Churn
Churn happens when a customer decides to stop using your product or service. It’s the moment they cancel their subscription, stop logging in, or disappear into silence. Churn isn’t just a lost sale; it’s a warning sign for businesses. It tells you something didn’t work.
Simply put, churn (often called customer churn or attrition) is the opposite of retention. It measures how many users or customers you lose over a period. It’s usually expressed as a percentage. For example, if you started the month with 100 customers and 5 of them left, your monthly churn rate is 5%.
Now, churn can look different depending on the business model. In a subscription-based SaaS company, it often means a user has actively cancelled their plan. In other cases (say, for a freemium tool or usage-based service), churn might be defined by inactivity, someone hasn’t logged in for 90 days, and you consider them gone.
But here’s the thing: churn is a lagging symptom. When someone leaves, the experience that led them to that decision likely happened weeks or months earlier. Maybe onboarding was confusing, they didn’t see enough value soon enough, or a competitor offered a better feature. Tracking churn is important, but understanding and reducing it is where the real work lies.
Marketers play a key role here. While customer success and product teams work to improve onboarding and support, marketing looks at signals. Are we attracting the right kind of users? Are expectations appropriately set during the sales or lead-nurturing process? Are we staying visible and delivering value post-signup?
You might see churn in your metrics dashboard or monthly reporting, especially in businesses where recurring revenue is crucial. Churn is often paired with retention rate, customer lifetime value (LTV), and acquisition cost (CAC) to understand the full customer lifecycle.