Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate

What is Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate?

Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate is the percentage of people who signup for a freemium or trial version of your product and convert to become a paying customer.

How to calculate Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate:

Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate is calculated by dividing the total number of new paying subscribers by the total number of signups in a given period.

Paying Subscribers / Total Signups = Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate

This is normally looked at on a cohort basis or rolling average of weekly or monthly signups. For example, if you had 2000 signups in a month and 200 of them converted to become paying subscribers then your conversion rate would be 10%.

200 / 2000 = 10%

Also, depending on the length of the trial or average time it takes for somebody to move from a free user to a paid user it is often worth having a cut-off point for conversions in the calculation. For example, if you have a 30 day trial you may track the percentage of signups who converted after 35 days.

Pros:

Signup to Subscriber Conversion Rate helps multiple teams understand their progress. The marketing team identify if their marketing efforts are generating good quality signups, customer success can see if they’re providing the right level of support during trial and product can identify if they’re improving the first-run experience for signups through their product optimization.

Cons:

Often signup to subscriber conversion rate can be negatively impacted by a high volume of low quality signups, or positively impacted by a low volume of quality signups. It’s always worth looking at the volumes of signups and subscribers to understand if it’s product or onboarding improvements that are driving movements or the types of signups being generated.