Reading Retention Curves

The Heatmap Layout

The cohort retention heatmap is a grid. Once you know how to read it, it becomes the most useful view in CohortGenie.

• Rows represent acquisition cohorts — groups of customers based on when they first transacted. The top row is the oldest cohort; the bottom row is the most recent.
• Columns represent months (or quarters) since that cohort's first transaction. Column 0 is their first month. Column 1 is one month later. Column 6 is six months later.
• Values show revenue retention as a percentage.

What the Percentages Mean

Each cell answers one question: "Compared to this cohort's first-period revenue, how much revenue did they generate in this later period?"

• 100% means the cohort spent exactly the same as their first period.
• Greater than 100% means expansion — the cohort spent more than their baseline. This is good. These customers are growing.
• Less than 100% means contraction or churn — some customers spent less or stopped transacting entirely.
• 0% means the entire cohort churned — nobody in that group transacted in that period.

Reading the Colors

CohortGenie uses a color scale to make patterns visible at a glance:

• Green cells indicate strong retention (closer to or above 100%)
• Red cells indicate poor retention (significant drop-off)

The darker the green, the healthier that cohort is performing. The darker the red, the more revenue has been lost.

What "Good" Looks Like

There's no universal standard, but here are practical benchmarks for service and product businesses:

• GDR above 85% at 12 months means you're keeping most of your revenue
• GDR above 90% is strong
• NDR above 100% means your existing customer base is growing without any new customer acquisition

If you're seeing 60–70% retention at 12 months, that's a real problem worth surfacing in your next client meeting.

Patterns to Watch For

The diagonal. Look at the diagonal line from top-left to bottom-right. This represents the most recent period for each cohort. If the diagonal is consistently green, recent performance is healthy across all cohorts.

Cohort maturation. Most cohorts drop in the first few months and then stabilize. The shape of that drop matters. A steep drop in months 1–3 followed by a flat line at 80% is very different from a gradual slide that never stabilizes.

Improving over time. Compare rows. If your newer cohorts (bottom rows) retain better than older cohorts (top rows) at the same column, your business is getting better at keeping customers. That's the trend you want to see.

Seasonal effects. Some businesses see predictable dips in certain months. The heatmap makes these visible — you'll see vertical stripes of red in the same column across cohorts.

Using This in Client Conversations

The heatmap turns a vague concern like "I feel like we're losing customers" into a specific conversation: "Your Q2 2025 cohort dropped to 65% retention by month 4 — that's below your historical average. Let's figure out what happened."

That's the kind of insight that makes advisory work stick.