Cohort analysis is the best way to truly understand how your subscriptions evolve over their lifespan. In ChartMogul, you can analyse your cohorts' progression using the following metrics: Customer Churn, Net MRR Churn, Quantity Churn, Customer Retention, Net MRR Retention and Quantity Retention.
Why are cohorts so useful?
Instead of looking at a metric such as customer churn rate for all your customers in aggregate, a cohort analysis visualises the evolution of your churn specific to a targeted group of customers. This enables you to answer various questions such as:
- At which point in the lifetime of a subscription is churn at it’s highest?
- Does churn stabilise after some period of time?
- How has a product change impacted churn trends?
The cohort analysis can provide insights that may help you take appropriate actions to mitigate churn.
The different cohort analyses
You can access the cohorts by clicking on the Cohorts icon on the left-hand side in the navigation bar. You can view any of the following cohorts by selecting them from the list:
Churn
- Customer Churn - The percentage or number of customers that churned.
- Net MRR Churn - The percentage or MRR amount that churned.
- Quantity Churn - The percentage or quantity that churned.
Retention
- Customer Retention - The percentage or number of customers retained.
- Net MRR Retention - The percentage or MRR amount retained.
- Quantity Retention - The percentage or quantity retained.
How to read cohorts
Each row contains one group of customers (cohort) that started paying in a particular month. We follow the lifespan of each cohort, starting with the month they converted.
Cohort Value
Depending on which chart you look at, the cohort value represents the total amount, customer number, or quantity acquired in that month.
Lifetime month
The numbers in the top row represent the lifetime months. Month 0 refers to month 0-1, Month 1 covers month 1-2 and so on.
Number of months
You can select the number of months included in your analysis by clicking on the drop down next to Number of months. You can view up to 36 months in your cohort analysis.
Show
Depending on which chart you are viewing, each cell in the cohort analysis can be shown as Customers or Rate (%), MRR or Rate (%) as well as Quantity or Rate (%). Clicking on the dropdown next to Show allows you to select one of the two available options.
Relative to
You can choose to view the data relative to the previous month cell or relative to the starting month (original cohort value) via the Relative to drop down.
Include current month toggle
You can choose to include the current month by ticking the box next to Include current month.
Viewing activities
By clicking on any of the cells in the cohort analysis, you are able to see all of the activities of that particular month.
Segmenting cohorts
Using segmentation allows you to filter your cohorts by region, plan, filters based on attributes, as well as any segments you have saved.
Cohorts work best with monthly subscriptions. If you have plans with other time intervals, we recommend creating a plan group of your monthly plans so that you can isolate them for your analysis.