Activation Insights Acquisition Performance Board
The Acquisition Performance Board is designed to evaluate and understand the value of Composer in the context of acquisition, as well as to identify opportunities for optimizing the subscription.
The content is organized into three main analytical use cases:
- Overall Composer Revenue and Value: Analyze the revenue generated by Composer and assess the value it brings to the client. This section also helps identify changes in acquisition trends (Summary tab).
- Effectiveness of Audience Targeting: Evaluate the effectiveness of targeting strategies and uncover potential opportunities by using the Revenue per Visitor metric (Audience tab).
- Impact of Changes on Composer Experience: Assess the impact of modifications to the Composer experience, including structure, settings, and acquisition marketing tools such as campaigns or promotions (Composer tab).
The board defaults to a time period of the past 7 days, with period comparison enabled.
Summary Tab
KPI tiles
The KPI tiles highlight the most important metrics to summarize the value of Composer activities in the context of new conversions and new revenue. Three main metrics are used in the KPI tiles:
- Experience Turnover as New Composer Revenue: This metric summarizes all revenue generated through Composer experiences, including new purchases for subscriptions, one-time payments, gifts, etc. It excludes renewals or conversion revenue originating outside of Composer experiences.
- Experience Payment Converted Visitors as New Composer Payment Converted Visitors: This metric identifies unique visitors (defined at the cookie level) who have made a purchase, including payment or dynamic term conversions.
- Experience Converted Visitors as New Composer Converted Visitors: This metric captures the total number of conversions, including non-monetary conversions such as registration term conversions, AdBlock disablement, access redemption, and more.
Overall new Composer revenue
The chart illustrates the monetary value of Composer conversions over time, with the goal of identifying unexpected drops and spikes in the revenue trend. To evaluate non-monetary conversions, such as registrations, alongside monetary ones, simply select "Experience Converted Visitors" from the dropdown list of metrics. It excludes renewals or conversion revenue originating outside of Composer experiences.
Payment conversions by billing period
This chart is designed to analyze the volume of payment conversions by term billing period over time. To analyze revenue instead of volume, select the "Experience Turnover" metric from the dropdown list. For a client running a subscription business, it's crucial to understand the ratio of new acquisition periods, as longer billing periods typically lead to better retention and higher lifetime value.
The chart provides a period-over-period comparison.
Top 5 terms by revenue & Top 5 terms by conversions
Both charts comparing the top 5 terms should highlight the difference between the total conversions and the revenue generated by each term. For instance, while there may be many conversions from Term X with a monthly billing period, the most valuable term in terms of revenue could be Term Y, which has an annual billing period.
Goal types conversions
If you are running different acquisition strategies and have various conversion goal types, this chart can be used to analyze the total value of all conversions.
Audience tab
Top 5 countries
The goal of the chart is to compare the proportions of visitor segments by country, the revenue per visitor and relative metric. If a specific country shows significantly higher revenue per visitor, you may consider implementing country-specific targeting in Composer.
Top 10 regions
For clients with region-focused content, it's important to understand how each region is performing in terms of revenue per visitor.
Top 3 devices
Many clients target specific devices and tailor their messaging because most conversions come from desktops. To understand the value of such customized targeting, use these chart tiles.
Likelihood To subscribe (LTs) score
These charts are beneficial for clients using the C1x segment Likelihood to Subscribe (LtS) metric, as they help assess the overall effectiveness of subscription acquisition targeting by LtS segment. The goal is to ensure that segments with the highest propensity scores (7, 8, and 9) generate the highest revenue per visitor. To learn more about C1x segment Likelihood to Subscribe please see the documentation. If the data in the chart are empty, please make sure you are using the segment in the live experiences so we can collect the data.
Top 5 sources
One of the most important questions in acquisition strategies is, “Where are my converting visitors coming from?” Understanding this can help you invest more effectively in acquiring new audiences. This chart helps you evaluate the value of different traffic sources in terms of revenue per visitor.
Composer tab
If you work regularly with Composer—setting up or editing experiences, creating new templates and offers, and defining targeting criteria—this tab in the Acquisition Performance Board can help you understand the impact volume of any changes in your acquisition strategy.
Revenue by experience
This chart helps you understand the greatest impact on revenue in relation to different experiences. The timeline view allows you to analyze the effect of newly launched experiences. To view all experiences, maximize the tile view. If you want to assess the impact of experiences in the context of different metrics, select the desired metrics from the KPI dropdown.
Experiences broken down by terms
For a detailed breakdown of conversions and revenue in the context of experiences and terms, use the following table. This table is valuable for understanding the acquisition types that each experience generates.
Revenue by templates
To identify the most impactful template from a revenue perspective, use this board tile. This chart can also be used to analyze the impact of newly launched templates.
Revenue by offers
To identify the most impactful offer from a revenue perspective, use this board tile. This chart can also be used to analyze the impact of newly launched offers.
Revenue by promotions
To evaluate the impact of promotions used in acquisition campaigns, use this tile. If you are also offering 100% price promotions, select a different metric than turnover to assess the impact of these zero-revenue promotions.
Revenue by campaigns
If you are using a parameter campaign for conversion events, you can analyze its impact using the following board tile.
Revenue by medium
If you are using the parameter medium for conversion events, you can analyze its impact using the following board tile.
If you are interested in other UTM properties, follow these steps:
- Expand the chart tile.
- Click on the property dropdown.
- Start typing the property you are looking for.
- Select the metric and click Apply.
Alternatively, you can adjust the data in the data query tool.
Payment Conversions by Experience Versions over Time
In case you are looking for a potential source of a sudden spike or drop in the revenue or targetting trends and you are suspicious that a new Experience version was created, you can use this chart to identify these changes.
To see the full list of experiences and versions, expand the tile. If you are interested in looking at specific experiences, use the tile filter to narrow the data.
Payment Conversions by Template Variant over Time
In case you are looking for a potential source of a sudden spike or drop in the revenue or targetting trends and you are suspicious that a new Template version was used, you should use this chart to identify these changes.
To see the full list of templates and versions, expand the tile. If you are interested in looking at a specific template, use the tile filter to narrow the data.
Activation Insights Editorial Performance Board
The Editorial performance board evaluates the content impact in the context of the audience acquisition journey and subscription revenues
The content is organized into three main analytical use cases:
- Understand the new subscription revenue in the context of site traffic and content that is being produced.
- Compare the readership preferences and browsing behavior for most important audience segments such as “Anonymous” visitors, “Known users without access” to restricted content, and “Subscribers” with the ability to alter the segments
- Analyze the impact of acquisition strategies in the context of articles and identify which content attributes have better total and relative performance results
The board defaults to a time period of the past 7 days, with period comparison enabled.
Overview tab
KPI tiles
The KPI tiles help to highlight the most important data points regarding audience traffic and new revenue. There are two tiles displayed side by side: the first tile considers all types of content, while the second is filtered specifically for article content type.
- Total Site Traffic: Main KPIs provide insights into the overall traffic volume and new subscription revenues. A key KPI to track over time is the Subscription ARPU, which represents the average new subscription revenue per 1,000 visitors to the website.
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Article Content Traffic: Main KPIs focus on a subset of traffic specific to articles, identified using the “content type” meta tag in your data. By comparing the two KPI tiles side by side, you can understand the proportion of traffic and content that is relevant for total site traffic versus article-specific traffic.
Bar and timeline charts
If you want to understand how content is being tagged and the traffic or revenue associated with it, refer to the set of charts below the KPI tiles. These charts reflect how conversions are attributed to articles, landing pages, or other content types.
If there is a significant portion of “N/A” values, we recommend addressing this by refining the data definitions in the Composer or PA SDK. To learn more check our documentation.
Audiences
Gaining insights into audience behavior differences—such as editorial preferences and browsing habits—is crucial for making data-driven decisions to optimize acquisition strategies or improve subscription retention. Understanding these behavioral differences between segments can help identify key attributes that inform decisions about optimizing Composer experiences or determining which content to lock or keep accessible to a broader audience.
The segments used on the Audience page of the Editorial Performance Board are as follows:
- Anonymous Visitors: Represents any visitor browsing the website who is either logged out or not registered.
- Registered Without Access: Identifies logged-in users who do not have access to locked content.
- Subscribers: Represents users with access to locked content through a purchased subscription.
These segments can be adjusted using the filter function on each chart tile. For example, if you want to compare the behavior of Site Licensing Subscribers, you can do so by selecting that segment in the tile filter instead of one of the segments mentioned above.
Traffic KPIs
To analyze the volume of traffic or engagement statistics for each segment, refer to the initial KPI charts. You can adjust the chart metrics by clicking on the “Visitor” metric.
Traffic by content type
The breakdown of browsing patterns by content type for each audience segment helps identify the level of internal browsing circulation, particularly between the homepage, articles, and front page. If you notice a significant portion of “N/A” values, we recommend reviewing the SDK implementation, specifically the “Content type” field.
Traffic by content section
To identify which sections generate the most interest among the Anonymous audience or contribute to increased retention for Subscribers, refer to the next set of charts. To view the full list of all sections, expand the tile.
Trending Articles
To discover which articles are effectively acquiring new anonymous audiences, increasing engagement among known audiences, or performing well across all audience segments, refer to the next set of charts.
Trending Authors
To analyze author preferences across different audience segments, refer to the next set of charts. These charts help identify which authors drive engagement, attract new audiences, or contribute to retention. By exploring the data, you can understand how content from specific authors resonates with each segment.
Article Visit Sources
To learn how the audience navigates to articles, see the next set of charts. The sources represent the origin of visits that resulted in an article pageview. This set of charts helps evaluate the effectiveness of your communication with the audience across multiple channels, such as social media and email, as well as the overall performance of your SEO strategy.
Articles
If you want to understand the value of the content you produce in the context of subscription acquisition and identify which editorial pieces contribute the most to both total and relative subscription growth, refer to the Article page.
Article KPIs
The set of KPIs is designed to provide valuable insights into how article content is being consumed, as well as its total and relative revenue value.
- Articles Metric: Represents the number of articles read within the analyzed time period, using a distinct count of article names.
- Page Views per Article: Reflects the relative value of page views per article.
- Experience Conversions: Describes the total number of any conversion type acquired through Composer.
- Experience Turnover: Represents the total amount associated with experience conversion events paid by visitors.
- Subscription ARPU: Indicates the average new subscription revenue per 1,000 visitors to the website.
Top 10 Articles
To understand the relationship between traffic volumes and new subscription revenues in relative terms, and to identify articles with the highest relative value in the context of subscriptions, refer to these charts.
The property “Article” used in these charts represents the last article viewed before the conversion event. This means that even if you attribute conversions to a landing page, these charts allow you to analyze the true content source of the conversion event. For more details about the “Content that Converts” mechanism, refer to our documentation.
Top 10 Sections
Use these charts to gain insights into the total and relative value of each section in the context of subscriber acquisition. The Subscription ARPU metric helps identify sections that contribute not only the highest total traffic or new subscription revenues but also the highest relative value.
For example, while the “Travel” section may not rank at the top for Page views or Experience turnover, it has the highest Subscription ARPU. This suggests that focusing more on the monetization of “Travel” articles could improve subscriber acquisition.
Top 10 Authors
To evaluate an article author’s performance in terms of traffic and new subscription revenue, refer to the following charts.
Activation Insights Subscription Performance Board
The Subscription Performance Board is designed to evaluate and understand the value of subscription businesses managed in VX, with a focus on retention, passive and active churn, and the VX site licensing feature.
The content is organized into four main analytical use cases:
- Overall Subscription Revenues and Value: Analyze the value of newly acquired and retained subscriptions. This page also identifies the growth of the subscription base and the revenue share from long-term vs. short-term subscriptions (e.g., annual vs. monthly plans).
- Passive Churn Details: Understand why renewal payments fail and uncover opportunities to reduce passive churn using data-driven decisions.
- Active Churn Insights: Gain data on subscribers turning off auto-renewal or canceling subscriptions, and evaluate Active Churn experiences in Composer.
- Site Licensing Insights: Evaluate subscriber statistics related to site licensees and contracts.
The board defaults to a time period of the past 7 days, with period comparison enabled.
Overview tab
KPI tiles
The KPI tiles highlight key data on subscription management performance.
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Subscription revenue overview: This set of KPIs provides insights into revenues managed via VX. For clients with multi-currency revenues, the Turnover metric automatically converts revenues into a default currency. Learn more about how the automatic exchange rate works in the documentation.
- VX turnover as value of total revenues including the new and renewal revenues
- New VX turnover as the value of revenues obtained from new payment conversions
- Renewal VX turnover as the value of all renewal payments for subscriptions
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Subscription overview: Analyze the growth or decline of the subscription base with metrics such as:
- Active subscriptions are a daily snapshot of all subscriber types across various terms, including Payment, Dynamic, Linked, Site Licensing, Gift, and External.
- New subscriptions as the value of new subscriptions created in VX, upgrades are excluded from this number
- Lost subscriptions represent the value of churned subscriptions.
Subscription revenue over time
Analyze revenue trends, spikes, or drops over time. Adjust the chart to view New VX Turnover or Renewal VX Turnover using the metric dropdown. To predict revenues or analyze anomalies, switch to the AXON chart type. More about AXON charts can be found in its documentation.
Active subscriptions over time
Understand subscription base growth or analyze new and lost subscriptions over time. The default metric is Active Subscriptions, which can be switched to New Subscriptions or Lost Subscriptions using the dropdown.
Subscription revenue by billing period over time
Identify revenue shares from short-term and long-term billing periods.
Revenue by term
To understand revenues as Total VX turnover or New VX turnover or Renewal VX turnover by term, please use the following charts. There are displayed top 10 terms and if you need to see the whole list, please expand the chart tile and use the table.
Revenue by resource
To understand revenues as Total VX turnover or New VX turnover or Renewal VX turnover by resource, please use the following charts. There are displayed top 10 resources and if you need to see the whole list, please expand the chart tile and use the table.
Passive churn
Passive churn represents the failure to renew subscriptions upon renewal due to various payment processing issues. The Passive Churn board page focuses on describing the volume of passive churn in existing subscriptions, providing detailed insights into the reasons for these failures, with an emphasis on annual and monthly subscriptions. The board is designed to help you understand how the Passive churn feature should be set up in VX.
Passive churn - Subscriptions with renewal failure
To understand the total volume of subscriptions that had renewal failure within the analyzed period see the initial charts on the Passive churn page.
Passive churn recovery rate - Subscriptions
To understand the volume of revenues impacted by passive churn but still recoverable because the subscriptions are in the grace period, refer to the following tiles. These are differentiated by the length of the billing period - monthly and annual.
If you need to see data for different billing periods, please use the tile filter to select a specific period.
Passive Churn - Subscriptions with renewal failure by terms
If you are wondering about the volume of passive churn in relation to specific terms, see the next charts. If you do consider setting up the Passive churn prevention scenario or targeting subscribers in grace via the C1x segment Expiring subscribers, this chart should help you to understand the specifics of passive churn per term.
Passive churn- Subscriptions with renewal failure by payment methods
To deep dive into details of payment methods that are attributed to passive churn use the following charts.
Passive churn- Subscriptions with renewal failure by payment errors
A payment error represents a decline code processed by the payment provider upon a failed renewal. The Passive Churn feature allows you to customize the renewal failure email based on the specific error message.
Passive churn- Subscriptions with renewal failure by retry attempts
The logic of retry attempts is tied to the length of the grace period. The charts help analyze the volume of failing subscriptions at various levels of retry attempts.
Active churn
Active churn is an essential aspect of retention. In the context of subscription businesses, it refers to proactive subscription cancellations or the customer disabling subscription auto-renewal. To optimize active churn, it is important to understand its volume, identify the factors driving it, and evaluate strategies that help to reduce it. The board page focuses on the evaluation of active churn, provides insights into the C1x segment Likelihood to Cancel, and offers the evaluation of the Active churn prevention feature.
Active Churn - Subscriptions Turning Autorenewal Off
Active churn evaluation relies on VX subscriptions. In VX, a subscription can either be canceled with immediate effect, or the customer can disable auto-renewal, allowing the subscription to expire at the next renewal date. It is important to monitor active churn events and to understand the volume of subscriptions that are still active but set to expire upon the next renewal because such subscribers can be targeted in Composer as C1x segment Expiring subscribers.
Active Churn - Subscriptions Turning Autorenewal Off by Billing Period
To understand differences in active churn by billing periods or to identify any time series anomaly, use the next chart. There are two default metrics to be used: “Expired subscriptions” and “Cancelled subscriptions”.
Active Subscriptions With Autorenewal Off by Term
If you are interested in the current subscription base which has auto-renewal turned off to identify an opportunity to win these subscribers back, see the next charts by a specific term. If you want to see the full list of terms, expand the chart tile.
Prediction Model - Likelihood to Cancel
The Likelihood to Cancel category of segments leverages Piano’s LtC algorithm to segment subscribers based on the likelihood they would cancel their subscription, allowing you to identify the biggest factors driving cancellation and target high and low-cancellation-risk subscribers individually. Models output a probability score between 0 to 100 for each subscriber based on their likelihood to cancel. Subscribers are then broken into 10 segments that can be targeted using Composer, with 0-9 as the least likely to cancel and 90-100 as the most likely to cancel.
Active Churn Prevention Experience
Active Churn Prevention is a feature that allows you to engage subscribers when they are on the verge of cancellation. Reacting to their actions in My Account with responsive and interactive Composer flows, you present targeted messaging, special offers, and feedback mechanisms stimulating user retention. The following section of the Active churn page in the subscription board focuses on the most important churn prevention KPIs to understand the ratios of customers exposed to churn prevention templates or upgrade offers.
Active Churn over Time
To understand the evolution of active churn and long-term trends, see the next chart with Active churn prevention exposed users and Subscribers prevented churn.
Active Churn - Churn Feedback Form
If you are collecting the churn feedback via Composer Show Form action, you can find key KPIs with collected responses in the last two tiles of the Active churn page. To see the full list of collected responses, expand the KPI tile.
Site Licensing
Site licensing is a VX feature that allows you to create a Licensee with your partners to redeem access to your site by visiting a landing page and registering. "Licensee" is the term for a group that you have a licensing agreement with, such as another company or a university.
Active Site Licensing Overview
The main KPIs show how many seats are managed in the Site Licensing feature, and what is the volume and ratio of redeemed site licensing accesses.
Active Site Licensing Users over Time
To see the trend of site licensing subscribers see the next chart.
Top 15 Site Licensing Terms & Activated Seats Rate for Top 15 Terms
To understand the top Site licensing contracts which are represented in data as terms, see the next charts.
Site Licensing - Details
The last table on the Site Licensing page on the board provides detailed insights into each Licensee and Site licensing contract. The KPIs available in this table are the following and a full list of contracts and licensees is available in expand tile mode.
- Total site licensing seats: It is the maximum setup in VX if the maximum of seats is not defined, then it is empty
- Active site licensing users: Number of users who redeemed the access and have the status “Active”
- Pending site license users: Number of users with the status “Pending”. Pending status represents the user who has been invited but has not yet redeemed access.
- Revoked site license users: Number of users whose access was revoked by a member of the client team.
- Invalid email site license users: For email-based site licensing contracts - The user has an incorrect email.
- Site licensing activated seats rate: Calculation: Active site license users / Total site license seats.
Board features and adjustments
Metrics preference
In the Summary tab, you can select your own metrics to display in the chart by clicking on the dropdown menu within the three predefined KPIs. This option to change metrics is available for all other charts and board tiles as well.
If you are not sure which metric to choose because you do not understand the metric definition, hover over to the metric and click on the info icon to display the tooltip with the metric definition:
Expanding tile and presentation mode
Each tile can be expanded to full screen and used directly for presentations. There is no need to copy charts and paste them into a slideshow; you can present them directly within the Piano Analytics interface.
Chart modifications with AXON
You can change each chart according to your preference and you can also use two AXON charts including predictions and anomaly detection.
Using global filters
To limit all KPIs in the board to a specific Experience, Device, geo-location or user segment, use the global segment feature. It is available on each board and you can use either suggested properties, look for specific ones or create and use your custom segments. More information is in the segment feature description.
Data customization and advanced data analytics
Each chart can be expanded into the presentation mode and you can add additional properties to the data or for more advanced data modifications click on “Open in Data Query” to work with the data.
Many more useful tips for working with Workspace boards can be found on our dedicated documentation page.