B2B SaaS marketers can monitor the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts, identify some seasonal patterns, and the overall impact of marketing initiatives.
But remember: metrics are only tools, not solutions. The real success comes from how you interpret and how you act on the insights these metrics provide.
The future of your business is in your hands. Let’s make it a great one.
