Restoring Growth with an 89% Increase in Net New Paying Customers
A SaaS platform for creative professionals had seen its net new paying-customer growth fall 78% year over year, and MRR had flattened. Free signups were increasing, but too few users were upgrading, while acquisition costs climbed. I needed to restore growth by improving acquisition efficiency and turning more free users into paying customers.
I mapped the funnel from acquisition through activation and paid conversion, combining channel data, onboarding surveys, and in-app behavioral analysis to understand why users upgraded and where they got stuck.
I rebuilt paid campaigns and the organic content program, then worked with Product and Engineering to simplify signup, onboarding, pricing, and upgrade flows. I also revamped in-app messaging, lifecycle emails, and retargeting to help free users recognize the value of paid features and upgrade.
Year over year, net new paying customers increased 89%, customer acquisition cost fell 59%, and free-to-paid upgrades increased 39%.
Year-over-year growth
Year Over Year
