The SaaS acquisition glossary

A B2B approach where you treat a handful of target accounts as markets in their own right, with marketing tailored to each one.

Annual Recurring Revenue: recurring subscription revenue brought back to a yearly figure, meaning MRR multiplied by twelve.

Business to business: when your product is aimed at other companies rather than individual consumers.

Business to consumer: when your product is aimed directly at individuals rather than companies.

Customer acquisition cost: what you spend on average (ads, time, tools) to land one new paying customer.

The churn rate: the share of customers (or revenue) you lose over a period. It is the leak at the bottom of the bucket.

Sending emails to prospects who don't know you yet, targeted and personalized, to open a conversation.

Cost per acquisition: what a targeted action (a lead, a signup, a sale) costs you on a given paid channel.

The average daily rate: the price of a day of work from a freelancer or contractor, a common billing basis in freelance work.

A model where a free tier attracts a wide audience, and only advanced features or heavy usage become paid.

A growth approach built on rapid experimentation: test many levers, measure, keep what works, drop the rest.

The go-to-market strategy: the plan that describes who you sell to, through which channels, and with what message to launch or expand a product.

The ideal customer profile: the type of company or person who gets the most value from your product and whom you serve best.

Attracting prospects to you through useful content (SEO, articles, resources) instead of going after them one by one.

A contact potentially interested in your product: someone who has left a trace (email, form, inquiry) without being a customer yet.

A free, useful piece of content or tool you offer in exchange for an email, to turn an anonymous visitor into a lead.

Lifetime Value: the total revenue a customer brings you on average over the entire duration of their relationship with you.

Monthly Recurring Revenue: the predictable subscription revenue you collect every month.

The simplest version of your product that already solves the core problem, so you can learn from the real market without building everything.

The art of maintaining the relationship with leads who aren't ready to buy yet, through useful content, until they take action.

A new user's first steps in your product: the stage that decides whether they reach their first value and stay, or leave.

Actively going after your prospects where they are (cold email, LinkedIn, calls) instead of waiting for them to find you.

The time it takes for a customer to pay back what it cost you to acquire them. The shorter it is, the faster you can reinvest.

A representative portrait of a target customer: their role, goals, blockers, decision-making style, used to guide messaging and product.

The set of deals in progress across their different sales stages, used to forecast upcoming revenue and spot where things stall.

Product-Led Growth: a strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, with the user trying and adopting it before ever talking to sales.

Building your price grid: tiers, thresholds, and billing logic. One of the fastest and most underused revenue levers in SaaS.

The point where your product answers a real need in a specific market so well that demand starts pulling on its own.

A qualified lead: a contact you have verified matches your target and has a real need, ready to be worked in sales.

Return on investment: what an action generates relative to what it costs, used to judge whether a channel or spend is worth it.

The number of months your cash will last at the current spending rate before you run dry.

Software as a Service: software accessed online through a subscription, no installation needed, continuously updated by the vendor.

The sales funnel: the step-by-step path a stranger travels until they become a customer, from discovery to purchase.

A sales rep specialized in the start of the cycle: they prospect, qualify leads, and book the meetings that others close afterward.

Paid advertising on search engines (like Google Ads): you buy visibility on specific queries, as opposed to free SEO.

Organic search optimization: the set of techniques used to rank your pages in search results without paying for every click.