A cohort is a group of people banded together or treated as a group. A segment is the division of something into separate parts or sections. GENERALLY WE WILL SEGMENT A COHORT Cohort Example SUPPOSE WE HAVE A CHICKEN HATCHERY… We will create cohorts of chicks by the month they hatched. Then we can look at things like: How long did it take them to get a certain size? How much do they eat? What is their mortality rate? January February March THEN WE CAN SEGMENT EACH COHORT… This could tell us things like: Chicks born in Jan that eat a certain type of feed have a higher mortality rate; or Chicks born in January that have blue eggs grew 2x faster; or Cohorts by birth month are the wrong measurement! Gender Color of Egg Type of Feed But wait… You’re not a farmer? NON-FARMING COHORT EXAMPLE Suppose we have a website/app that sells subscription access to instructional videos. We want to answer a couple common business questions: • What is my revenue per subscriber? • Which is my most profitable channel? • What type of user behavior (engagement) is likely to predict retention? • What type of user behavior is likely a precursor to churn? • Who are my most valuable users? What are they worth? COHORT BY SUBSCRIPTION MONTH REVENUE BY COHORT @ $10 PER SUBSCRIPTION IF YOU WEREN’T USING COHORTS Churn is losing customers through cancellations. SUBSCRIBERS AND CANCELLATIONS (CHURN) SEGMENT YOUR COHORTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND CHURN In our example, we’ll call video views “engagement”. You could also get fancy and add other vectors like logins and video views etc. but lets keep it simple. There are 6 subscribers in March that signed up in the Jan cohort. What’s the activity of users that churned? Videos Viewed Date Range: March Cohort: January Of the people that were not subscribed in March from the Jan cohort (4 people): None of the users that churned viewed more than one video! If a user does not view at least 6 videos, they have a high likelihood to churn. Watch that number! FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET THEM ENGAGED! You can use cohorting for lots of things! COHORTING ATTRIBUTION You an use cohorts in your attribution model to see the effectiveness over time (and LTV) from your advertising channels. COHORTING EMAIL If you send an email today, you’ll get half of your clicks from that email today, but an equal number over the next 30 days. Use a cohort to find out revenue by send date (rather than revenue per day). Defining Your Cohorts DEFINING YOUR COHORTS How you define your cohorts depends on your type of business. You can define your cohorts any number of ways: • First Time Purchasers • Trial Start Month • Subscription Start Month • Subscription Cancellation Month • Cancelled Users Use cohorts to get “True LTV” CALCULATING “TRUE” LTV There are lots of formulas you can use to calculate LTV. LEARN MORE NOW Discover how Kissmetrics can help you optimize your marketing

1. Burn Your Churn Using Cohorts
RYAN KOONCE, CEO SAAS MANAGEMENT GROUP
WWW.SAASMGMT.COM

2. @Kissmetrics
#KissWebinar
@thuelmadsen

3. Thue is the Kissmetrics Webinar Wizard and Marketing
Ops Manager. Before joining forces with Kissmetrics, he
was a Lyft driver in SF, which is also how he ended up as
a Kissmetrics marketer. Whenever Thue is not trying to
automate everything around him, you can find him hiking
in the Sierras.
THUE MADSEN
Marketing Operations Manager, Kissmetrics
@ThueLMadsen
Before founding SaaS Management, Ryan created a
number of data-driven testing methods that helped him
build multi-million user companies.
RYAN KOONCE
CEO, SaaS Management Group (SMG)
ryan@saasmgmt.com

4. ryan@saasmgmt.com
#KissWebinar
@ryankoonce

5. 1 Section One - Introduction
What’s the difference between a Cohort and Segmentation?
Cohort examples
Comparing Cohorts for better insight
Churn
Segmenting Cohorts to better understand Churn
2 Section Two - Understanding Cohorts
3 Section Three - Determining your “True LTV”
TABLE OF CONTENTS

6. WATCH WEBINAR RECORDING NOW

7. A cohort is a group of
people banded together
or treated as a group.

8. A segment is the division of
something into separate
parts or sections.
GENERALLY WE WILL SEGMENT A COHORT

9. Cohort Example

10. SUPPOSE WE HAVE A CHICKEN HATCHERY…
We will create cohorts of chicks by the month they hatched.
Then we can look at things like:
How long did it take them to get a certain size?
How much do they eat?
What is their mortality rate?
January February March

11. THEN WE CAN SEGMENT EACH COHORT…
This could tell us things like:
Chicks born in Jan that eat a certain type of feed have a higher
mortality rate; or
Chicks born in January that have blue eggs grew 2x faster; or
Cohorts by birth month are the wrong measurement!
Gender Color of Egg Type of Feed

12. But wait…
You’re not a farmer?

13. NON-FARMING COHORT EXAMPLE
Suppose we have a website/app that sells subscription access to
instructional videos.
We want to answer a couple common business questions:
• What is my revenue per subscriber?
• Which is my most profitable channel?
• What type of user behavior (engagement) is likely to predict retention?
• What type of user behavior is likely a precursor to churn?
• Who are my most valuable users? What are they worth?

14. COHORT BY SUBSCRIPTION MONTH
Jan Feb Mar
Jan 10 8 6
Feb 10 8
Mar 14
Total 10 18 28
Of the 10 people that subscribed up in January, 8 were still subscribed
in February and 6 were still subscribed in March.

15. REVENUE BY COHORT @ $10 PER SUBSCRIPTION
Jan Feb Mar
Jan $100 $80 $60
Feb $100 $80
Mar $140
Total $100 $180 $280
While you generated $280 of revenue in March, only 21% was from
users that subscribed in March!

16. IF YOU WEREN’T USING COHORTS
Jan Feb Mar
Subscribers 10 18 28
Revenue $100 $180 $280
But 34 people subscribed between January and March. Why do we
only have 28 now? What happened to them?

17. Churn is losing customers
through cancellations.

18. SUBSCRIBERS AND CANCELLATIONS (CHURN)
Jan Feb Mar
Jan 10 8 6
Feb 10 8
Mar 14
Total 10 18 28
Jan Feb Mar
Jan 0 2 2
Feb 0 2
Mar 0
Total 0 2 4
Subscriptions Cancellations
Total New Subscriptions
34
Total Cancellations
6

19. SEGMENT YOUR COHORTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND CHURN
In our example, we’ll call video views “engagement”. You could also
get fancy and add other vectors like logins and video views etc. but lets
keep it simple.
Did the number of videos viewed have something to do with churn?
Jan Feb Mar
Jan 10 8 6
Feb 10 8
Mar 14
Total 10 18 28
There are 6 subscribers in March that signed up in the Jan cohort.

20. SEGMENT YOUR COHORTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND CHURN
Zero 1x 2-5x 6-10x < 10x
0 0 0 2 4
Videos Viewed
Date Range: March
Cohort: January
Of the people that were still subscribed in March from the Jan cohort (6 people):
NONE of the users viewed < 6 videos. ⅔ viewed >10

21. SEGMENT YOUR COHORTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND CHURN
What’s the activity of users that churned?
There are 4 subscribers in March that were not still subscribed from the Jan cohort.
Jan Feb Mar
Jan 0 2 2
Feb 0 2
Mar 0
Total 0 2 4

22. SEGMENT YOUR COHORTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND CHURN
Zero 1x 2-5x 6-10x < 10x
1 3 0 0 0
Videos Viewed
Date Range: March
Cohort: January
Of the people that were not subscribed in March from the Jan cohort (4 people):
None of the users that churned viewed more than one video!

23. If a user does not view at
least 6 videos, they have
a high likelihood to churn.
Watch that number!
FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET THEM ENGAGED!

24. You can use cohorting for
lots of things!

25. COHORTING ATTRIBUTION
You an use cohorts in your attribution model to see the effectiveness
over time (and LTV) from your advertising channels.
Not accounting for specific attribution models, for a fixed date range:
Visits Conversions Revenue
Facebook 5000 500 $50
Adwords 5302 530 $52
Bing 5829 574 $57
Total 16,111 1604 $159

26. COHORTING EMAIL
If you send an email today, you’ll get half of your clicks from that email
today, but an equal number over the next 30 days. Use a cohort to find
out revenue by send date (rather than revenue per day).
Sent Opens Clicks Revenue
11/1 5000 500 50 $50
11/2 5302 530 53 $52
11/3 5829 574 52 $57
Total 16,111 1604 155 $159
The total sent is fixed, but the rest of the data “bakes” over time.

27. Defining Your Cohorts

28. DEFINING YOUR COHORTS
How you define your cohorts depends on your type of business.
You can define your cohorts any number of ways:
• First Time Purchasers
• Trial Start Month
• Subscription Start Month
• Subscription Cancellation Month
• Cancelled Users

29. Use cohorts to get “True
LTV”

30. CALCULATING “TRUE” LTV
There are lots of formulas you can use to calculate LTV. Or you can
see your REAL LTV by cohort.
Jan Feb Mar
Jan $100 $80 $60 $240
Feb $100 $80 $180
Mar $140 $140
Total $100 $180 $280
2013 2014 2015 Total
2013 $50k $20k $10k $80k
2014 $75k $60k $135k
2015 $100k $100k
Total $50k $95k $170k

31. LEARN MORE NOW
Discover how Kissmetrics can help you optimize your marketing

32. THANKS!

33. RYAN KOONCE
CEO, SaaS Management Group
@saasmgmt
ryan@saasmgmt.com
THUE MADSEN
Marketing Operations Manager, Kissmetrics
@ThueLMadsen
tmadsen@kissmetrics.com
Questions?