Define Marketing KPIs for SaaS

Business Context

Nimbus is a B2B SaaS company that sells team collaboration software through paid search, paid social, email, webinars, and partner referrals. The CMO says marketing spend increased from $420K to $510K last quarter, website sessions grew from 280K to 355K, but new paid customers only rose from 3,200 to 3,360.

Metric Scenario

Leadership wants a clear KPI framework for marketing because different teams are reporting different success metrics. Paid acquisition highlights CTR and impressions, lifecycle marketing highlights email opens, and finance is focused on CAC and payback. Product leadership also wants marketing measured on downstream activation and retention, not just lead volume.

You are asked to define the core marketing KPIs, explain how they should be calculated, and show how to use them to diagnose performance. Assume the current quarter has the following funnel: 355K sessions, 28.4K signups, 11.1K activated workspaces, 6.7K trial starts, and 3,360 new paid customers. Existing-customer gross revenue retention is 91% and 90-day logo retention for new customers is 76%.

Requirements

1. Define the 5-7 most important marketing KPIs Nimbus should track and explain why each matters.
2. Identify one primary north-star-style marketing KPI and 2-3 guardrail metrics.
3. Show how you would decompose weak performance despite traffic growth.
4. Explain which KPIs are leading indicators versus lagging indicators.
5. Recommend actions if traffic is up but paid customer growth is nearly flat.

Data Available

• web_sessions
• signup_events
• workspace_activation_events
• trial_events
• subscription_orders
• marketing_spend_by_channel
• crm_leads
• customer_retention_monthly