Purchase cohort

Customers grouped by the year of their first purchase, fixed. Per cohort: retention, products held now against year one, revenue now against year one. A cohort that retained but did not expand stalled, and the year it started is where onboarding, product or sales changed.

DefinitionCustomers grouped by the year of their first purchase, fixed. Per cohort: retention, products held now against year one, revenue now against year one. A cohort that retained but did not expand stalled, and the year it started is where onboarding, product or sales changed.

What the renewal rate cannot say

Eighty-four percent every year, averaging every cohort together, while one cohort holds one programme two years on.

Too young

A cohort in its first year has no expansion yet. Mark it rather than read it as stalled.

How it is used

Customers are grouped once by the year of their first purchase. For each cohort the table shows how many still buy, what they hold now against what they first bought, and revenue per customer.

Example

Institutions that first bought in 2021 now hold 2.8 products on average against 1.2 at the start; the 2023 cohort holds 1.3 against 1.2 and one in five has stopped.

Where it goes wrong

Reported as one average across all customers. Whether older customers deepen or fade cannot be seen.

Articles that use this term

Board and management reporting

How to read a cohort retention table: the diagonal, the column, and the cohort that broke the pattern

A reading guide for a cohort retention table, rows by signing period and columns by months since signing: why the columns are read before the rows, the diagonal as the most recent data and the least settled, the cohort whose row falls faster than its neighbours, the too-young cohorts to leave alone, the difference between the gross and net versions of the same table, and the row to open, the one that broke the pattern in a column where its neighbours held.

16 Sept 20262 min read Forecast and pipeline · Education

Ten questions an education provider CEO asks, and the table that answers each

The ten questions the chief executive of an education provider puts to the sales and success teams, which institutions renew in six months with low utilisation, which cohort stalled, which trusts and districts are counted as ten schools, what did the price uplift realise, which programmes fit which institutions, which entities have gone silent before the academic year, which account managers hold a price, what is the pipeline against the year's target, which institutions are over their seats, and what changed, each with the table from the licence register, the usage export and the orders, and the answer to send back.

16 Sept 20262 min read Alternatives and comparisons · Education

How to choose analytics software for education: questions, data and traps

How education providers should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.

24 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting · Education

Sales KPIs for education and edtech providers: ten measures that matter, each with its formula and the export it comes from

The ten sales KPIs a company selling to schools, trusts, colleges and universities should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: licence utilisation per institution, renewal rate by count and value, renewal watch, price uplift realised against proposed, programme or product fit, group and trust penetration, adoption by purchase cohort, budget cycle coverage, onboarding completion, and customer concentration by contracting entity. Also the three measures most providers miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.

17 Sept 20264 min read