RETAINED ACQUISITION
Acquire SaaS customers who pay upfront and keep using the product.
MarginTrace joins every ad click to checkout, product use, refunds, and retained revenue. See which queries, pages, prices, and onboarding paths create contribution profit, then send the correct value back to Google Ads.
$1,497 for the first 90 days, then $499/month. No sales call. Account creation follows payment.
For web SaaS companies with trackable paid acquisition, account-level billing, product events, and at least 60 days of cohort history.
Ad spend
$42,860
Upfront cash
$81,500
D60 contribution
$39,240
| Search path | Paid CAC | Cash/customer | Activated | D60 active | D60 contribution | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category alternative → annual | $284 | $1,188 | 79% | 82% | $711 | Scale |
| Problem query → annual | $362 | $1,188 | 71% | 76% | $598 | Hold |
| Category → monthly | $191 | $299 | 58% | 54% | $61 | Reduce |
Reallocate 12% of search budget
The Category alternative → annual path produces the highest D60 contribution after acquisition and delivery cost. Review the affected keywords before sending the change to Google Ads.
Review changeKeep the customer identity intact from search to retained revenue.
Connect Google Ads, Stripe or supported subscription billing, and your existing event source. MarginTrace preserves the click identifier on the customer record through payment, activation, refunds, cancellation, and renewal.
- Google Ads
- Stripe
- Paddle
- Chargebee
- Segment
- PostHog
- Amplitude
- Mixpanel
See what each acquisition path actually earns.
Which searches collect cash?
Which buyers remain active?
Which path produces contribution profit?
What should Google optimize toward?
Replace one conversion column with the full economic path.
- 01Search term
- 02ad
- 03landing page
- 04offer
- 05checkout
- 06activation
- 07D60 status
- 08contribution
Current decision
Preserve annual checkout for high-intent alternative searches. Test monthly-first checkout for broad category searches. Keep paid conversion, cash collected, activation, and D60 contribution as separate outcomes.
From click data to a controlled acquisition decision.
- 01
Connect the record.
Join acquisition, billing, product usage, refunds, and variable customer costs.
- 02
Choose the economic outcome.
Set the activation event, retention window, and contribution-cost rules before comparing paths.
- 03
Run and measure the change.
Launch one pricing, page, checkout, onboarding, or campaign change with a control when traffic permits.
Upfront payment, CAC, activation, and retention remain separate.
An annual or prepaid offer can increase cash collected and shorten payback while reducing checkout conversion. MarginTrace reports every effect independently. The winning path is the one that produces the highest retained contribution per acquired visitor, not the one with the most annual selections.
Built for a measurable paid SaaS funnel.
Good fit
- Web SaaS product with a stable user or account identifier
- At least one active paid-acquisition channel
- Account-level billing and product-event data
- At least 60 days of cohort history
- Authority to connect data and implement one controlled change
Incompatible today
- Prelaunch product with no paid customers
- Marketplace or offline sale with no reliable identity join
- Advertising optimized only to anonymous leads with no closed-revenue feedback
- Buyer seeking a pricing report without connecting acquisition and product outcomes
How many new paying customers came from trackable acquisition during the last 60 days?
0–9 · 10–29 · 30–99 · 100+
The default founding-access threshold is 30. Lower-volume companies may pass only when they have enough longer-run historical cohorts to support the requested analysis.
Founding access
$1,497 today
$499/month beginning on day 91. Cancel before renewal from billing settings.
Included
- 90 days of MarginTrace Retained Acquisition
- One Google Ads account
- One billing connection
- One product-event source
- Customer identity validation
- Retained-contribution path explorer
- One controlled offer, checkout, onboarding, or value-feed experiment
- Up to four team members
Questions buyers ask before paying
- Does requiring upfront payment automatically lower CAC or improve retention?
- No. It changes commitment and cash timing and may reduce checkout conversion. MarginTrace measures paid conversion, cash collected, product activation, refunds, and retained contribution separately.
- Does this replace our current attribution product?
- It supplies a customer-level economic outcome layer. Keep any system you use for channel reporting; MarginTrace is responsible for connecting acquisition paths to payment, product use, and contribution.
- Can it send conversion values to Google Ads?
- Yes, after the customer identity join and value rules validate successfully. Raw signup and checkout-start events remain secondary.
- What happens if our data cannot be joined?
- The compatibility form screens the required systems first. If the advertised connector fails after a compatibility pass, the initial payment is refunded under the checkout terms.
- What happens after 90 days?
- Access renews for $499 per month. The ongoing product monitors new cohorts, detects path deterioration, evaluates further experiments, and updates the value feed.
Find the acquisition paths worth scaling.
Connect each paid click to cash, use, retention, and contribution before the next budget decision.
$1,497 for the first 90 days, then $499/month. No sales call. Account creation follows payment.