Ask HN: What's your churn rate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#11

Post by petervandijck » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 12:40 PM UTC

petervandijck wrote: post #10

paraschopra wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking out of experience or do you have some stats? It seems unlikely that people take at least 3 months to unsubscribe a service they never use.

Out of experience with 2 large services. Can't share stats, sorry. It may seem unlikely, but it's true :) I'm talking average, many take up to 6 months. Now you know why there are so many ads for crappy services online :) ps: I didn't say "at least", I said "on average".

The math of subscription services generally goes like this: acquiring a paying customer is going to cost you about 15-60$ each (for typical lifestyle services). So lifetime value needs to be more than that. Once you're live, you tweak those numbers, make acquisition more efficient and increase lifetime value.

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#12

Post by tnorthcutt » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 12:45 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #3

Here are my numbers for S3stat. We don't have free accounts, though we do have a 30 day trial. Visit to trial conversion: 3% Trial to paid conversion: 26% Average subscription length: 11.5 months Average cancels per month: 2% Over time, those last two numbers keep getting better, since there's more time passed for our first loyal customers to inflate the average subscription length, and there's more people on board t…

Do you have any sort of automated solution in place to calculate those stats for you on a running basis, or do you just manually re-calculate at set intervals?

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#13

Post by paraschopra » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 12:53 PM UTC

Constant Contact is a public company, there for they share stats in their annual report http://investor.constantcontact.com/common/download/download...

Some key stats. Their churn is ~2.5% and their cost of acquiring customer is (whopping!) $370

PS: planning to write a post analyzing all such open stats. Do you know any other public Internet companies?

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#14

Post by thebigjc » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 1:02 PM UTC

Is there an equivalent or similar metric for non-subscription commerce sites? I operate one, and I'm struggling to find good references on the best way to determine I've 'lost' a customer.

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#15

Post by dan_manges » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 1:11 PM UTC

pplante wrote: post #2

No public stats I can personally provide. But I have seen it vary wildly depending on the type of service. Businesses are generally slower to adopt a new service/tool, and once they are locked in can be apprehensive for change. Consumers can change on a whim if something better comes along. Here are some interesting stats I found for Evernote: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/video-evernote-ceo-phil-lib... Evernote h…

It can also vary a lot within a type of service depending on the target market. At Braintree our churn rate is higher for the start-ups that we work with (because they sometimes go out of business) than it is for companies that have been around longer and are profitable.

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#16

Post by pospischil » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 1:59 PM UTC

thebigjc wrote: post #14

Is there an equivalent or similar metric for non-subscription commerce sites? I operate one, and I'm struggling to find good references on the best way to determine I've 'lost' a customer.

Im working on a service, currently in private beta, that I think you (and lots of others here on HN) would be interested in.

Shoot me an email and I'd love to tell you more about it: Pospischil at gmail

Re: Ask HN: What's your churn rate?

#17

Post by jasonkester » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 3:59 PM UTC

tnorthcutt wrote: post #12

jasonkester wrote: post #3

Here are my numbers for S3stat. We don't have free accounts, though we do have a 30 day trial. Visit to trial conversion: 3% Trial to paid conversion: 26% Average subscription length: 11.5 months Average cancels per month: 2% Over time, those last two numbers keep getting better, since there's more time passed for our first loyal customers to inflate the average subscription length, and there's more people on board t…

Do you have any sort of automated solution in place to calculate those stats for you on a running basis, or do you just manually re-calculate at set intervals?

I do a little obsession-fest at the start of each month where I pull down income reports for the services I run, update some spreadsheets, and roll around naked in piles of virtual money.

If I could have the bank deliver it all in the form of one dollar bills spilling from canvas bags with dollar signs stenciled on the side, that would help the process immensely.