Ready to grow?
Take action star 🚀

14

Jul

3 SaaS Metrics You Should Track to Stay Recession-Proof

What are “Advanced” SaaS metrics?

While there’s a ton of content about SaaS metrics, the more we talk about them with SaaS CEOs and the community, the more we see a need to dig deeper than standard CPA, CPL, CAC, LTV and other core SaaS metrics. This is how we came up with the concept of “Advanced SaaS Metrics”, and by “advanced” we mean that we will focus on the metrics that drive your momentum, that drive your revenue, or at least help to operate your SaaS marketing budget in the most efficient way.

The first three metrics that we will review are the ones that will help your SaaS business be more recession-ready and recession-proof. These are the metrics that will help a SaaS business operate more efficiently.

Watch the video below where I discuss advanced SaaS metrics to stay recession-proof:

3 key metrics that help your SaaS business become more recession-proof

The image below summarizes the 3 business metrics I will discuss in this article. Feel free to download and share it.

underrated saas marketing metrics for recession proof

Metric 1. Disqualification rate

The disqualification rate is the ratio of sales of disqualified leads divided by the total amount of leads you’ve got for a period of time.

Here’s the formula to calculate Disqualification Rate:

disqualification rate formula

Disqualification Rate = Sales DQ Leads / Total Leads

While many SaaS businesses are looking at the Cost per Lead, Cost per Acquisition, not all of them are looking into Disqualification Rate as the factor that determines where they are actually losing money.

We saw a lot of SaaS businesses fighting for lead quality and this is natural, everybody wants to get as many sales-qualified leads as they can.

However, what usually was missing in the picture is the Cost per Disqualified Lead.

Disqualification rate is the metric that will help you determine over time how you are doing in terms of not wasting your budget on the leads that your sales team is repeatedly disqualifying.

And it is a simple metric to look at, it’s a percentage and you can calculate it straight away for a given period. You just need to know the total lead numbers and how many leads were qualified and how many were disqualified.

Also, we saw Disqualification Rate being an effective KPI for marketing campaigns especially when you are spending money consistently on Paid Ads. By decreasing your Disqualification Rate you are setting the right expectations from your marketing team (or an agency, or a person who is managing your ads) because all of you start looking in the same direction.

You do not want your Disqualification Rate to be through the roof, you want to bring it down. And it’s very easy to monitor, it’s easy to calculate, and it’s easy to assess how you are doing with the quality of your leads when you monitor your Disqualification Rate on a regular basis, and you see it is declining.

Metric 2. Cost per Demo

The second metric to track in order to help your SaaS company be more recession-ready is the Cost per Demo.

How do you calculate the Cost per Demo? 

cost per demo formula

Cost per Demo = Marketing spend / Demos completed

There are a lot of cost metrics associated with SaaS products. You can measure the Cost per Acquisition, you can measure the Cost per Lead, but what we saw most effective as the metrics to monitor on a regular basis is the Cost per Demo.

It’s super easy to calculate: you take your marketing spend for a period and divide it by the amount of demos completed.

Why Cost per Demo?

A Demo sits in the middle of your funnel and you need to know exactly how much money it cost to bring somebody on the call with your salesperson.

You can still measure more top-of-the-funnel metrics such as Cost per Lead or you can measure more bottom-funnel metrics like Cost per Acquisition.

However, Cost per Demo is a great interim metric to have in your SaaS business simply because it merges the effort between the marketing team and the sales team into one single metric that you monitor regularly and you can see how much it costs to bring somebody on the call with your team.

We’ll be blogging more about marketing and sales aligning metrics a little bit down the road, but Cost per Demo is a great metric to monitor how your marketing effort is helping your sales team to get more business closed.

Metric 3. Time to Contract

The third metric is the Time to Contract is also a SaaS productivity metric. The formula is super simple: you get the first touchpoint date, which could be the lead’s creation date in the SaaS CRM, and you get the conversion date, i.e. the date when somebody actually signed up for your product and thus made a contract with you.

How do you calculate the Time to Contract?

time to contract formula

 

Time to Contract = Sign up date – First Touchpoint date

The sales cycle for B2B companies is usually extremely long. As it becomes longer and longer, the more economy goes into recession mode.

Monitoring these timing metrics is extremely important in Q3 and Q4 of 2022 part in particular because this is something that you would like to know and manage better during tough times.

The timing metrics are a bit tricky to use and assess, however, they can bring a lot of insights into your cash flow and marketing budget planning, as you can forecast much better knowing your sales cycle stages in this very detail.  

There is a lot of research about the number of touchpoints, the number of days, and how long overall it takes for the prospect to convert, and recently the SaaS companies tend to have even longer sales cycles than ever.

Monitoring your Time to Contract regularly will greatly help you with your budgeting and resource alignment.

Conclusion

This is the first article of the Advanced SaaS Marketing Metrics Series. We’ve reviewed Disqualification Rate, Cost per Demo and Time to Contract as the key metrics that will help a SaaS business be more recession-ready.

We will be posting more content on SaaS metrics, CRM, and ways to get more data for your marketing decisions soon, so stay tuned!

Advanced SaaS Metrics Whitepaper

Download our Advanced SaaS Marketing Metrics Whitepaper PDF and read on to learn more about how your SaaS business can benefit from measuring the following sets of advanced Saas marketing metrics:

Teams interaction metrics:

  • Sales accepted leads 
  • Not-a-fit leads 
  • Re-engaged leads

Recession-proofing metrics:

  • Disqualification rate 
  • Cost per demo
  • Time to contract

Time-sensitive metrics:

  • 2nd class leads 
  • Time to reaction

Advanced SaaS Marketing Metrics Whitepaper by Rampiq

Get your PDF now

DOWNLOAD WHITEPAPER

Send download link to:

About the author
Liudmila Kiseleva

Liudmila is one of the best-in-class digital marketers and a data-driven, very hands-on agency owner. With top-level education and experience, Liudmila is a true expert when it comes to digital marketing strategies and execution.

Related Posts

7 Steps to Measure SEO Results and Metrics for SaaS

Using practical examples to teach you how to measure SaaS SEO results, performance, and ROI. Discover the key metrics to track and tools to use to maximize your SEO success.
03.24.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

Shedding Light: How to Track & Measure Lead Generation in Dark Social

What is dark social and how do you track lead generation in this channel? Measure your marketing efforts with these effective tips.
03.23.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

All 64 Best B2B Lead Generation Tools to Boost Your Sales and Grow Your Business in 2023

Discover the top B2B lead generation tools for your business. From LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Survey Monkey, our list includes the best options for lead generation platforms, software, and services.
03.01.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

The Differences Between Lead Generation And Demand Generation

Confused about the difference between demand generation and lead generation? This post breaks down the key differences between these two marketing approaches, including strategies, content marketing, and bringing them together for your business success.
02.14.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

12 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices & Benchmarks to Maximize Results in 2023

We prepared a comprehensive guide to b2b email marketing. Learn everything you should know from reasons why it is important to best practices to achieve success.
02.08.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

A Practical B2B SaaS Lead Generation Guide for 2023

Expert-backed guide with the top lead generation strategies for B2B SaaS to generate high-quality leads and convert them into paying customers. We cover everything from the types of B2B SaaS leads and planning and strategy to driving traffic and generating leads for your SaaS. We will also delve into content creation and distribution, lead generation landing pages, paid advertizing, and optimization and testing.
01.26.2023
Matt Baker
Read more

Step 1 of 4

  • What is your business biggest demand right now?
POP-UP