Want to calculate your retention rate? Use the calculator below:
Want to find out your attrition rate? Use the calculator below:
You will find a break down of the differences between retention and attrition rates below.
What does retention rate mean?
Your retention rate is the percentage of people (subscribers/customers/employees/accounts etc) that have stayed active or a member of your business in a given time period.
For example, at the beginning of a month let’s say you have 800 subscribers, and by the end of the month you gain an additional 200 subscribers but lose 100. Your subscriber count is now 900. Your retention rate would work out the percentage of those who decided to stay.
If you need help improving customer retention, check out our post on customer retention statistics.
What does attrition rate mean?
Attrition rate works out the complete opposite. Instead of calculating the percentage of people who decided to stay, your attrition rate works out the percentage of people who decided to go. Also known as the churn or loss of people in a given time period.
Churn or loss can refer to anything from a person unsubscribing to your email list, or cancelling their membership with your services, to an employee handing in their notice and leaving your business.
Using the same figures from the example above, if we have 800 subscribers at the beginning of the period, and 900 by the end, with 200 new subscribers, the attrition would work out the percentage of those who decided to leave.
How to calculate attrition rate
To calculate your attrition rate first you need to make note of the total people in the group (e.g. customers/subscribers/accounts etc) at the start of the period, then add the total of new people gained in a specific period. This figure is then deducted from the total figure at the end of the period, and lastly divided by the start of the period figure.
For example, we have 800 subscribers at the beginning of the month and at the end of the month we’ve had an extra 200 people subscribe. However during this month we have had 100 unsubscribed, leaving our end of month figure at 900.
Therefore we take 800 and add 200 giving us a total of 1,000. We deduct the end of month figure, which is 900, this gives us 100. This figure is then divided by 800 and multiplied by 100 to give us our attrition rate of – 12.5%
(800 + 200 – 900) / 800 x 100 = 12.5% attrition rate
(Customers at the beginning of the period + customers acquired during the period - customers at the end of the period) / customer at the beginning = AR
How to calculate retention rate
To calculate your retention rate you need the same 3 figures: starting figure at the beginning of the period, as well as the end, and the total number of people you acquired during this period.
We take the figure at the end of the period and deduct those acquired during, this figure is then divided by the number at the beginning of the period.
Using the same figures for the attrition rate, we have 900 subscribers at the end of the period and we deduct the 200 we acquired during the period. This gives us 700, which we then divide by the subscribers at the beginning of the period which is 800 and multiply by 100 to give us our retention rate of – 87.5%
(900 – 200) / 800 x 100 = 87.5%
(Customers at the end of the period - customers acquired during the period) / customers at the beginning of the period = RR
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