The most important SaaS marketing metrics go beyond traffic and leads – they track pipeline, revenue, and efficiency. Key metrics include CAC, CAC payback, pipeline velocity, MQL-to-customer conversion, and marketing-sourced revenue. Tracking these helps B2B SaaS teams prove impact, optimise spend, and align marketing with growth goals.
When it comes to SaaS marketing metrics, it’s great to look good, but it’s far better to have the revenue to back it up!
If you’re part of a SaaS business, you’ll know that vanity metrics don’t pay the bills or create happy investors, even if they do indicate things are moving in the right direction.
If you’re serious about proving the value of your marketing efforts, you need to know your MQLs from your MRRs. Here are the B2B SaaS metrics to track!
Grab a coffee and see:
- If your content strategy is worth your investment
- How to calculate key SaaS metrics yourself or find answers with your tools or software
- The most critical metrics for a B2B enterprise saas marketing organization that correlate with getting paying customers
- The SaaS specific metrics to track to decrease customer churn
- The metrics for each stage of the marketing funnel that show business growth
What Are SaaS Marketing Metrics?
B2B Saas marketing metrics are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that can give you a measurement of success from your SaaS marketing efforts.
Perhaps you’ve been looking for ways to prove that inbound marketing is working, or that you are getting piles of leads from AI searches.
The best metrics to look at include traffic, engagement, conversion, pipeline, and revenue, which can all indicate that you’re on the right path.
Why SaaS Startups Must Measure Their Marketing Metrics
Whether you think B2B SaaS marketing is an art or a science, if you’re making a go-to marketing strategy or refining your proposition, a data-focused approach on true marketing metrics can remove any ambiguity.
Some other benefits:
- You avoid wasting budget: Invest in the top performers and increase revenue, or find channels that aren’t giving a return
- Source high-quality leads: Find the best channels that provide the most cost-effective new leads so you spend less to get new customers
- Optimize for maximum ROI: In SaaS the speed through the sales funnel is critical. SaaS B2B metrics help you understand what works to drive sign-ups faster!
- Find hacks to improve conversion rates and customer retention: By tracking top SaaS marketing metrics closely, you can quickly pivot your strategy if you need to crank up engagement or retention.
12 Must-Track SaaS Marketing Metrics (From Small to Big Impact)
So let’s get into the key SaaS marketing metrics. We’ll start with those quick and easy wins, calculating awareness and interest in your brand, and then move on to the SaaS marketing KPIs that focus on revenue and lifetime value. All you need to get started is access to your site analytics as well as any platforms you currently use for your marketing.
Traffic & Engagement Metrics (TOFU – Awareness Stage)
Traffic and engagement sit at the top of the funnel or ‘awareness’ stage of marketing.
While traffic is nice to get, visitors can look at your content for many reasons but might not yet have a decision-making mindset.
However, it’s worth tracking top-of-the-funnel stats as part of your B2B SaaS metrics to measure if your content and marketing efforts are reaching potential customers.
#1 Impressions & Clicks
- Definition: The number of times your content appears in search results and the number of clicks it receives.
- Why it matters: Higher impressions mean greater visibility, while clicks indicate engagement.
You might be showing up in search, but are people actually interested and engaging?
Tracking impressions and clicks helps you understand your demand generation results by showing how visible your site is in organic search and what visitors from your SEO efforts do when they’re on site.
If impressions are high but clicks are low, your content might need a more enticing title or meta description, or pivoting to cover the topic in a new way.
If both are low, it could be a sign to work on SEO visibility with internal linking, the right technical structure or keyword analysis.
Want to turn traffic into paying customers? Let’s chat!
Schedule a Call#2 Organic Traffic & SEO Metrics
- Key metrics: Click-Through Rate (CTR), Bounce Rate, Avg. Time on Page
- Why it matters: More engaged users signal your content’s effectiveness to Google, boosting rankings.
Once people get on site, what do they do? Click-Through Rate (CTR), Bounce Rate and average time on page are the metrics that SaaS businesses should know inside out!
Get these fundamentals right and you can ensure your site is performing well, so you know any investment in search is worth the $$$.
Look at your analytics and find:
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): How compelling are your title and meta description in search results? A high CTR means your content is attracting clicks.
- Bounce Rate: How many visitors leave after viewing just one page? A high bounce rate could signal that your content isn’t answering user intent.
- Average Time on Page: How engaging and valuable is your content? Longer times often mean people are actually reading.
#3 Traffic from Large Language Models (LLMs)
- New metric: Tracking clicks from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
- Why it matters: AI-driven search is growing, and optimizing for it is key.
AI use is booming, and it is now becoming a search engine in its own right. Even back in 2023, 13 million people claimed it was their primary tool for online search, and giants like Google have got ahead of the game by introducing AI overviews and AI mode with advanced reasoning.
So, are you being mentioned by AI? At the moment, tracking is tricky. Many use large language models via apps, not web browsers, which show in GA4 as “Direct” traffic.
Still, it’s not a lost cause. You can keep tabs on AI traffic and your AI optimised terms using GA4 by finding pages and screens and adding a filter and a referrer for exact matches on terms like ChatGPT or other AI platforms.
Lead Generation & Conversion Metrics (MOFU – Consideration Stage)
SaaS marketing KPIs should include middle-of-the-funnel metrics too, for when buyers enter the consideration stage.
If your content is getting seen but not getting signups or demo requests, and can’t move to sales, then the pressure will shift to manually chasing leads. Nobody needs that, so here are some metrics to consider.
#4 Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
- Definition: Leads that show strong intent but are not yet sales-ready.
- Why it matters: Identifies top-of-funnel demand generation effectiveness.
MQLs usually match your target audience profile and/or have some level of significant engagement with your brand, such as accessing your pricing pages. Lead scoring is a great way to separate the basic site visitor from a potential sales match by assigning a numerical value to a lead based on specific criteria like demographics or behaviour.
Another way is to flag leads who have engagement with certain material, indicating high intent, such as certain form completions, a number of sign-ups, or downloads. You might track this through site tracking, UTM codes on some sources, or use your CRM to move contacts through lifecycle stages (e.g., from Subscriber → Lead → MQL)
Tired of vanity metrics and need actual ROI? Let’s chat!
Schedule a Call#5 MQL to SQL Conversion Rate
- Definition: The percentage of MQLs that become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
- Why it matters: Helps understand lead quality and sales-readiness.
Knowing your B2B SaaS funnel metric conversion rate is so important! While marketing qualified leads indicates the people with a level of interest, the leads that get pushed to sales are those with real potential to convert.
To see if this is happening, pick a time period and divide the number of leads that become sales-qualified by the total number of MQLs, then multiply by 100 for your percentage.
If you’re seeing low conversion rates between MQLs and SQLs, that could signal that your messaging isn’t matching buyer expectations or that you’re passing leads to sales too early.
Pro Tip: you can also do this in most CRM’s by creating a custom funnel report to show you the conversion rate from one stage to the next.
#6 Cost Per Lead (CPL)
- Definition: Marketing spend divided by the number of leads generated.
- Why it matters: Ensures lead generation remains cost-efficient.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) tells you how much it’s costing you to get each new lead through the door.
It’s one of the quickest ways to see what promotions or placements bring in the best leads with the lowest costs.
You can manually calculate CPL as Total Marketing Spend ÷ Total Number of Leads, handy for an in-person event, or you can analyse platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn using landing pages, date ranges, or UTMs you’ve used.
Pro Tip: don’t get this confused with Customer Acquisition Cost. Cost per lead is the cost to acquire a new lead, while customer acquisition is the cost for a new customer.
Pipeline & Sales Impact Metrics (BOFU – Decision Stage)
The bottom of the funnel is a really exciting space to track and see the fruits of your labors!
These metrics assess the direct impact of marketing on revenue generation and money in the bank. Of all the metrics, these are the juiciest and can really impact what tactics you continue to pursue.
#7 Pipeline Generated
- Definition: The total value of deals influenced by marketing.
- Why it matters: Helps measure marketing-driven revenue impact.
Pipeline generated shows how effective your marketing really is in creating fresh leads and influencing revenue.
For example, through tracking, it was possible for SaaStorm to show how through marketing, Lingio grew organic traffic by 500% with an 11x increase in leads and 200+ MQLs. This could then be correlated to contributing to 60% of Lingio’s sales pipeline!
Your CRM platform can be analysed for attribution reports or interaction sources to get your pipeline stats. This will show which campaigns or channels led to the most new contacts, deals, or revenue.
Pro Tip: look for terms like ‘UTM dimensions’ or ‘attribution’ in your CRM’s report builder to tie pipeline value back to specific campaigns, periods or marketing assets.
#8 MQL to Revenue Attribution
- Definition: How many marketing-generated leads actually turn into paying customers
- Why it matters: Shows marketing’s impact on revenue growth
MQL to revenue attribution gets to the heart of what marketing directly influences, and is one of the SaaS metrics that matter the most!
To track this in your CRM, find the prospect touchpoints made when they move from MQL to SQL to a Customer.
You can use UTM tracking or filters to see if they downloaded a campaign asset, or correlate the prospects who changed during a campaign window, or track B2B SaaS trial start metrics over a time period.
Pro Tip: not all conversions happen within a neat campaign timeline. A lead might convert weeks later, but a marketing campaign will have been a necessary touchpoint!
Revenue & Retention Metrics
Your SaaS business’s ultimate goal should be driving sustainable revenue growth and keeping customers engaged and loyal…the dream combo!
Customer success initiatives need to be driven by an understanding of the direction in which revenue is heading.
Find out what’s really happening by getting under the skin of your finances with your CRM or billing system.
#9 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- Definition: The total predictable revenue earned each month.
- Why it matters: Directly ties marketing impact to business growth
Just like you know your own monthly wage, you’ll want to be just as confident in your Monthly Recurring Revenue – MRR – from your monthly active users. This is one of the top SaaS metrics to know.
To get this data, take a look at subscription payments and customer billing data for the predictable revenue each month.
This is calculated by multiplying active monthly subscribers by your ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).
For example, if you have 50 customers on a $30/month plan, your MRR is: $1,500
You can also use a net calculation to consider churn and expansion.
To calculate Net New MRR, the sum is Net New MRR = New MRR + Expansion MRR – Churned MRR
Pro Tip: don’t include one-off fees like setup charges, as MRR is only for recurring revenue.
#10 Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
- Definition: MRR x 12 months.
- Why it matters: Long-term revenue growth indicator.
ARR gives you a clear picture of your business’s revenue trajectory month in and month out, which is as simple as your Monthly Recurring Revenue x 12.
But, as you know, in SaaS, not every customer payment is static. Packages change, upgrades occur, as do downgrades. These small changes all tell a much more accurate growth story!
As such, ARR should always be a net calculation that factors in any losses.
For example, if a customer on a $10 plan moves to a $15 plan, that’s an extra $5/month for 6 months, so you’d need to add $30 to your ARR for that customer (5 × 6 = 30).
Curious how we drive pipeline, not just pageviews? Let’s chat!
Schedule a Call#11 Churn Rate
- Definition: The percentage of customers who cancel subscriptions.
- Why it matters: High churn means revenue loss and poor retention.
Customer churn is common in Saas companies, but it’s often preventable. However, to get ahead you need to be able to see when you have an issue.
The calculation for churn is lost customers / total customers) x 100 for a percentage.
What’s a good score? Well, SaaS marketing benchmarks indicate that in the first quarter of 2024, SaaS companies saw monthly churn rates of about 3.5%.
With a benchmark, you can ensure customer success teams stay focused on customer satisfaction scores using NPS surveys and other tools to gauge clients ‘retention intentions!’
#12 Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Definition: The total revenue a customer is expected to generate.
- How to track: Average revenue per customer x customer lifespan.
- Why it matters: Helps determine if CAC is sustainable.
Knowing your ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is useful to get a snapshot of how much each customer brings in per month, but what about over the long haul? That’s where customer lifetime value (LTV) steps in.
When you know how long a customer stays in a typical subscription and their average spend, you can multiply that to find the general revenue over a customer’s lifetime.
Now, you can justify spending more upfront to bring in new customers, knowing full well the long-term return will be worth it.
What Metrics SaaStorm Tracks for Clients
At SaaStorm, we focus on important SaaS metrics and the data that actually impacts your bottom line, not just vanity metrics.
Our key performance tracking includes:
- Impressions, Clicks & Organic Traffic
- Traffic from LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.)
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) & Engagement Metrics
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
- MQL to SQL Conversion Rates
- Pipeline Value Generated
- Actual MRR Generated from Marketing Efforts
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Our Data-Driven Approach Leads To Customer Success
You’ve likely found that when it comes to marketing, the data can be tweaked to fit almost any narrative, which is why we focus on telling a different story entirely from other agencies.
Our interest when it comes to B2B SaaS marketing KPIs is in revenue, not traffic.
That means we sit inside our clients’ CRMs, track leads from first click to closed deal, and optimize campaigns accordingly so that every decision is made based on actual sales performance data, and no filler stats.
Our Results
When it comes to SaaS growth metrics, we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk!
Take a client like Reditus as just one recent example.
With SaaStorm helping refine their sales and marketing efforts (and measuring it all against the best b2b SaaS metrics) they have achieved 127.84% growth in the inbound pipeline. Not only that, but they have created a $1.3M ARR pipeline, and now rank as one of the strongest players in B2B SaaS affiliate marketing!
We’d say that’s some considerable customer success.
B2B SaaS metrics in summary
We’ve covered a lot in this piece, but hopefully, you now have a hit list of the best KPIs to track to see what parts of your SaaS strategy are worth sticking with and where it may be time to twist.
To recap, here’s your quick checklist:
- Ensure that your SaaS marketing metrics are tied directly to growth.
- Tracking MQLs, MRR, pipeline, and customer retention is critical
- But don’t forget that website UX and engagement metrics now play a bigger role in search rankings than you may have thought, especially when AI is coming into play!
- The most important metrics for a B2B enterprise SaaS marketing organization are full funnel, not just at one stage.
- Tracking across the full-funnel ensures you don’t just have traffic, but money in the bank.
These B2B SaaS marketing benchmarks are just part of the puzzle of SaaS marketing, which starts with great strategy and requires strong execution.
We can help you take the steps that you need. Remember, we are the marketing agency that delivers real growth, not just traffic!
Ready to see real growth? Let’s chat!
Schedule a CallFAQs
The most crucial SaaS marketing metrics include MQLs, MRR, pipeline generated, customer lifetime value (LTV), and churn rate, as these directly impact growth and ROI.
Tracking KPIs helps startups optimise their marketing spend, identify high-quality lead sources, increase conversions, and align efforts with revenue goals.
MRR is calculated by multiplying the number of active monthly subscribers by the average revenue per user (ARPU). Net New MRR includes churn and expansions.
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