How Buffer did for Business in December 2013: Revenue and Growth

We’ve had one of the most exciting months for Buffer for Business. In it’s first month of public launch, which we’ve been lucky to have seen received so well, Buffer for Business already grabbed 23.9% of total Buffer revenue and all other metrics have also grown substantially.

Here is an insight in all our numbers from December:

Revenue

Here is how we did in terms of revenue:

Total Recurring Revenue from Jun – Nov: $19,190
New Monthly Recurring Revenue from December: $15,850
Total Monthly Recurring Revenue December: = $32,491
Total revenue December = $56,208

Conversions

There was a total of 345 new paying customers in December, out of the 3009 trials started in December. That is 11.5% conversion from trial to paying user (versus 13.2% in Nov).

What was the conversion rate for each channel?

Source	Conversion rate	Converted	Trials
Landing page (‘false’)	12%	102	938
Web Popup	8%	88	1099
App Header	66%	58	88
Pricing (Awesome)	13%	18	138
App Modal	53%	8	15
Billing Page	58%	7	12
Web Analytics	15%	4	26
Blog Bottom	60%	3	5
Launch Post	18%	3	17
Twitter Holidays	2%	2	124

In total

11.5% of people who started a trial converted to paying users (345 out of 3009). There were 2972 new total trials started in December.

Compare to last month.

Growth

Here is a breakdown in terms the % of growth happening to all of our numbers in December:

69.3% increase in MRR (from $19,190 to $32,491)
156% increase in total revenue (from $22250 to $56,208) (versus 27% MoM decline in Nov)
Buffer for Business is 23.9% of total Buffer revenue ( from 11.4% last month)
222% increase in new paying Business users (from 107 to 345)
260% increase in new trials started (From 826 to 2,972)

Total users on Business

Month	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
Large	2	6	1	10	15
Medium	7	9	12	9	43
Small	101	89	95	326	596
Total	110	104	108	345	654

Outlook and thoughts

2X growth in both trials and new paying users

We saw that “Landing page” and “Web popup” are driving the highest volume of trials and subsequent signups, albeit at a lower conversion rate.

“App Modal” and “App Header” converted the most trials into paying users, which means that people converting from Awesome remain the most engaged users, with the highest likelihood to upgrade

Conversion rate stabilizing

While the conversion rate trended down (from 13% to 11% in December), we see that as healthy and stabilizing with the significant growth in trials starting.

Conclusion

With the official launch of Business plan in December, we see growth kicked into high gears. We expect organic growth to sustain in the coming month as we launch more core features, beyond the ones announced recently.

We are also looking into paid advertising channels including Google, Twitter and Facebook, as well as retargeting. This will be a key focus for our marketing efforts, as already mentioned in our previous report.

PS: In case you’re interested, you can see November’s report here and the full Buffer update with all revenues and numbers from December.