Acquisition tells you who signed up; cohorts tell you who's still paying six months later. Signal Sparrow tracks retention, LTV and LTV:CAC by the channel that acquired each cohort — read straight from Stripe subscriptions — so you double down on the sources that compound, not the ones that churn.
Retention from StripeLTV:CAC by channelReconciled to the centLive in 30 minutes
SaaS cohort analysis groups customers by a shared starting point — usually the month and channel that acquired them — and tracks how their revenue behaves over time: retention, expansion, contraction and churn. LTV (customer lifetime value) is the total gross-margin revenue a customer produces before they leave, and LTV:CAC compares that to what you paid to acquire them.
Signal Sparrow builds every cohort from Stripe revenue sync and keys it to the acquisition channel through revenue attribution — so retention and LTV reflect real subscription revenue, by source.
One company-wide LTV number tells you nothing about where durable revenue comes from — and retention inferred from page views isn't retention at all.
A strong 3.8:1 LTV:CAC can hide a channel retaining at 6 months and another that's gone by month two. Optimizing on the blend funds churn you can't see.
Product-analytics tools infer "active" from events and logins. Only Stripe knows who's still paying. Revenue retention and usage retention are not the same number.
LTV that counts the first sale but not upgrades and downgrades undervalues your best channels — the ones whose customers expand — and overvalues cheap, flat ones.
Every Stripe customer is tagged with the channel, campaign and month that acquired them, forming cohorts you can compare side by side.
We follow each cohort's MRR through trial conversion, expansion, contraction and churn — straight from Stripe subscriptions, not inferred from activity.
Retention curves, LTV, net revenue retention and LTV:CAC are calculated per cohort and reconciled to your Stripe MRR.
Instead of one LTV number, you get a retention curve and LTV:CAC for each acquisition channel, so budget flows to the cohorts that compound. Pair it with CAC payback and you have the full unit-economics picture.
Illustrative cohorts, reconciled to Stripe MRR. Channels below your LTV:CAC target surface in red.
Illustrative figures based on typical results when teams reallocate budget toward channels with stronger cohort retention.
LTV is easy to inflate and hard to trust. Signal Sparrow builds every cohort from Stripe and reconciles it to your real revenue: attributed plus direct/unknown equals your net MRR for the period, to the cent. The retention curves and lifetime values you present are grounded in payments, not assumptions.
Reconciled to Stripe91.4% matchNet MRR in Stripe
=$49,100
Cohorts are only useful if they change where money goes. Signal Sparrow ranks channels by durable value — retention, expansion and LTV:CAC — so you can shift spend from cheap-but-churny sources to the ones that build a compounding revenue base.
Fund the channels that pay back and retain.
Cohorts that leak revenue surface early.
Credit channels whose customers upgrade.
See if newer cohorts retain better than old.
Connect Stripe read-only and add the first-party snippet — Signal Sparrow builds your acquisition cohorts, retention curves and LTV:CAC automatically, with no data warehouse, no SQL and no sales call. Your first channel-level cohort view is ready in under half an hour.
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Cohorts & LTV:CACBuilt automaticallyComputingEverything teams ask before switching their attribution to Stripe truth. Still curious? Talk to us.
Cohort analysis groups customers by a shared starting point — typically the month and channel that acquired them — and tracks how their revenue behaves over time. It reveals retention, expansion and churn patterns that a single blended metric hides.
LTV is the total gross-margin revenue a customer produces before they churn — commonly (monthly ARPA × gross margin) ÷ monthly churn rate. Signal Sparrow computes it from real Stripe subscription revenue per cohort, including expansion and contraction.
3:1 is a widely used SaaS benchmark — you earn three dollars of lifetime value for every dollar of acquisition cost. Below ~1:1 you're losing money; far above ~5:1 you may be underinvesting in growth. The insight is in seeing it by channel, not blended.
Product analytics infers retention from logins and events. Signal Sparrow measures revenue retention from Stripe — who is still paying, expanding or churning. Usage retention and revenue retention often disagree, and revenue is what funds the business.
NRR measures how much recurring revenue you keep and grow from existing customers: (starting MRR + expansion − contraction − churn) ÷ starting MRR. Yes — it's tracked per cohort and channel, so you can see which sources produce customers that expand.
Yes. Cohorts are built from full Stripe lifecycle data, so upgrades, downgrades, cancellations and reactivations all flow into retention and LTV — giving credit to the channels whose customers grow, not just sign up.
Start free, connect Stripe in 30 minutes, and get attribution that reconciles to the cent.
