A SaaS funnel is the path from a first visit to a paying customer who stays, split into stages you can count. A common version has awareness, acquisition, activation, conversion and retention. Pick one event for each stage, then read the drop between stages. The marketing funnel covers the early stages and the sales funnel covers the later ones.
Stage names vary from team to team. What matters is that each stage has one question and one event you can count.
This follows the AARRR model that Dave McClure introduced for startups: acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue. Amplitude's summary of the pirate metrics framework describes each part. The table above folds referral into retention and revenue into conversion. Other guides use top, middle and bottom of the funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) for the steps before a purchase, then add onboarding, retention and advocacy. Use whichever names your team already uses, as long as each stage has one event you can count.
The marketing funnel covers how strangers become known sign-ups or demo requests. The sales funnel covers how those leads become customers. In a self-serve product the product does much of the selling, so the two blur. In a demo-led product they are separate steps with a handoff between them.
Some SaaS companies mix the two: people sign up on their own, and sales contacts the ones who show strong use. Keep a separate set of stage rates for each entrance, because an average of the two describes neither.
A stage conversion rate is the number of people who reached the next stage divided by the number who reached this stage, for the same group over the same period. Group people by the week they signed up, which is a cohort, because someone who signed up yesterday has had no time to pay. The whole-funnel rate is the number at the last stage divided by the number at the first.
Report every stage rate, not only the total. A single blended number hides where to fix.
Activation is the point where a new user first gets value from the product. Amplitude's pirate metrics article gives Facebook's early finding as the example: users who gained seven friends within the first few days of creating an account saw the product's value, so that became its activation measure.
Your version will be a product action. Look at what early paying customers did in their first days, such as creating a first project or connecting an integration. Compare people who did it with people who did not, then write the event down and measure the time it takes to get there.
Search feeds the top two stages. Awareness pages answer problem and category questions. Acquisition pages serve people who are choosing a tool, such as comparison, alternatives, pricing and integration pages. Give each page one stage and one next step, then read it in the matching tool: Search Console for awareness and GA4 for acquisition. For more on this, see what part of the funnel SEO covers.
Mergeflo works at the front of the funnel. It finds search gaps and buyer questions, drafts briefs and articles in your brand voice for you to edit, and publishes the ones you approve to Webflow when you press Publish. It tracks your Google clicks, impressions and positions, and it credits each sign-up to the first channel and article that brought the visitor. It does not report pipeline or revenue and has no CRM connection, so read paid conversion and deals in your billing system or CRM.
A common version is awareness, acquisition, activation, conversion and retention. Dave McClure's AARRR model uses acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue. Pick one set of names and one countable event per stage.
The marketing funnel covers how strangers become sign-ups or demo requests. The sales funnel covers how those leads become customers. In a self-serve product the product does much of the selling, so the two overlap.
There is no single figure. Unbounce puts the median SaaS landing page at 3.8%, and that covers one step: a visit that ends in a conversion on a landing page. Judge every other stage against your own history, by cohort.
Pick the first action that early paying customers took, such as creating a first project or connecting an integration, and write it down. Amplitude cites Facebook's early finding that users who gained seven friends within the first few days of account creation saw the product's value. Yours will be a product action, not a number copied from another company.
Yes. A free plan makes sign-up easier, so the sign-up rate alone says less, and it adds a free-to-paid step after activation. Track activation and free-to-paid as separate rates.
Open Explore, choose Funnel exploration and define your steps, up to 10, from events such as a page view, a sign-up and a purchase. Choose an open funnel if people can enter at any step, or a closed funnel if they must start at the first step.
