
Help! SAAS revenue dropping 50% month on month. 3rd month, numbers look scary. - hnTerebi
Monthly recurring revenue has dropped 50% month on month for 3rd straight month.<p>At first I thought it was just a blip.<p>But 2 blips and now it looks like a trend.<p>Its 4 year old desktop application, revenue was growing steadily before that.<p>I feel like this has come out of NOWHERE, i&#x27;m struggling to even begin to figure out what was the cause.<p>I did some Googling and I found a helpful post by Amy Hoy, she suggested this&gt;<p>1. Earn more per customer.
2. Get more customers.
3. Keep more customers you already have.<p>------<p>So far I have figured out I can start doing this.<p>1. Up-sell customers to my other products
2. Investigate if I can create or add a  paid add-on service to the current product
3. Start posting on community forums
4. Start contacting more sites to review the product
5. Convert more trial -&gt; paid accounts
6. Find out why customers are failing to renew their services and fix the problem.<p>How do I find out what was the cause of the drop? I literally have no idea where to start...<p>The only thing I know what to do is whatever I can to at least re-start my marketing efforts.<p>Any advice appreciated...
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saluki
First sign up for a subscription with a live card make sure signups are still
working properly.

Setup a plan to renew on a live card tomorrow, make sure that's working.

Setup tracking on which users visit your cancellation page but don't cancel.
Setup a page to view this in your dashboard. Email each one personally and ask
them how their experience is going see if they have any questions or have
suggestions to improve your app make it more valuable to them.

Adding a required text box on the cancellation page asking why they are
leaving is a good way to get feedback.

Personally email every user you can, start with cancellations say "Just
reaching out to see if there is a reason you cancelled and are there any
improvements I can make to make the application better? Any feedback you can
provide would be appreciated".

Next email new signups to see how their experience is going.

Check all your domains, browse through your funnel make sure signups are
working nothing is broken on the site.

Test out your app run through with a new account as a user and make sure
things are working properly.

Check error logs any issues users could be seeing.

Check your traffic, organic search rank and make sure you haven't fallen out
of favor with Google. (Investigate your typical traffic sources/analytics).

Add code to start tracking logins, how users are using your SaaS to see if you
can see which users are active or maybe active then drop off. Follow up with
them see if you can help.

Good luck turning the ship around.

~~~
hnTerebi
Since its a desktop app, I haven't added any analytics past the download exe
stage, I will look into it once I read that book about lean analytics.

I do feel literally in the dark about things.

~~~
saluki
Gathering analytics from a desktop app will be more difficult than a web app.

You might want to reach out to the guys at StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com they've
both had desktop apps in the past. Just email a question about desktop app
analytics and also about your drop off in subscribers. They might email back
and/or answer it on the podcast.

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codegeek
Some of the things to look for:

1\. ACQUISITION: Has the number of new clients that you gain gone down
significantly ? If yes, look into your current sales and marketing channels.
For example, if you used to get a lot of inbound marketing (through search
engine etc), check if your search engine rankings has taken a bit hit
suddenly. Has google penalized you suddenly ? Have you lost some key backlinks
or referrals that were providing you significant traffic and conversions
before ? For outbound marketing, have you lost a key resource on your team ?

2\. ATTRITION: If you are losing "current" clients at a significantly higher
rate, talk to them directly when they cancel. Has something changed in your
SAAS suddenly ? Did you drop a major feature ? Has your customer support
changed a lot compared to 3 months ago ? Has a new competitor come up or an
existing competitor is getting your current clients to join them instead ?

3\. BUSINESS DOMAIN: Do you do business in a specific domain that is perhaps
seasonal ? Is it possible that you may have a slower business during certain
times of the year ? Just throwing this out as well.

Find answers to these questions above and I am sure you will get an idea of
where things are going wrong.

~~~
hnTerebi
1\. New users trial signups are the same and steady, ~30 a day.

2\. Yes attrition rate has been very high. Why? I don't know. Most of the
cancellations don't leave any feedback (or its not usable -> Will re-design
cancellation form).

3\. Lots of my new signups have been via partnerships with blogs that sell
training and use my product as part of it. It could very well be that the
numbers are new users that start the process, signup but they lose motivation
along the way. But I don't have data to back this up.

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nanis
There is one question you must answer first:

WHAT CHANGED?

Your application may not have changed, but the environment in which it
operates may have. Is there a new alternative in that space? Don't limit your
attention just to things that look exactly like yours: Consider everything
that might conceivably be used instead of it.

Or, are there new legal requirements which your product fails to satisfy? Or,
did the legal requirement that necessitated the use of your product disappear?

Also, given that this is recurring revenue, I am assuming you have a customer
database, and you know who cancelled subscriptions. Do consider contacting a
random sample of them and asking straight up if they would mind telling you
why they stopped using it, and how they think you could improve the product to
best serve their needs.

Also, order of magnitude would be helpful here: Did 30 customers cancel? 300?
3,000? ... 30,000,000?

~~~
hnTerebi
I'm losing about 10 customers a week from recurring billings not re-signing.
They value from $27 to $100.

Over the last 4 months, total number of users that didn't upgrade from trial
-> paid or just expired was: ~4000 users.

I will run report on cancellations that happen and email them all and ask why
they cancelled (I do have automatic email that gets sent on cancellation but I
never get a response from those).

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karterk
You can't reverse the trend if you don't know why exactly it's happening.

First talk to those who are cancelling to find out why. For e.g. add a
mandatory field on the cancellation form that asks them to describe why they
are quitting you service.

~~~
brudgers
I'd say personal contact rather than a mandatory field will garner more
helpful responses...since my response to a mandatory field might be "because
you disrepsect my time with things like this here mandatory field" even though
I'd already decided to drop the service for other reasons.

~~~
saluki
Yeah, no one likes a mandatory field on cancellation.

However, in my experience the mandatory field gets useful feedback about 90%
of the time and the other 10% are just people entering something to complete
their cancellation.

Definitely worth trying to get feedback as users cancel.

You could make it mandatory till you get a handle on what's gone wrong then
leave it in place as an optional field once things settle down.

~~~
brudgers
Even better would be listening to existing customers and take steps to
increase retention. Collecting data after cancellation requires allowing "the
bad thing" to happen.

~~~
saluki
Double True, definitely need to listen (and watch) existing users to keep
increasing the value your app provides to keep them happy.

A page out of patio11's playbook is tracking users that visit your
cancellation page but don't cancel so you can connect with them right away to
try to avoid 'the bad thing'.

~~~
hnTerebi
I'll send out 2 emails.

1] Cancelled users asking why they did. 2] Email existing users and ask "how
are they going" and if they need help.

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ruyi
Need a lot more info. You need to find data that answers the following
questions: 1\. Any major changes/events within the past 6 months? (or, is your
product still as good as it was 6 months ago?) 2\. Any new competitors? Any
existing competitor had a major update/upgrade on their product? 3\. How is
the industry your product serves doing? 4\. Any (strategy or metrics) changes
on marketing? 5\. How are your customers doing?

Also, it helps a lot to schedule some calls with customers who left.

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citizens
Are your original subscribers credit cards expiring?

Any failing webhooks preventing invoices from being charged?

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MalcolmDiggs
It sounds like you need data, and lots of it. Here's a good place to start:
[http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Analytics-Better-Startup-
Faster/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Analytics-Better-Startup-
Faster/dp/1449335675)

~~~
hnTerebi
Yes, thats the biggest issue. No actionable data.

Thanks for link I'll have a read.

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_____s
The first thing I'd do is e-mail people who are cancelling and ask them the
reason. Upselling current customers doesn't really stop the churn, and a 50%
drop rate means there's something seriously wrong. Asking people nicely will
get you a lot of answers, especially when there are so many people cancelling.

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ckluis
1 - what do your analytics show?

2 - do you have something like intercom.io installed to message customers
based on usage?

3 - call customers who are leaving and ask why? ask if you can fix it (if
valid) and ask if you can offer them something to stay

4 - I hope by re-start you do not mean - you stopped marketing. It should
never stop and always evolve.

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ig1
Call your (ex-)customers and ask them.

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tmaly
Have you tried to collect some exit data from customers that are leaving your
service?

Maybe they are going to something else? Maybe they are not seeing the benefit?

Doing a simple single multiple choice question would give you some more
perspective.

~~~
hnTerebi
Most answers from exit survey aren't answered.

But I emailed some users and about half of them that replied are saying they
want a Mac OSX version of the software.

Unfortunately I can't even bundle the windows app using crossover because it
crashes. Unless I poney out $3000 to hire the crossover team to make
investigate it and try make it work.

Not sure if its sign of the times or something else?

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WhatIsThisIm12
Query your database for all active users, print list of emails. Transfer list
to text editor. Paste into BCC field of email. Ask them what they want.

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55555
You should link to your product. It probably won't hurt, and will improve the
advice we can offer you.

