∧pex

Retention & Cohorts

Retention measures whether customers stick around after converting. Apex provides cohort-based retention analysis, churn tracking, and net revenue retention — the metrics that separate sustainable growth from a leaky bucket.

Cohort Retention Matrix

The retention dashboard's centerpiece is the cohort heatmap. It groups customers by their signup month and tracks what percentage remain active in each subsequent month (M0, M1, M2, ...).

A cell showing "85%" at M3 for the January cohort means 85% of customers who signed up in January were still active three months later.

How "active" is determined: A contact is considered retained if their lifecycle stage is not churned. If they churned, they're only counted as churned from the month of churn onward.

Tip

Look for patterns in the heatmap: consistent drop-offs at M1 suggest onboarding issues, while gradual decline starting at M3+ might indicate a feature gap or lack of engagement.

Churn Metrics

The dashboard shows:

  • Active customers — Contacts who haven't churned
  • Churned customers — Contacts with lifecycle stage churned
  • Churn rate — Churned ÷ total, by signup cohort month
  • Churn trend — How monthly churn rates are changing over time

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

NRR measures whether your existing customer base is growing or shrinking in revenue terms:

NRR = (Initial Revenue + Expansion Revenue - Churned Revenue) / Initial Revenue × 100
  • Initial revenue — Revenue from customers currently in the customer lifecycle stage
  • Expansion revenue — Revenue from customers who've reached the expanded stage
  • Churned revenue — Revenue lost from churned customers

An NRR above 100% means expansion from existing customers outpaces churn — a strong signal of product-market fit.

Time Windows

The retention dashboard supports 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month lookback windows. Longer windows give you more cohorts and deeper visibility into long-term retention patterns. Shorter windows focus on recent performance.

Data Requirements

Retention tracking requires:

  • Contacts with createdAt — to build signup cohorts
  • Lifecycle stage tracking — contacts must progress through stages, including churned when they leave
  • Revenue data (optional) — conversionValue on contacts enables NRR calculation. This is typically set from Stripe, HubSpot, or QuickBooks revenue events.

Relationship to Other Features

  • Activation → Retention. Activation tracks the journey to first value; retention tracks whether that value persists. Together they form the complete post-signup picture.
  • Scoring → Retention signals. PQL scoring uses retention behavior as one of its four dimensions, so contacts with strong retention patterns score higher.
  • Funnel → Retention context. The funnel shows how many customers you're creating; retention shows how many you're keeping.
  • Causal Ledger → Retention impact. When the retention dashboard shows a churn spike, check the timeline to see what changed around that time.

Next Steps

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