Reducing Churn and Improving Retention for a Product-Led SaaS StartupNBFC
But beneath the surface, serious challenges were brewing—free-to-paid conversions were stalling, 90-day churn was rising, and the product team lacked clarity on what was driving engagement vs. drop-offs. The founder team recognized the need for structured growth planning and retention visibility.
Service Focus: Growth Consulting + Metrics – Elevate + Decode
Industry: SaaS – B2B Productivity & Workflow Automation
challenge
- Low free-to-paid conversion rate (~4.8%) despite rising sign-ups
- High churn in the first 90 days post-subscription
- No product usage segmentation—’active’ users not clearly defined
- Absence of onboarding journey insights and engagement benchmarks
- Founders were struggling to isolate value moments that drove stickiness
our approach
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Capital Crest Consulting was engaged under Elevate + Decode to build a structured growth-retention engine, with data, design, and execution clarity. The project focused on three dimensions:
1. Funnel Mapping & Drop-off Analysis – Identify moments of friction or low engagement
2. Retention Strategy Design – Customer segmentation, onboarding fixes, and re-engagement logic
3. Metric System Implementation – Cohort-based churn tracking, feature adoption dashboards, and success KPIsWe worked with the founders, product leads, and customer success team to build clarity, discipline, and measurement into their growth model.
key intervention
- Mapped the full onboarding funnel from signup to 30-day activity milestones
- Defined active usage benchmarks and segmented users by intent + behavior
- Built a churn analysis dashboard using cohort survival curves
- Designed automated onboarding nudges based on user triggers
- Introduced ‘Customer Success Operating Rhythm’ with proactive interventions
the solution
- Free-to-paid conversion improved to 8.9% within two quarters
- 90-day churn reduced by 37% as onboarding and success touchpoints improved
- Weekly dashboards gave product and CS teams a shared view of retention risks
- Feature adoption tracking helped prioritize roadmap decisions
- Success team shifted from reactive to proactive engagement using health scores
strategic insight
In product-led SaaS, growth isn’t just about acquisition—it’s about earning usage. Metrics and retention strategy bring product clarity to what users truly value.