Average Subscriber Lifecycle (a.k.a. Average Days Retained) is one of the most important metrics to focus on for understanding churn in your subscriber base. You can find it on the Retain and All Purchases Overview dashboards.
It is a measure of the length of time subscribers stay with your service before churning.
Growing the length of time you retain your subscribers results in higher CLTV. This in turn means a higher return on acquisition efforts and higher MRR.
Measurement: The average number of days elapsed between the acquisition of a subscriber and the termination of their subscription. Considers any subscribers who churn within a defined period of time (eg. all subscribers who churn in a given month).
Note that a subscriber will only be counted here when they have no remaining subscriptions. Active subscribers are not considered in calculating the average subscriber lifetime. This is due to new subscribers distorting your overall picture of typical subscriber retention patterns.
Average Subscriber Lifecycle is a very powerful metric. The questions it helps you answer include the following:
- How many billing cycles are my subscribers retained for?
- At what point in the lifecycle do subscribers become more likely to churn?
- After how much time does the risk of churn significantly decrease?
- When should I intensify by engagement messaging with subscribers?
- Can a given subscriber be categorized as new, average, or mature in terms of the length of time they have been a subscriber?