Excel Exercises · hands-on Excel training site
Work out lifetime value separately for monthly and annual customers
Blended 3:1 LTV:CAC hid monthly plans barely profitable, 4-5 month payback
Workedanalytics-attributionpricing
What they did
Stripe shows one blended LTV across all subscriptions, products, prices, discounts and bundles. Despite a ~3:1 average LTV:CAC, growth lagged, so he exported all payments to a spreadsheet and split them by monthly vs annual. Annual customers were very profitable; monthly customers barely turned a profit with a 4-5 month payback.
What happened
Revealed monthly plan was barely profitable; led directly to doubling the monthly price.
- Stage
- $10K-30K/month, with paid ads
“So, I exported all my payments into a spreadsheet, separated them out by monthly and annual, and I found that my my annual customers were really profitable.”
“Stripe gives you one LTV metric for all of your subscriptions for all time, for all your products, across all prices, with discounts or bundles or upsells.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Excel Exercises: Put your rough product online and let strangers pay before it feels readyFirst $50 sale arrived unpromoted; more trickled in over weeks
- Excel Exercises: Write 1,500-2,000 words on your homepage explaining what it is and whyMain growth driver to $10K/month; most traffic and highest-intent visitors
- Excel Exercises: Write a blog article for each topic people search for, like each Excel functionFounder says it helped less than the long homepage text
- Excel Exercises: Post about your product on RedditNot credited with growth; a couple of posts
- Excel Exercises: Add paid ads once organic search has proven people will payBiggest growth turning point, from $10K to $30K/month
- Excel Exercises: Sell team plans to bosses after individual users bring your product to workAccelerated growth from $10K to $30K/month; requests like 50 seats
- Excel Exercises: Give a few free lessons, then put up a hard paywallFounder says free samples are needed because the format is unfamiliar
- Excel Exercises: Double your monthly price and keep the annual price the sameGrowth took off afterwards; no numbers given
- Excel Exercises: Teach a skill with hands-on exercises instead of videosCore of the product; founder says it's how people learn
- Excel Exercises: Add points and leaderboards to your lessonsOne user logged in almost daily for a year; no wider numbers