ChartMogul
- As more companies turn to subscription-based models, measuring revenue and performance relies on things like renewals and churn.
- Data analytics startup ChartMogul hopes to be the go-to data platform for subscription businesses to manage and analyze their revenues and customer behavior.
- From software-as-a-service companies to meditation apps, ChartMogul's clients vary, but they all have one thing in common: a need to consolidate data sources in one place.
- Going forward, ChartMogul is focused on integrations with customer-focused analytics platforms like Segment and Salesforce so it can export and apply the data it collects to a company's growth strategy.
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The subscription economy is booming - from software-as-a-service companies that sell to other businesses, to consumer-facing industries like food, media, medicine.
And while their products differ, their business models all rely on the same thing: keeping their subscribers.
While customer acquisition and growth may take priority in the early days, subscription businesses understand that customer retention becomes just as important as they scale.
And as of 2020, 93% of subscription businesses view retention as being just as or more important than acquisition, according to a report from customer retention software company Brightback.
ChartMogul is a startup that wants to be the data platform behind the subscription economy, providing businesses with data and analytics to understand their subscription-based revenues.
Over the last five years, ChartMogul has developed data tools that give companies insight into their revenues and customer churn and retention rates.
ChartMogul was founded in 2014. It was originally headquartered in Berlin, but in January of 2019, the team started working fully remote.
The startup has raised $3.7 million to date in seed capital from investors including Alven, Point Nine Capital, and RTAventures.
Platform play
And now, it's launching a subscription data platform that will join its data importing, cleansing, analyzing, and reporting functions.
"A lot of people perceive us as analytics and visualization tools. But this is our foray deeper into true data management," Sara Archer, director of sales and marketing at ChartMogul, told Business Insider.
Using ChartMogul, a subscription company can connect various sales, marketing, and payments data sources to get a full view of its performance.
And the platform provides three basic data analysis functions: importing, enriching, and exporting.
To import subscription data, ChartMogul integrates with billing providers like PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe to get a view of subscription-related revenues. Then, by integrating with marketing and sales software like MailChimp and HubSpot, the revenue data can be enriched with customer information like membership tiers, discounts, and regions.
ChartMogul's data can be exported through customer service platforms like Zendesk and Happyfox, as well as internal productivity tools like Geckoboard and Slack.
Going forward, ChartMogul will focus on enhancing its exporting functionality, Archer said, based on what its clients are asking for.
And it's no surprise they want integrations with analytics companies like the $1.5 billion startup Segment and cloud giant Salesforce.
While these integrations are big asks, Archer said, ChartMogul doesn't want to be another software-as-a-service (SaaS) silo where data gets trapped.
From B2B SaaS to meditation apps
Joining all these data sources together could prove valuable for companies who are managing subscriptions across several channels, from online to mobile to one-off spreadsheet-tracked billing.
"The market is moving more towards niche analytics products," Archer said.
Companies can and do spend time and resources building and managing data analysis in-house. But by outsourcing the data management to a company like ChartMogul, they could have their business intelligence and data teams instead focused on solving customer problems, Archer said.
ChartMogul's early clients were mostly B2B software-as-a-service companies, Archer said, like conversational marketing platform Drift and project management software Notion. But the startup is seeing growth in other industries.
"In the last year, we've also started to see more virtual subscription models in e-learning and in lifestyle and fitness applications," Archer said.
ChartMogul is used by sports streaming service FuboTV and meditation app Breethe.
ChartMogul itself runs on a tiered subscription model, with monthly fees and service levels dependent on a client's monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
Companies with less than $10,000 MRR can use a basic plan for free. Once a company scales above that, there's a sliding monthly fee based on total MRR. For example, a company with MRR of $100,000 per month pays ChartMogul $350 per month.