Retaining new software customers requires more than just a great product—it demands a systematic approach to the crucial first 90 days. When users abandon platforms early, companies lose not just revenue but future growth potential. Bradley de Wet, Chief Operations Officer at iExcel, has developed data-driven strategies that turn initial sign-ups into loyal customers. With experience scaling SaaS companies and coaching businesses on operational excellence, Bradley offers practical solutions to the retention challenge facing self-service software companies.
The 30-Day Drop-Off Problem
Bradley de Wet knows the pain of watching new customers disappear. As Chief Operations Officer at iExcel, he’s helped scale a digital marketing agency and coached countless businesses on fixing their leaky buckets. “One of the biggest challenges SaaS self-service solution companies face is early churn – losing customers within the first 30, 60, or 90 days,” Bradley says. “If you’re struggling with this, don’t worry. You are not alone.”
He’s developed three data-driven tactics to identify and fix early churn so you can boost retention and maximize revenue.
Map Your Customer’s First Moves
The first 30 days represent the most critical window for new users. “In your first 30-day window, you need to understand what your activation funnel is,” Bradley emphasizes. This isn’t just jargon – it’s the roadmap to customer success. “An activation funnel is the initial steps that any user needs to take to get to first value in a product,” he explains.
Bradley illustrates this with a CRM example: “They might need to go through a process of connecting their email, importing contacts, organizing those contacts into groups before they can message them and get that first value.” Mapping this journey provides the foundation for your entire onboarding strategy. Once you know the necessary steps, your communication should match each user’s progress. “You want to focus on the first step with the initial emails, hammering that first step until they’ve completed it. Then they move to the second step and get messages about that until they’ve completed it, and so forth,” he advises.
Show, Don’t Just Tell
Between 30 and 60 days, the focus shifts to education. “You want to make sure you’ve set up the right sort of onboarding content for your customers,” Bradley notes. His approach combines two complementary methods: live webinars and self-serve videos.
The live format enables group learning while addressing specific questions. “You can do group bulk sessions – it doesn’t need to be one-to-one – where you can answer live questions for people who need to work through things more thoroughly,” he explains. Meanwhile, self-serve content allows users to progress at their own pace. Bradley acknowledges the tendency to skip product tours but emphasizes that “the thing that really helps people get through that learning process is definitely the content associated with onboarding.”
Watch What They Do, Not What They Say
For days 60 through 90, Bradley stresses the importance of data. “You need to have the tooling in place to understand what behaviors people are taking in your product,” he says. Without proper event tracking, you’re flying blind. “If you can’t understand those behaviors, you’ve got a problem. You need to talk with the dev team to ensure you’re doing that event tracking.” This data enables customer segmentation, unlocking more targeted engagement. “You can start segmenting users into different groups. With that segmentation, you want to nudge those groups toward the activities that are more of your super user, advanced user type of activities,” Bradley explains. In-app messaging becomes particularly valuable during this phase. “Whether you’re using Intercom or some other in-app messaging tool, those tools drive users to discover the rich features where people find a lot more value.”
Bradley’s approach isn’t flashy, but it works. “Reducing early churn isn’t about guesswork – it’s about understanding the activation funnel, onboarding content, and usage-based in-app messaging,” he says. No single tactic solves everything. Some users blaze through all stages in 30 days, while others need the full 90. The key is having a system that meets them where they are. “Implementing these data-driven tactics will increase retention, maximize lifetime value, and ultimately help you drive growth,” Bradley concludes. For a guy who specializes in scaling businesses, that’s the bottom line that matters.
Connect with Bradley de Wet on LinkedIn for more insights on customer retention and growth strategies.
